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Have you ever received an email in which a client tells you that he has chosen to work with a larger company in the field? Every startup that has big competitors knows this battle, especially when you are the little one and you are not in a very safe position.
You are at risk and you are struggling for each client.
When it comes to your company’s email and online presence, people want to know if they can trust the company they buy from and if they will work for them specifically.
And if I choose a large company, like Siteground, for the hosting service, I do it because there are thousands of other customers who use their services. Surely, this will make their decision easier to make.
We cannot disagree with our prospects because in real life we also choose the safest choice.
The question that arises is how do the businesses at the beginning of the road, which have 1-2 partners or employees, get to break even (the point where the expenses are equal to the income). Here, you neither lose or win.
Here the experience that the entrepreneur has can make a difference.
This overtime has constantly brought us, customers. Sure, we still have a lot to learn, but I can say that what helped us the most was the use of testimonials to help potential clients overcome their objections to working with a small company.
What I noticed was that some customers appreciated this from 2 perspectives:
- Outsource an email and web hosting service for which they had an employee who handles a Linux server they had on-site. Moreover, this server had to have a high-speed internet connection, to have a backup to the power supply, and at certain periods to have an upgrade to the equipment to keep up with the number of users accessing the site. This is resolved when you use email service on a server in a data center that has these 3 issues resolved. You only pay a monthly subscription for a service.
- The second advantage of a small company is flexibility. For a small business, in order to survive, professionalism and creativity must be the order of the day.
That means doing WHAT you need, WHEN you need, for the customer. When you sell, to have the customer in the center and in terms of FLEXIBILITY given by a small company, you end up having a PERSONAL relationship with each of the customers you have. A small company is your friend, beyond all.
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The power of testimonials.
It’s no secret. People want to follow other people who are like them.
In the book “Psychology of Persuasion” – Robert Cialdini explains this phenomenon as social proof, that is, where there are many people doing something automatically, we assume that this is the right behavior.
Here is an example of 2 restaurants on the same street:
2 tourists stop and want to go to eat at one of them. Which do you think they will choose? The one with the most people inside, of course. You think the food is better because they have a higher turnover or other arguments like that.
When we see a new product or service, we automatically build some objections that it will not work for us. Testimonials help us overcome these objections and show us that this product really works for people who have the same challenges as us.
What does a good testimonial look like?
A good testimonial is not only someone who says that the product, the service, but company X is also extraordinary. It takes much more because in the mind of the potential customer will appear questions like: “who is this person and what does he want to sell me?”
A good testimonial must contain 2 things:
- Who is the one who writes the testimonial specifically – Name, Company, what service he uses from you, possibly a number of licenses, products, etc.
- What problem does your product solve for the customer, a situation in which you can find your potential customer who reads/follows this testimonial (it can be done in writing or video)?
How to request testimonials?
There are several ways we can do this.
- When a customer orders services from us, he automatically receives an email from the autoresponder in which he is asked where he found out about us and what determined him to buy from us.
This is a way to find out what triggers the purchase decision, but we can also find out what other disadvantages are in the competition’s products, directly from our customers.
For example, if we had customers who chose our hosting services because they offered a better site speed than other companies or because of the up-time, provided by the server.
This information received by email from the client, if we wanted to use it as a testimonial, we first asked for the consent of the person from whom we received it. Ethics is paramount in this regard.
- Discussions we have with our clients. Either on the phone or by commenting on the articles posted. There you find out what the clients’ challenges are and how they managed to solve their problems using your services.
When we encounter situations in which the client is not satisfied with what he received, together with the technical department we find a solution so that the client can do better with our service.
Immediately after that we return to receive a reference to the interaction we had.
- Ask for a testimonial directly. There are quite a few people who are quite busy and do not have time to meet or talk on the phone with us. So we send them an email, not only do we ask them for a testimonial but we guide them to follow the necessary steps to receive an excellent testimonial.
Here you can use 2 helpful questions:
- I know that before starting the collaboration with us they did not use an email service in the cloud. How did you feel when you had the whole email and web hosting solution on a server in your headquarters? What frustrates you the most?
- When did you know that you made the right decision to use our services? What have we done to prove that you receive enough value from using our service?
Conclusion
Testimonials are a very powerful weapon of influence and if used properly can bring you, customers, without having to invest in marketing and advertising materials on various marketing channels such as Google or Facebook.
These are as authentic as possible and help you do marketing at no cost. Your only investment is in the time allotted to interact with the people who use your product.
I hope this article inspires you to test the impact on your marketing campaign.
Please leave me a comment telling me how you applied these concepts in your business and what the results were.
