What your customers say about you matters. Think about it… How often do you use reviews before buying something? According to a report from the e-commerce marketplace platform Vendasta, 88% of consumers say reviews – like those on Google, Yelp, and Amazon – influence their purchasing decisions. For B2Bs, there is not always a Google or Yelp review to consider but a customer testimonial can be just as impactful as a dozen 5-star reviews. In fact, a study by Demand Gen found that 97% of B2B buyers say customer testimonials and peer recommendations are the most reliable type of content.
More importantly, customer testimonials can actually grow revenue. Strategic Factory found that B2B companies that use customer testimonials regularly can boost revenue by more than 62%. That was echoed in a recent study by G2 and Heinz Marketing which found that 92% of B2B buyers are more likely to purchase after reading a customer testimonial.
The evidence makes a clear case that your potential future customers want to hear from the people you have worked with in the past. So, if you have a lot of happy customers, let them tell the story of how you solved, or are solving, a major pain point for them. Get into the details of what they were trying before. How much was it costing them? What alternatives did they look at and why were you a better solution?
Customer testimonials like this are crucial for delivering credibility. Plus, there is a high likelihood that someone else is feeling that exact same pain point and those people are going to turn to you to help relieve that. So, let’s take a deep dive into the best ways to utilize customer testimonials.
Grow B2B Revenue: Effective ways to get the most out of your testimonials
First, let’s go over how most B2Bs use a testimonial, and then we can get into how you can do it better. The most common place for a testimonial is on your website. These usually come out to be about a sentence or two. While these are helpful on a quick search, what a lot of business-to-business buyers want is to see what is under the hood or behind the curtain. They want the details.
Another, often underutilized, place for a customer testimonial is within an email, often under the signature line. This can lend credibility and is worth trying. However, this also lacks in-depth insight into how you solved someone’s problem. There is also the issue of visibility since only those you email will actually ever see it. With 90% of the buying cycle now happening before contacting a sales rep, this approach is still not ideal.
Social media is one of the best all-around places for a customer testimonial, but it does not take the top spot. While you should be sharing your testimonials on LinkedIn, those are only visible to a small percentage of people on the platform – mostly people who already know and are connected with.
Grow B2B Revenue: Getting the biggest BANG for your buck
This leaves us with the granddaddy of them all. The single best way to use customer testimonials is by creating feature articles and in-depth case studies that can be widely distributed. This requires much more work because you’ll have to actually interview your customers as opposed to sending them a request to write their own testimonials. However, anything worth doing is worth doing right.
By getting your customer to describe their issues, you can develop a story that connects with a wider set of prospects. Therefore, getting leads from customers that are ideal for your solutions.
Taking this approach one step further, Rankin PR not only develops these types of stories for you, but we have the connections to get them published in many of the top publications that your ideal customers are already reading. After all, the first goal of any B2B publicity program is simply to boost the number of impressions – or the number of times your potential customers receive your message.
If you are not generating 40-60 published articles per year about your company, its products, and how you are helping your prospects, you are not creating enough credible and persuasive impressions required to influence your prospects.
We can help. Set up a call now to see if you qualify for Rankin PR’s B2B publicity program.