A testimonial is where you use a positive feedback given by an existing or previous customer as a marketing tool to attract new customers to your products or services. Over the years, ‘testimonials’ have proven to be one of the most effective methods of marketing. Only recently have webmasters started using this technique to attract targeted traffic to their websites. As a result, today this concept is practiced by many websites primarily to prove their legitimacy and build confidence within the minds of prospective buyers.

Testimonials are considered by many people as a guaranteed solution to increase your sales. This is simply due to the confidence it generates within the prospective customers to do business with your company. When visitors see that there are other people who succeeded using your products and services they start feeling confident about you.

There is no better way you can communicate with your potential and existing customers, than having a set of customer testimonials praising your products and services. For instance, the websites of universities generally contain the success stories of their current and alumni students. They apprecite the learning experience, support of the staff, financial aid, career opportunities and other areas the university wants to market. In fact these comments are more powerful and compelling than anything a university says about itself in presentations to prospective students. This is because the testimonials come from similar profiles within your target audience.

So far we have discussed how effective ‘testimonials’ can be. Now let’s talk about the way to proceed. One thing you should know is you can never have too many testimonials. The higher the number of testimonials, the better it is. So start collecting them now.

Let us now discuss some of the important aspects you need to remember in using testimonials.

Make it real for the reader

One thing you need to ensure is that your testimonials look real to the reader. No one will believe in your products and services if they suspect the genuineness of your testimonials.

One approach would be to provide complete information about the people who give testimonies. It is identified that more and more people will start believing you if you can provide more information about them. Therefore it is always better to include all the details such as full name, occupation, the firm, e-mail address, city and/or state etc. Sometimes a simple thing like adding their photo can significantly boost believability.

Another approach would be to use audio and video media for your presentations. It has been noted that when people can hear you or see your message, there is a higher tendency to believe you than reading all your boring writings.

Highlight the achievement

I have seen many testimonials which beat around the bush but never come to the point. On the other hand there are sometimes brilliant testimonials which manage to convince the readers at once. The reason is that these are results oriented and they talk about how your customers have benefited, very often in financial terms. In fact your prospective customers are in search of just that type of recommendation.

Getting him to write about you

This is often quoted as a major issue which hinders the potential of using testimonials. Getting the customer to write the testimonial is an art.

First you need to contact customers who now enjoy the benefits of your product or service. If you ask them to write a short testimonial outlining their experience most probably they will say "yes".

However what you need to understand is that no customer will voluntarily provide you a testimonial. After convincing the person with much effort to write you the testimonial, you need to follow up. Otherwise the customer may forget about it and consequently you will receive nothing, so it may be necessary to bug him just a bit. Be sure to confine your reminders to friendly, gentle nudges. You don’t want to turn a happy customer into an aggravated one!

If nothing else seems to work, you may want to bribe your existing customers in the form of a contest. To acknowledge their worth and value, you can provide free products or gift items encouraging them indirectly to write a testimonial.

As we discussed earlier testimonials are one of the best methods to market your products and services virally. Though many people use it as a marketing tool, very few of them manage to achieve maximum benefits out of it. I hope this article provided some insight into using testimonials as an effective marketing tool.