Product reviews have always been important for B2C companies. After all, people love to check out product reviews before they go ahead and make a purchase, and that applies to everything from books and movies to furniture and cars. So why should it be any different for B2B companies?
<p align="justify"It’s certainly true that B2B and B2C companies have very different sales models and product lifecycles, but the idea behind using reviews and testimonials remains the same. They add an element of social proof to your website and instil a sense of trust, and this sense of trust can be the deciding factor when it comes to whether they make a purchase or fill out a form on one of your landing pages.
Social proof is the reason why we trust what our friends say about brands over what those same brands say about themselves. The chances are that if you’re doing your job properly then your clients are already singing your praises, even if it’s just verbally during a meeting or as a couple of sentences in a thank you email. You’d be crazy to leave it at that without making the most of it.
The smart use of testimonials
All of your great testimonials are useless unless you’re actually putting them out there in front of customers. That’s why you need to put some thought into where you’re going to put those testimonials and what impact you want them to have.
For example, you could add testimonials to your product pages and your landing pages to encourage people to convert on them. You could turn them into graphics for Instagram or share them on Facebook and Twitter. You could even include a different testimonial each time as part of your email marketing campaigns.
Of course, written testimonials aren’t the only option. You can also create video testimonials by asking a client to talk about your company while sitting in front of a camera next time they stop by your office. It doesn’t have to be a professional quality video, either – a smartphone will do as long as you remember to turn it sideways and shoot in landscape mode.
Conclusion
By now, you should be convinced of the value of reviews and testimonials and so the next step is for you to put what you’ve learned into practice. Gather all of your testimonials together and start to think about where you can put them and how else you can use them.
Be creative, and be sure to follow the marketing mantra of “test, test, test”. Every time you finish one test you should start to run another. Experiment by putting client comments, reviews and testimonials on different parts of your website and then measuring the impact they have. In some cases it can even reduce the number of conversions your site receives and you don’t want that. If you keep an eye on the metrics and keep making improvements, you’ll be reaping the rewards in no time.
Struggling with lead gen? Don’t worry – we’re here to help you to gather the leads you need to boost your business. Request a demo of Bant.io to find out how we can help your company to grow by sending hot B2B leads directly to your inbox. You won’t regret it.
Dane
Dane Cobain is a published author, freelance writer, book blogger, poet and (occasional) musician from High Wycombe, UK. Before going freelance, he worked as a social media marker, now specialising in writing about publishing, technology and marketing.