!!!Navigate this guide: Collect testimonials → Manage testimonials → Share testimonials

What is this guide?

This is a free, zero-fluff guide to help you collect more, better testimonials, manage them, and share them at the perfect place and time to grow your business. Whether you have 1 or 1000 happy customers, this guide can help you.

You are currently in part 1 of 3 of this guide: collect testimonials.

Who is this guide for?

Founders, marketers, creators, ecommerce owners, service providers and sales people. Anyone who wants to get more customers and grow their business with social proof.

Who wrote this guide?

Me! I’m Olly, the founder of Roast My Landing Page and cofounder of Senja. I have roasted over 900 landing pages and worked with 100s of founders to grow their businesses. My style is actionable and direct, and that’s what you can expect from this guide.

Why testimonials?

Before I walk you through how to collect testimonials, let me remind you why you should collect them. In short, they are a proven and effective marketing asset. You can use testimonials to:

• Get more traffic to your website

• Turn more website visitors into registered users or checkouts

• Activate more users

• Turn more active users into paying customers

• Book more demos

• Close more sales deals

• Get more job applicants and hire better

But most founders I’ve worked with are doing it wrong, overcomplicating things, or not collecting testimonials at all.

This guide will show you how to use testimonials effectively in your business.

Want to see how leading SaaS companies use testimonials as social proof? View our directory of 100s of examples.

Collect testimonials

Here's the TL;DR of collecting testimonials as a handy checklist.

Let me walk you through each of these:

Happy customers

Sadly I can’t help you with that one 😅. But take a look at first100users.com a free resource that helps early-stage founders get their first 100 users. I made that too.

The best time to ask

One of the most important things when asking for a testimonial is to ask at the right time. Traditionally people collect testimonials in three main ways: passive (adding a link somewhere), campaign (a specific marketing campaign around testimonials) or automated.

When automating them aim is to have a constant stream of new testimonials, collected at the best time possible for the highest quality and response rate.

The format: text or video

Decide if you want to collect text or video testimonials. Text testimonials are easier for your customer to collect and are more common on landing pages. Video testimonials are richer and more engaging. They work well in case studies and to highlight well known customers. You can also transcribe video testimonials and use them in their text-based form.

Using a tool like Senja, your customer can record their testimonial in the browser with the hassle of recording and uploading manually.

Testimonial questions

Broke: "Can you leave me a testimonial?"
Woke: "What was your biggest doubt when signing up? How has it worked out?"

This may seem obvious, but the questions you ask your customers impact the quality and persuasiveness of testimonial you receive.

And depending on when and where you want to share the testimonial, it’s good to have some control over its format and content.

Here’s an example of some questions you might want to ask. Ask different customers different questions to help create high-performing testimonials for different use cases.

• What problem was your business facing?

• Why did you decide to use a SaaS platform?

• What ultimately triggered you to sign up?

• What was your biggest doubt when signing up?

• What tool or product did you switch from?

• Describe life before and after using our product?

• What do you think about [a certain aspect of our product]

• What outcomes have you had vs goals?

• Can you share numbers or results?

• Anything else you'd like to share?

Keep going! Here's 50 more testimonial questions you can ask to get different better responses.

Customer details

You need to collect the customer and company information from your customer. This will help you increase the authenticity of your testimonials when you display them. And make it easier to find relevant testimonials when you search for them. Collect the following:

The customer (public facing)

• Full name

• Picture

• Job title

The customer (private)

• Email address

The company (public facing)

• Company logo

• Company size (employees)

• Company industry

• Website URL

The company (private)

• Company size (employees or revenue)

A testimonial collection form

You can collect testimonials over email, the phone, or even in person. But the simplest way is to create a testimonial form. Why use a form?

You can learn more about testimonial forms here.

An incentive

Users of Senja see twice as many testimonials when they offer an incentive aka a reward. There are a few parts to this:

• Decide the incentive

• Create the incentive mechanic

• Request the testimonial and mention the incentive

• Distribute the incentive

Here’s some incentive ideas

• Free lead magnet

• Product or service discount code

• A physical gift

• A voucher code

Creator Modest Mitkus collected over 1500 testimonials using a simple incentive. Here's how he did it.

An invite

• With an invite. With a template [https://senja.io/blog/freelance-testimonial-request-template]

• By sharing your form link [https://senja.io/blog/where-to-share-testimonial-form]

Consent

This is important: you need to ask your customer for consent to use their testimonial in your sales and marketing campaigns. This is critical if you want to avoid any confusion over how and where the testimonial is going to be used.

Here's some copy you can include for your customer to read and approve:

By submitting, you give us permission to use this testimonial across social channels and other marketing efforts.

As mentioned, using a form with a testimonial platform like Senja means you can have your customer opt-in to consent.

A Customer Consent Horror Story:

"In the thriving world of SaaS, one entrepreneur, Frank, launched a revolutionary product. Success came quickly, and the praise from clients followed. One glowing testimonial from a top industry leader, Mrs. Grayson, stood out. It was the ultimate social proof that could solidify Frank's product in the market. He was eager to broadcast it across his website, newsletters, and social media platforms. Without a second thought, or obtaining marketing consent, Frank shared Mrs. Grayson's endorsement everywhere. Then, one chilling morning, Frank received an email from Mrs. Grayson's lawyers. His heart pounded as he read through the allegations of misuse of personal data and infringement of privacy rights. The lawsuit threatened to not only tarnish his company's reputation, but also lead to potential financial ruin. The horror of his oversight engulfed him, a nightmare born from bypassing a critical step in collecting testimonials."

Automation

I’ve walked you through best practice for collecting testimonials from your customers. But if you’re  feeling fancy or ready for something more challenging, learn how you can collect testimonials on auto-pilot using testimonial automations.

Next up, I am going to show you best for managing your testimonials. Just click below to continue through the guide.

!!!Navigate this guide: Collect testimonials → Manage testimonials → Share testimonials