Writing Testimonials That Generate Leads

When it comes to content creation, most of the time you have a couple of goals; for example, good content should be informative, compelling, and it should be building your reputation. One of the best ways to do all three of those things is with testimonials. Testimonials are great ways to showcase your talents as a company without sounding egotistical or obnoxious.

But Wait, Aren't Testimonials All Cheesy and Boring?

Sure, they can be, but I'm not talking about the three-sentence blurb that reads like something out of an infomercial. What I'm talking about are longer pieces of content that are sincere and showcase a problem solved, or a company helped. These types of testimonials work really well as blog posts because the blog format gives you enough space to convey a good amount of information without being overly formal.

Writing a testimonial with that much meat to it can be daunting, which is why I following a simple outline whenever I help our clients solicit testimonials.

Include Your Company Bio

This is the part of the testimonial that gets your clients on board. After all, besides being motivated by an overwhelming swell of good feelings about your company and products/services, the company bio the free publicity that is going to offer an incentive to your clients.

Kari and Matt from Durable Technologies

That being said, it's important to get this part right. You want the basic facts about your client so that the rest of the testimonial makes sense. It's important to note things like how long the business has been up and running, what field they are in, and, if it helps tell the story, how long they have been using your products or services.

For example, Durable Technologies recently highlighted one of their clients who uses steel stamps made by Durable to create a makers mark. The client themselves is compelling, a disabled combat veteran-owned and operated small business, and they recently donated a stamp to help the client’s charity. This testimonial doesn't have a meaty challenge to focus on, but the client’s back-story makes this a compelling piece of content.

Be careful not to let this section overwhelm the rest of your testimonial. Your client is going to want to include as much about themselves as possible, remember this bio is how the people you are connected to get to know your client. But a 1,000-word bio is going to completely overshadow the rest of the testimonial, which is your incentive.

Include Background Information and the Challenges Faced

Think of this section as the setup. This is where you give all of the background information that a reader is going to need to understand why this client felt compelled to provide a testimonial in the first place. Sure, you might know that because your client works in A field that they obviously have a need for B product, but that might not be something your readers are aware of. Even if they are, it's still a best practice to set up the background.

If you're not sure exactly what counts as "background", then ask yourself why your client needed you. Did your client have a new challenge or problem they needed to be solved? Did they previously use a competitor's product but found it lacking? Have regulations or industry standards changed, causing the client to need a new product to meet the new standards? The background is whatever challenge or set of circumstances led your client to you.

Check out how well Torque Transmission blends their client's challenge into the rest of this testimonial for a good idea of how to pull this step off.

Include Your Awesome Solution

This is the part where you get to tell the world about how awesome you are. You and your product or service are always going to be the solution (if you weren't then it wouldn't be a testimonial at all), but you need to use the last section of the testimonial to explain why you were the solution.

Did you find a new or innovative way to solve your client’s problem? Do you deliver on time, on spec, consistently over the course of a year? Did your solution land your clients new business? Here is where you get to talk about the things that you do that are so awesome your clients want to tell the world about them.

Finish up with the Delightful Results

The key to any good story is how did the situation change as a result of your actions and efforts. Did the customer increase sales, decrease cost, improve quality, reduce waste, and if so by how much? Results for testimonial stories are much like good Inbound Marketing goals, they are SMART - specific, measurable, attainable, realistic, and timed.

An example would be:

"After one year of implementing Todd's Inbound Marketing strategy we increased sales by $1,000,000 dollars and expect to double that amount next year." Read this story here.

A good story is not complete without the specific information about what you actually attained.

And, if you've got a really good story, you can take this format one step farther by creating a download or featuring long, compelling testimonials on their own section of your website. You can see an example of this on our own site. We’ve taken our biggest, most exciting testimonials and housed them on a Case Studies page. Here you can see the highlights from each story, or you can read more and dig into all the details.

Don't be afraid to let testimonials to be bigger pieces of content. There really isn't any reason, if the story behind the testimonial is big enough and good enough, that a testimonial can't be a bigger piece of content. You could create a download, use it as the basis for a white paper, and certainly create content (like emails and social media updates) to compliment your content.