Real client reviews and testimonials have some of the biggest impact in marketing, because they mitigate the buyer’s fear of making a bad decision.
Your buyer is thinking something like:
- “What if this doesn’t work out?”
- “I’ve heard this before – it sounds good but it did last time too”
- “Will I really get the impact I need by investing this?”
- “How do things really work?”
That’s because no matter how good and clear your marketing is, much of it is coming from you.
The words on your website, on social posts, in proposals were created with your collaboration and approval, to reflect who you believe your firm is and what you stand for.
Which is absolutely right: marketing needs to reflect you and the buyer.
But even the most well educated buyer still has concerns. Hesitations. Questions not fully answered until they start working with you.
So the word-for-word quotes from your clients, saying “this is for real” and “I had those fears too and this is how it worked out for me”, helps mitigate those concerns.
Even more so when the quote is connected to a real person’s name, company, location, Google account, or social profile. It adds social proof – again, at the back of the buyer’s mind if they’re reading words on your website they’re wondering if these really are your client’s words, or if you doctored it a bit. Or made it up. (I was reading someone’s suggestion on LinkedIn to “create client stories, even if they’re hypothetical”. Unless you say they’re hypothetical, this is exactly the sort of thing which causes buyers to be nervous.)
So how do you get these amazing quotes posted on Google or social, which you can then use in your marketing?
Here are three very simple steps:
- Gather: Go to the AI notetaking summary from your last amazing client call – the one where they had some kind words to say about you, your firm, or the results they’ve experienced.
- Copy: Put these exact words into a document. You can tidy it up a bit – remove some of the ‘ums’ and ‘ahs’ or duplicated words – but stay true to what they actually said.
- Contact the client: Copy that text into an email, text, DM, whatever is the fastest way you’ll get a reply from your client, and say, “Hey, you said this in our meeting last week. Would you mind posting this as a Google review here?” (Make sure to link directly to your Google listing, like this)
The key is to use the exact words they said, how they said it. Even if the words they use aren’t quite the ones you would, or it doesn’t sound as “professional” as you thought it needed to. Your future buyer isn’t looking for ChatGPT to recommend you: they want the perspective of a real human person. Someone like them.
This is ultimately what you want the future buyer to think: “Wow, that person sounds exactly like me! …Except they have these amazing results and I don’t yet.”
There are loads of other ways you can get testimonials, but given the incredible amount of documented information we all have – in emails, texts, notes, and recorded calls – this is a simple way to get a few testimonials posted quickly.
What you’re doing is making it easy for your client.
After all, they like you. They’re happy with the way you’ve helped them – they already said that to you. They’d love to share those kind words with others.
But they’re as busy as you are, and if you ask, “Could you write me a testimonial?” they’re likely going to think, “Oh yea, good idea, I need to think about that.”
Taking the time to stop and think and make notes and write something can feel like a big investment – and they’ll also want to get it right. Make sure it’s good – reflects well on both them and you.
So when you take all of that decision making and effort away, and say “here are your exact words. Could you copy and paste this into a Google review?” you’ve changed it from a job that feels like it will take an hour, to one which they can do from their phone in seconds.
I always add something like “Feel free to adjust the wording a little, or add something about [topic] if you wish, but a direct copy/paste is absolutely fine if that’s easiest!”
Give it a go this week. I’d love to hear how you get on!
P.S. To show you how easy it is, here’s a Google review from a client of ours in Canada who we followed this exact process with!
