The importance of reviews in your creative business
Why do you need reviews and testimonials for your business?
Social proof of your product or service is absolutely vital in any creative business. It demonstrates credibility, trustworthiness and legitimises your business amongst the noise of your competitors. Believability is so important in today’s market, where scams and fake news are ubiquitous, this is your chance to show real people’s views on your offerings. Whilst they are unlikely to persuade someone to invest in you on their own, if they are already close to the point of spending money it can really help to give them the confidence to step across the line.
Even bad reviews can help you build a better business, allowing you to improve your product or service and serve your customers better in the future. All reviews also give you insight into why people buy your offerings – they might not always be for the reasons you think! Being able to use their thoughts and the transformations you’ve provided them for future marketing is invaluable.
It will also help to strengthen your SEO, especially if you are using third-party sites like Trustpilot or Google My Business. More relevant and regularly updated text on your website also supports your SEO and helps Google see your trustworthiness.
How can you gather reviews or testimonials?
Real, verified sales reviews are always going to be the biggest help in your customers deciding to purchase from you, it’s why Amazon and Google reviews are generally so highly regarded. They are of course not without fault or open to misuse, but they are much harder to fake than say a testimonial on your own website or something you may have crafted from something someone said to you in an email or DM. That’s not to say these are without value, however if you have the ability to provide both I strongly recommend it.
Another great way to garner more reviews to send a survey out which has a free text box for a review at the end – you can always sweeten the deal with a small incentive to fill out the survey – just make sure the survey is not too long and actually works (I’ve lost count of the times I’ve had to give up because the survey had a technical glitch). I use Survey Monkey on the free plan for mine and it works well. The paid for version has even more capability and can be useful for businesses that sell high volumes of one or more products.
Including a piece of literature in your product sales packaging can also help, for example inviting your customers to take part in a hashtag share with your product with a nicely designed leaflet or postcard. You can always turn this into some sort of competition each month too – again giving added incentives for your customers to review your products or services. People are more likely to buy from personal recommendations on social media too, so your products used in a real-life setting will always yield better results.
How should you display your reviews and testimonials?
As I mentioned above, sending links to purchasers to fill out an Amazon, Facebook or Google review kills two birds with one stone – it allows your real verified customers to be honest about your product or service, but it also allows you to copy these reviews onto your website in a more attractive format that fits your aesthetic (or use a plugin to display them).
If you can ask for video reviews these are even better – a real customer talking directly to your potential customers is going to be one of the most valuable pieces of marketing at your disposal. Of course these are trickier to obtain from clients as it requires them to be happy talking on camera, as well as setting aside the time to create a piece of content for you. If you have really transformed someone’s life with your product or service however it can be much easier to obtain – if they have left a glowing review already you can always reach out to them to ask if they would remind recording it on video for you too.
Add your best testimonial into your email footers or signatures – think how many emails you send a day to potential customers – it’s an often-overlooked piece of digital real estate, but actually has an enormous amount of power.
Add them onto your product pages in an easy-to-read accessible format, as well as well-chosen ones on your homepage where your website visitors are likely to see them.
If you have abandoned cart email recovery you can also use them here to reassure your customers that previous buyers have loved your offering.
Use your stats if you have a high volume business, eg 95% of my customers gave my product a 5* rating.
I hope you’ve found this post useful and to consider the power of reviews in your business. If you’d like more help with any aspect of your creative business please get in touch to discuss my coaching services by booking your free discovery call below.
