#74 How To Get Great Testimonials
In typical Leo fashion I'm going to tell you for the second time that my birthday was this week. It was fabulous and featured my husband, wine, jazz, and a hole in the wall authentic Italian joint (my love language).
I used my birthday to launch a new testimonial project – free gifts (free courses, 1:1s, and workbooks) for newsletter testimonials.
In addition to the testimonials, I also got quite a few responses from you about what a great idea it was and a fun way to collect them.
My clients that have the best testimonials offer some kind of incentive to get them and so I wanted to share some of the strategies I've seen for collecting great testimonials.
Let’s get into it —
Let's say you delivered an incredible product or experience for your community. You get thank you messages here and there in the DMs but you want to collect amazing testimonials that share their growth and wins.
We know that our customers make decisions based on trust. Trust is earned and social proof goes a long way in building that trust. Think about it... we get an ad or read a sales page and we think 'this looks / sounds great but how has it worked for others?' and then we jump to ... the reviews. So how do you actually get a great testimonial?
Below we'll dig into the ideal testimonial format, how to collect testimonials for on-demand products, live programs, and services. Plus I recorded a bonus video analyzing testimonials for themes.
Ideal Testimonial Format
You can't always control how the testimonial is formatted, although I'll give you tips below for how to write testimonials on behalf of your clients ethically.
It helps to give your clients or customers a formula for a great testimonial. I use the below formula from my friend Cheyenne Buttrey, messaging & marketing expert.
I went from (point a) to (point b) in (timeframe) using (offer)
For the next few sections I'll review strategies to get great testimonials!
On Demand Products
Direct Outreach
broken record enters that chat ... Digital products are not set and forget, they just leverage your time.
You can still check who is buying your courses or products and reach out to them. "Hey! I saw you recently purchased [product name]. Has it been helpful? Do you have any questions?"
Start a conversation. You might get product feedback. You might get a rave review which you can ask if you can use as a testimonial. Win, win.
Course Completion
Once someone completes a course, you can trigger a testimonial request to send. You can also make it a module at the end of the course section. But I recommend offering an incentive to get them to do it (section below).
Raffle Free Things & Discounts
You can use Senja to allow someone to "spin the wheel" to win discounts or freebies after submitting a testimonial. That's what I used for my newsletter testimonial.
Live Program
Curriculum Incentives
I have a client that requests a testimonial at the end of each module (total 8) – for anyone that submits all 8 they have an opportunity to win a high value ($$$$) luxury gift.
These can work for on-demand courses too!
1:1 Calls
I am always recommending 1:1 onboarding calls but I also love a 1:1 offboarding call. These are great opportunities for you to ask what kind of transformation they had and what they thought of the program. Send them a testimonial you write after the call for approval to post.
Graduation / Celebration Calls
These are so amazing for community building. When I ran this call for my January cohort of my program nearly everyone attended live. The call chat is your best friend for testimonials.
After spending 90% of the time supporting your attendees, ask them to share their greatest takeaway from the program in the chat. You can get some awesome feedback and turn them into testimonials with student permission.
Here are a couple examples:
Services
Part 1: Ask live as part of your exit process
This is for immediately after your service is completed. You might not know the impact or results yet but you can communicate the clarity or strategy you provided.
During my agency's product sprint service there is a live workshop toward the end of the process. At the end of the workshop I ask 3 questions:
What was the biggest breakthrough today?
What are you most excited to change, update or create based on today?
Where do you still feel unsure or like you could use more support?
I later reframe it into a testimonial and ask the client's permission to use it. They love it because the work is already done.
Part 2: Follow up to ask about outcomes
I keep in touch with all of my clients by following up every 3-6 months to ask what has worked / not worked about the strategy we set. When they share impact on revenue, retention, etc, I ask permission to update their testimonial to include the results. Easy.
Analyzing Your Testimonials (video)
I use Senja to collect testimonials and I played with their AI tool and shared some stream-of-consciousness around making data-driven decisions in the business in this loom video.
If you loved this, you can subscribe to the weekly newsletter here for free! I send a bunch of resources & share a bts happenings of my business in the email version.