I have always believed that no matter how brilliantly you articulate your brand, when a client does it for you, it’s so much better.
When working as marketing consultant or as marketing mentor with a business, we put the effort into gathering a range of customer reviews in different ways, depending on the business and it always pays off. It really does provide evidence that your brand delivers what it promises.
Genuine client reviews help potential new clients relate to your brand and reassures them, as they make their decision to choose you.
Hootsuite published research on how Irish consumers check out the brands they are considering buying. It makes for interesting reading, with consumer reviews featuring heavily.
As a professional service, for me, once I finish working with a client, I methodically invite recommendations on LinkedIn or request a testimonial by email, following a discussion with the client. I promote these on LinkedIn and also on my website https://carolcousins.com/clients/. Potential new clients who contact me, often refer to these reviews, a sure sign they are doing their job.
As optimising Google My Business profile has become even more important recently, I have started to invite clients to review me on google. For b2c businesses and increasingly b2b, google reviews work very well, both in terms of providing useful information to potential new customers, as well as benefiting search engine optimisation.
In terms of professional services marketing, I also find that featuring case studies on the website, which integrate client reviews, also works well. They can provide a potential client with a good feel of what to expect from my service, in terms of the challenges I can help solve, the approach I take and the results they can expect when they choose me as their marketing consultant or one of my other services.
Where you gather and publish reviews will depend on where your target audience goes for recommendations and reviews. There are lots of specialist review websites that are sector specific. Of course, for both businesses and consumers, there is a certain amount of cynicism of these review sites, with some being merited. It is essential to ensure that these websites are trusted by your target audience and that they feature negative as well as positive reviews.
I always work with clients to leverage reviews by publishing and promoting them effectively. Your business has worked hard to earn that review, so putting the effort into publishing and promoting it as widely as possible is very much worthwhile.
