Customer testimonials are a powerful form of word-of-mouth advertising for your brand. They offer enhanced credibility for your brand and its promises. Credence is found to your marketing efforts when you add a personalized customer testimonial.

You find customer testimonials increasing in number, power and reach with the easy use of  social and digital media reaching more consumers. Testimonials can come in comments on related blog posts, Twitter, Facebook, YouTube. Those sources are in addition to the traditional ones with letters and emails.

All are wonderful. But how do you corral them, organize them, to help lend the power of your customers' words to your product's message?

Lisa Barone offers 4 excellent tips and helpful perspective in her post  How to Solicit Testimonials Without Being Annoying.

CustomInk with Sean Murphy as the Executive VP of eCommerce allows customers to post uncensored testimonials on the front page of their site. That makes it easy, immediate, for everyone to celebrate their purchase... with a testimonial. On the site's main page.

CustomInk's example may illustrate some near-universal rules for testimonials and their handling:
  1. Testimonials are built on a foundation of delighting the customer
  2. Testimonials come naturally when the customer is delighted.
  3. Delighted customers want to help.
  4. Make it delightful for them to testify for you.

Now, for the What-if's

What if you at this moment your website resources are not equal to CustomInk's?

What-if you have a strong foundation for delighting your customer?

What-if you have a series of emails and even saved voice mails from your customers testifying for the delight you created?

For goodness sakes, then, what-if you:
  • Organize them into a page for your website.
  • Put a tab titled "customer testimonials" on each page on your website
  • Display as many testimonials on each page as you can
  • Personalize the testimonials.
  • Share their name, their photo, their company name.
  • Link to your customer's website.(That adds credibility. It adds free advertising for your customer. And it adds a thread of connection with your customers. Note: be sure to ask for their permission.)
  • Write a blog post about them. Share the testimonials. Tell how they make you feel, the delight it added for your day.
  • Tweet a link to the blog post.
  • Share your twitter feeds on your blog or website.
  • Share them with your employees.
  • Celebrate them.
  • Learn from them.
Testimonials are gold. Your gold. Your customer's gold. Your shared gold. Gold dazzles people. Sharing this gold magnifies it, makes it richer and you, richer, too. Share that wealth.


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