It’s common knowledge that testimonials are important for any business, and it’s because they provide three major benefits:

• Increased online conversions
• Improved SEO performance
• Establishes social proof

However, it’s not enough to just talk about these benefits, which is why we’re adding some real-world examples to give you an idea of how testimonials can have a positive impact on customers.

Testimonials Increase Conversions

When implemented correctly, testimonials can convince a customer to make a purchase. A study from Northwestern University showed that putting relevant reviews with a product increased conversions dramatically. Showing at least five reviews increased the purchase likelihood by almost a factor of 4x.

The study also revealed that the first 5-10 reviews determined if the customer made a purchase, which makes it even more crucial that you make testimonials a major centerpiece when someone makes a purchase decision.

Take a look at the example below, which highlights reviews of a carpet cleaning business. At a glance, these reviews offer proof that the company’s service is trustworthy, but a closer look reveals that the reviews touch on a specific aspect of the customer experience: the professionalism and friendliness of every technician who visits each customer’s home.

In other words, the reviews specifically targeted potential customers that were curious or had concerns about a stranger visiting their home and cleaning their carpet. Reviewers said that the technicians were “extremely polite and professional,” “quick and thorough,” and had a “very professional and informative service.”

One reviewer even mentioned the technician by name:

“Mike was proficient and courteous, [and] did an excellent job. I was very pleased with the results and speed of service.”

By visiting a website, customers already show interest in the product or service offered and showing reviews with specific details about the customer experience can be the final push needed to make a purchase. Testimonials need to show not just praise, but specific details as well.

Testimonials Improve SEO Performance

The text of a testimonial can help drive conversions, but testimonials can also include ratings, which can actually improve your SEO performance.

The main link between SEO performance and reviews is review schema markup code. Implementing these specific lines of code on first-party reviews (reviews written and submitted on the business’s website) helps search engines like Google easily find reviews on a website.

Garner enough first-party reviews and ratings, and you’ll soon see your search engine results page (SERP) entry come with an overall star rating and the total number of first-party reviews on the site.

For example, the image above shows a SERP entry for a blog post on how to boost a business’s online presence. People who read the article had the option to rate it at the bottom of the page.

These ratings are marked with review schema. Google then saw the review data and added it to the SERP entry.

Having review data, like a rating and the number of votes, on a SERP entry can make it stand out from other material on the results page, which makes it more attractive to customers.

However, the work doesn’t stop there. You need to encourage customers to leave reviews on the website on a regular basis. A steady flow of reviews shows Google that new content is frequently added to the site, which can increase its SERP ranking and further drive traffic.

Adding review schema markup and implementing first-party reviews on a website can be tricky at times, especially if you have little to no experience with coding. Fortunately, there are some great review widgets that can automate the process and make it easy to post reviews.

Testimonials Establish Social Proof

More than anything else, testimonials are effective forms of social proof. It’s your way of saying, “Don’t just take our word for it. Check out the experiences of other customers.”

Customers want to hear from other people to get a genuine idea of the business before they make a decision. Testimonials are a great tool to use in this scenario because you’re selecting specific reviews that will convince someone to convert.

Just like the carpet cleaning reviews, the testimonials below for multiple auto dealerships were not randomly selected by the company. They were picked to show future customers that the interaction with the sales team wouldn’t be intimidating. Reviewers used terms like  “professional,” “top-notch,” “informative,” and “great personality” to describe the salespeople that they met.

Testimonials establish trust for potential buyers. They show that real people actually tried the product or service and they had a great experience with it. In a way, it’s free marketing so make sure it’s somewhere where everyone can see it.

Get More Testimonials

The easiest way to get testimonials is by asking customers for reviews. However, it’s not enough to just find the best reviews and post them on a website.

You also need to respond to reviews and strive to improve the experience for future customers. Only through constant engagement and overall business improvement based on customer feedback can you get more reviews, and more importantly, amazing testimonials from both recurring and new customers.

Let’s talk customer acquisition strategy. One fundamental way to grow your business is to win new customers.

Sounds simple enough, right? After all, there are so many channels and so many ways for today’s businesses to find, engage with, and attract potential new customers.

