If you’re just starting out with your review page, check out these 7 creative ways to get customer testimonials for your business to super-charge your word-of-mouth marketing strategy.

You are leaving a lot of money on the table if you don’t have a customer testimonial page. Don’t believe it?

Nearly 95% of online shoppers said they read online reviews before making a purchasing decision. (Source)

In a 2016 survey by Fan and Fuel, nearly 94% of customers said they read reviews. 75% of customers say they don’t take action until they have read reviews from other users.

For local businesses, 93% of customers say they use reviews to determine whether a business is trustworthy. (Source)

As data showed, customers are turning to testimonials to decide whether to patronize a particular business or not.

The reason is not far-fetched: people trust people not brands and they believed the best way to learn about a business – which by the way is true – is to read what current or past customers have to say about their experience.

Packaging, branding and your strategic pricing can only get you so far with new customers.

Sometimes, what they really need to become buying customers, is to read authentic reviews from real customers.

You may also like: How to Build Emotional Connection With Your Customers

Customer Testimonials

Customer testimonials are reviews, feedback, and comments that your previous or existing buyers leave after experiencing your services.

Customer testimonials serve to build business’ trustworthiness in the eyes of new and potential customers.

Mostly because hearing about how your business has helped similar individuals will boost your new client’s confidence to try a new product.

Testimonials also go a long way in proving your trustworthiness, brand vision, and loyalty.

How to Get Customer Testimonials

Forget about the advertising jingles and large billboards. Customers are now going to real people to get information on their experiences using your products.

No reason to be left on the sidewalk, here are seven creative ways to get customer testimonials;

Ask Customers for Feedback

There are more than a few ways to collect feedback from your customers. You could shoot them emails, send out Google forms, create an online survey on sites like Survey Monkey, use social media to hold polls, or even call your customers.

To make sure you get complete and accurate feedback from your customers, you must ask the right questions. The process involves asking specific questions and providing space for added opinions.

Also, be sure to keep the feedback forms anonymous, as most people would provide more honest answers under the shield of anonymity.

Enable Facebook Page Review

A Facebook page for your small business does not just allow you to market on social media and reach out to more people. Your customers can also sound off here, and leave feedback after sampling your product/service.

What with the popularity of the social media platform, you can be sure that at least 50% of your customers have active Facebook accounts. And, your potential customers can easily find you, too.

You have to be aware of the social media platform that your potential customers frequent the most. Depending on the age, nationality and other details about your target market, their social media haunts might differ.

Ask for Personal Stories

This method can usually only be applied if you have an excellent bond with one or more of your customers. Ask them directly for some personal stories from their experience with your brand.

They might show some hesitancy towards the request. After all, few people want to be subjected to questions on how they feel about a product/service. However, it is up to you to convince them that other customers will benefit from their honest true-life stories.

Encourage LinkedIn Recommendations

Even freelancers will tell you how far a useful review or client recommendation goes in ensuring they get a good gig. On LinkedIn, you can get some pretty good customer recommendations; all you have to do is ask your customers to leave a review on your LinkedIn page.

All though LinkedIn doesn’t allow you to add reviews to your business page, you can get your employees to encourage customers’ reviews on each employee’s page. Then, you can easily include these recommendations on your website or blog.

Your company gets glowing reviews, and your employees get good reviews too. Everybody wins here.

Create a Business Profile on Review Sites

Whatever business you are into, some sites cater to serving customers with information on that niche.

Sites like Yelp, Yahoo and Google, are more broad, offering visitors information on all kinds of business. However, some sites are specifically designed to deal with customers for a specific market.

For example, tourists or fun-seekers would visit TripAdvisor for information on exciting places to visit. People with an interest in paintings would visit Thumbtack.

Since these sites are trusted by customers to give the best reviews on products and services, be sure to create a business profile on these platforms and encourage your customers to leave reviews there.

You can then easily copy these reviews to create a testimonial page. Or perhaps, if your website is built with WordPress, use plugins to automatically fetch those reviews to your site.

Time Your Ask

Depending on the nature of your business, the ideal time to ask your customers for reviews varies. Think about all the times you just finished installing a newly downloaded application and were immediately asked to leave a review.

Of course, you have only just launched the application; you don’t know all its functionalities and glitches, and you don’t have a helpful review to leave yet.

Be smart about how you ask for a review, and know when to ask for it, too. Remember not to rush it. You must time the feedback request to meet your customers at a time when they are happy or in a good mood.

Reward Customers Who Leave Reviews

With all the many benefits you and your business will get from customer reviews and recommendations, it seems only fair that the customers should be getting something too. And what better way to encourage their loyalty than with rewards?

To encourage online reviews, you could employ a method often used by fast-food restaurants and online stores. Offer your customers the chance to win a coupon, a discount and more exclusive deals when they leave a review on your site.

With the many brands and businesses available for customers to choose from now, it is left to every business owner to make sure their business stands out.

Using any or all of the tips mentioned in the article, you should be able to gather testimonials and customer reviews from your customers.