The Trouble with Written Testimonials

There is a very good reason to have testimonials on your website. It indicates that people can trust you, it shows that other people have used your services, and it also shows that you’re pretty good at what you do. However, there is a caveat.

A woman's smiling face.Some unscrupulous (or perhaps over-eager) people will flagrantly make up testimonials to “help” people to hire them. Yikes.  These are the same people that litter their website with phrases such as “award-winning,” when they’ve never actually won an award in their lives.  Run for the hills from those people, friends.

How do you get around that situation?  Sure, your testimonials are probably legitimate, but how do you prove it in a world where lots of people like to cry wolf? It’s quite easy. Try using video testimonials. We do, and the results have been absolutely staggering. We get comments all the time from people that watch our videos on our web site, and give us a call directly after.

You should never take a company’s word for it that they’re very good.  They are incredibly biased. Of course they think they’re good. Otherwise why be in business?! The truth lies within the clients that support the organization you’re looking at. When you can get a client to go on record with their name, their face, and their voice to tell the world that the company is really good, you’ve basically struck gold. That is something at lends true credibility to any organization.

The success of an organization rest on the shoulders of it’s happy clients, does it not?. That’s all there is to it. It doesn’t even need to be really fancy production in order to count. Nowadays, you can find a really simple video tools on smart phones. I happen to have an iPhone. The iPhone has a really nice HD video camera in it.  Here are a few good questions to get you started in interviewing your clients (in no particular order):

  • how they like working with you (shows the humanity of your business)
  • about your services or products (shows what you do)
  • what their favorite aspects are (shows the perks that others may enjoy)
  • how long they’ve worked with you  (shows trust and longevity)
  • the results of whatever they bought from you  (shows impact)
  • whether or not they’d recommend you (shows their high opinion of you)
  • who would be a good fit for your services, in their opinion  (shows who else might be a good match)
  • some initial hesitations that have since been overcome (shows how other people might feel)
  • the tragic situation that existed before you (the hero) showed up on the scene
  • how big their company is (this helps people see them as a relatable source)

Once you’ve got your questions together, ask away.  Your client or customer doesn’t even need to look at the camera.  Sometimes people are really shy about that.  Most are, in fact.  This isn’t a problem.  Have a look at our most recent one with Jillian Canavan.  She was more comfortable being interviewed, and helped her to appear more naturally.  That’s the goal!   Once you’ve got it shot, you can edit the video and take your voice out of it after-the-fact with something like iMovie (I think it’s $5 in the app store?), and you’re in business.  Windows Movie Maker is pretty good too, for a freebie.  You’d be surprised! If you don’t feel like doing this, but want to have the really nifty videos done, you can always ask the experts. We’re pretty good at this stuff.  But seriously – don’t take our word for it.  Ask Jillian. 😉

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About the author : Vision Advertising

Vision Advertising is a full-service marketing agency enhancing the online brand presence of business-to-business and business-to-consumer companies across the US. We focus on providing custom marketing services to address unique client needs, customer profiles, and budgetary concerns, created in-house by our team of skilled marketing specialists. This author profile is used for deattributed posts or when content is posted to this blog without comment.