The most challenging part: where exactly — and how.

After all, you don’t want to waste your time and money on the wrong channel or customer acquisition strategy. As anyone who has ever looked to scale their business will tell you, one of the most difficult things to do as far as ways to acquire new customers is narrowing down your choices.

So what are some of the lowest-cost, highest-ROI ways to win new customers? Read on as we share 5 cost-effective strategies for customer acquisition.

5 Low-Cost, High-ROI Customer Acquisition Strategies

Boost local search signals with location pages

Organic local SEO (search engine optimization) is a low-cost strategy that will help your business gain visibility in the eyes of potential new customers.

If you’re running a business with multiple business locations, then you can even try to rank for specific geographical areas that you’re targeting. This is where location pages come in.

When done right, location pages can be a powerful SEO machine and high-ROI customer acquisition strategy. Think of them as micro-sites or silos containing locally optimized content for each of your business locations. And all are linked to your main website.

The idea is to map out all of the locations in which you are targeting new customers, then build out unique, discoverable landing pages for each.

Choose your URLs wisely. Keep it simple and make it effective. Let’s say your website URL is terracegrill.com. A sample recommended URL for your location pages is terracegrill.com/cityname (ex: terracegrill.com/chicago).

Add your NAP. NAP stands for your business Name, Address, and Phone number. This should be present on each of your location pages and correspond to each individual business location.

Publish unique local content. Besides your NAP, your location pages should also include unique, relevant local content, like store descriptions, operating hours, local news, deals and promotions, online reviews of the location, and even information about the team.

Manage and respond to your online reviews

Online reviews can make or break your business. In the age of Yelp and Tripadvisor, reviews impact search engine performance, shape your brand reputation, and affect your ability to win new customers.

This makes it critical for your business to manage and respond to online reviews as part of your customer acquisition strategy.

By tuning into online review sites and engaging with those who leave feedback, you can demonstrate to potential new customers that you care about what customers have to say. (To improve your review response rate, feel free to use these easy-to-use, fill-in-the-blanks review response templates.)

Apart from responding to reviewers, you can also take advantage of the 5-star ratings that you already have. Share your best reviews on social media. Add them to your website. Celebrate or call out those who consider themselves as your biggest fans. This will help you build powerful social proof that will inspire shopper confidence and attract more people to your business.

You’ll also like: Social Media Marketing Strategies to Drive Real Results

Build relationships with influencers

Another low-cost, high-ROI customer acquisition strategy is to approach bloggers, social media influencers, and opinion leaders and engage with them so that they can talk about your product or service in front of their audience.

Once you have built a strong relationship with these people, then you can begin to develop and execute your influencer campaign.

For example, if you’re marketing a restaurant, you can reach out to foodies on Instagram who have a growing community of fans and followers. You can invite them to dinner, send them samples of menu items, give them custom discount links or codes that they can share, ask them to create sponsored posts, or even take over your Instagram account for a day.

By building relationships with influencers, you can turn them into brand ambassadors and, through their own communities, expand your audience reach and attract more potential new customers.

Ask your happiest customers for referrals

If you have the ability to identify who your happiest customers are, a good customer acquisition strategy is to create a customer referral program.

This incentivizes your happiest customers to refer their friends and family. Just like with influencer campaigns, you can create personalized discount links or codes for your customers to share with their own networks.

Remember: when you make customers happy, they will want to share their experience with their friends and family. A customer referral program is a great way to leverage that and really empower your promoters to introduce and advocate your business to others.

Answer relevant questions on Quora

As you may well know, Quora is a question-and-answer website and a place for people to share knowledge and contribute unique insights on literally any topic you can think of.

It can also be a low-cost, high-ROI platform for acquiring new customers.  

A growing number of savvy business owners and marketers are using Quora to drive traffic to their site. The idea is to funnel traffic through to your website content (like a blog post or landing page) by answering questions posted on the Q&A site.

The key is to scope out the right questions and answer them in a helpful yet non-promotional way, and to give Quora users a reason to click the link to your site. (Check out this great blog post on how marketing software company Wishpond is attracting qualified traffic through the use of Quora.)