Testimonials and case studies are invaluable to your business’s marketing budget. They cost next to nothing to prepare and are extremely effective internet marketing tools. They can be used throughout your website, blog, newsletter, and distributed throughout your social media channels. They are great for telling stories about your organisation that you want the world to know!

Testimonials

A testimonial is a personal account from a client about their experience with your organisation. The message appears increasingly compelling as it is from the client’s point of view. Your business needs to ensure the testimonial comes across as credible and not as a paid testimonial.

Testimonials create trust and instill confidence in prospective clients which will impact your business’s sales rate. Your business needs trust to generate inquiries, close sales, increase subscriptions and so forth. Consider the difference between asking a business about how brilliant it's service is, compared to asking your friend about the business’s service. You are much more likely to trust your friend’s opinion over the company’s.

You may need to ask the client for a testimonial. Reciprocal marketing can be used to prompt them to oblige due to the increased visibility their brand will receive. They may even offer to write up a testimonial for your business due to the impressive work that your business has completed.

When your client has agreed to write up a testimonial for your business, encouraging the client to use specific language that describes the outcome, such as results that have occurred, and the way they were treated, will be enticing for potential prospects who read the testimonial.

It is also a good idea to provide basic information on the testimonial writer to add to the credibility of the write up. This could include the company they work for, the person’s position at the company & their name. If the client allows for it, posting their basic contact information can be an effective move as prospects can use the information as a reference and to validate the testimonial.

Case Studies

Case studies are written by your business about jobs or projects it has completed. The case study could cover projects that:

• Were complicated to complete
• Were different to your business’s usual projects,
• Were completed for clients your business doesn’t normally cater to, or
• If your business is trying to target a certain client segment, write case studies on projects or clients that are related to this segment.

Your business can write the case study as it pleases and talk about the positives of the work that it has completed that may set it apart from the competition. The case study could illustrate the process a client may follow when dealing with your business. For example, Expert’s case studies generally begin by stating what the client’s business was originally struggling with. This shows that Expert reviewed and analysed the client’s problem. Then it explains how Expert came up with a solution to the problem. The way your business lays out its case studies will depend on how your business wants to portray the case studies.

Although the case study is not directly written by the client, your business could ask the client for a comment or two to be included in the case study. The comments should be very specific and useful to prospective clients, such as providing statistics or results the client has experienced in their business or life.

Conclusion

Your business could use both testimonials and case studies on its website. It all depends on how your business wants to portray itself. One technique may be more effective than the other for your business.

Case studies and testimonials are not needed for every type of business. For example, a fast food chain such as McDonalds won’t require testimonials or case studies from its customers due to the number of customers it serves each day.

A key thing to remember is to keep your business’s testimonial page up-to-date. If old testimonials are present on your business’s website, it will look as though your company is not receiving much business or completing projects to a high standard.