By Carly Thompson Administrative/Communications Assistant
When you are deciding on a product to purchase, what is your first step? Most consumers will search multiple product reviews to compare prices and features, and read customers’ first-hand experience. Before you spend money, you want to be sure the product is worth it.
Whether you’re in sales or providing a service, utilizing customer feedback exposes your blind-spots, establishes trust, and encourages potential customers to take action. As the marketing gurus at Hubspot say it, “If we don’t know what’s right, we can’t do more of it. If we don’t know what’s wrong, we can’t do less of it. Without customer feedback, we are destined to fail.”
How do you use feedback to drive success? Here are some helpful tips to put this practice to work:
Ask
Reach out personally to your key stakeholders, frequent clients, and customers and simply ask them to take the time to write a few sentences about their experience.
Include a link on your website home page where customers can click to leave a review or write a testimonial.
Invite your followers on Facebook to leave a Facebook review on your business page. You can send them an email with a link to the review section of your page.
Check out more ideas to gain customer feedback!
Content
Use deeper and more specific testimonials instead of, “I love ___ organization or product!” Paint a picture with words of the true worth and value of a product or service and make sure it’s enthusiastic.
Use more formats. Experiment with short video interviews with your customers instead of written content and use photos to captivate a broader customer audience.
Feature
Create a Testimonial Webpage. This can be as simple as adding a few quotes to your home page. As you get more feedback, create a page or tab on your site to house all the great feedback you receive. Check out these 12 testimonial page examples done right.
Feature Testimonials in your Publications. Do you send out any monthly newsletters, weekly email blasts or blogs? Include a testimonial in each one with a link to the page on your website where reviews can be left. You’ll gain more readers if the first thing they see is a success story from a new perspective rather than your own.
Feature on Social Media. Post a new testimonial regularly on your business social media accounts—videos would work well for this setting. Include testimonials in your account bio of stories that endorse your mission statement and content.
Contact Carly Thompson with thoughts and questions at carly@northernlakes.net and 231-582-6482.
