If you’re like most marketers, you don’t realize that you need a testimonial until your back is up against the wall. A salesperson might be pressing you for testimonials to help close a big deal. Or the marketing department is working on a large campaign when they realize a customer testimonial will be required to make it effective. At that point, it is all hands on deck to find a relevant testimonial and once it's resolved, everyone moves on to the next crisis.
This is no way to live. The best marketers know that they will need a huge stockpile of social proof and plan to sprinkle it throughout their marketing continually. As a result, they create systems and programs for identifying customer advocates and continually collecting testimonials so that it is not a mad scramble at the end.
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Let’s review the three approaches to building customer testimonial programs.
Approach #1: Ad hoc Program
The most common way marketers execute their testimonial program is by making periodic one-off requests. Whenever the marketer learns of a satisfied customer (or more likely when there is burning fire requiring a testimonial), the marketer pours a ton of resources into getting a proof points. Ad-hoc approaches work well if you want to get one or two high quality testimonials. For example, the marketer may arrange to send an interviewer and a film and lighting crew to the customer’s location to shoot a video testimonial. This requires a lot of coordination, setup, and cost (typically over $10,000), but usually results in a high production value video that can be used over and over. Nonetheless, ad-hoc requests programs by their nature never really become scalable, programmatic programs for lack of attention and priority.
Approach #2: Event Driven Program
Events, such as trade shows and seminars, represent another excellent opportunity to collect testimonials. You can arrange to interview and film customers at a tradeshow where everyone will be in the same location at the same time. This is mutually convenient for everyone involved, although oftentimes the event can be a big distraction for both parties involved..
Alternatively, savvy marketers are starting to create their own user generated content contests (essentially another event) to get high impact testimonials and videos. By promoting them on social media, they can get customers, partners, and other relevant people to contribute video and user generated testimonials by participating in a contest. User generated content contests can be an effective way to collect a large amount of social proof quickly.
Photo by Artem Beliaikin / UnsplashApproach #3: Continuous Program
The most effective marketing teams build an automated system that yields a continuous, evergreen flow of testimonial content. To do this, you must truly understand your customer’s journey and their key a-ha moments. The key to creating an automated testimonial program is delivering the request at the right moment in time. Using marketing automation or email autoresponders, marketers can trigger testimonial requests that line up with the customer’s journey and thus scale their customer testimonial program much faster and with a more rich supply of content than other approaches.
For example, a SaaS business can tightly couple the testimonial ask to their customer’s journey. The SaaS application knows when a user logs in and also when they hit a key usage milestone. A savvy SaaS marketer can set up automated emails to fire on this milestone or after a customer renews his contract. By combining the ask for feedback with a testimonial request, they can generate tons of relevant and in the moment testimonials. SaaS applications have 100s if not 1,000s of users so this approach can scale up dramatically and yield a steady flow of high quality, authentic testimonials.
Likewise, B2B companies can execute a similar strategy. In this case, they can tie the ask for a testimonial to events that are tracked in their CRM system. For example, if a product needs to be installed or some customization completed, they can send an email request for a testimonial tied directly to a status change in their CRM system. This approach is completely automated and ultimately drives lots of great testimonials content.
Similarly, eCommerce firms can time the ask for testimonials with key moments in the consumer’s journey. An eCommerce firm can send email requests for testimonials shortly after a product has been shipped or wait for 30 days after a shipment so that they can be assured that the customer has enjoyed and realized some of the benefits of their order.
You can see the relative pros and cons of each type of testimonial program in the chart below:
Interested in deepening your knowledge of customer testimonials and how they can move the needle for your business? Check out the other chapters in The Definitive Guide to Testimonials.
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