Testimonials Aren’t Just For the Web

I write a lot about testimonials and user reviews because they are more important now than ever. At no time in advertising history have peer reviews and opinions had as much power to sway the general public as they do today.

Sure, we all know the stat; make one person happy with your product or service and they tell three people, piss one person off and they tell ten.

Today, those figures are on steroids!

If you piss someone off today, they tell 100, 300 or 500 people in their social graph at the push of a button. If Mrs. Jones isn’t completely satisfied with your work, she can ruin your day by telling everyone she interacts socially and professionally that she had a bad experience with you. And guess what happens to your referrals?

What’s it all mean?

It means that you need to give as much social proof offline as you do online. If you have followed me for any length of time, you know that I want you to have your testimonials prominently placed on your website. It’s great that you have 10 reviews on your Places page and 15 reviews on your local YP page, but you know that YOU NEED TO HAVE a specific tab in your nav bar on your own website specifically dedicated to all the nice things people say about you. And you also know that you need to beg or bribe clients or customers to give you testimonials to continue to build up your social proof for others.

But you also need to expand the reach of your testimonials

You do this by including a few short, solid testimonials in all of your advertising offline; print, radio, direct mail, whatever you do to market your construction company should have one or two short testimonials included.

Why?

Because people depend on social proof (testimonials and recommendations) that you are good at what you do, and they pay more attention to what their peers say about you than what your advertising says about you, and that hurts me to say, but it is true.

So dust off your reviews and testimonials and get them into the hands of the people who need them most…your prospects!