SEO SHORTS: GATHER AND USE GOOD TESTIMONIALS AND SOCIAL PROOF

We hear it all the time… Get some social proof!

And with more than 80% of buyers trusting reviews & testimonials equal to that of a recommendation from a friend ⬇️

…social proof → sells! Social proof can include:

• Testimonials
• Case studies
• Screenshots
• Interviews
• And more!

Today we’re chatting about getting GOOD testimonials from your clients & customers.

✨ hint: the magic lies in specificity ✨

And then… how you should use testimonials in your marketing.

Grab the Testimonial Template if you want to collect testimonials TO-DAY! ✨

Do you feel like this episode helped you create a game plan to get better testimonials? Tell us! Follow, rate, & write a review for the podcast on your favorite player (Apple, Spotify, etc.) 

PS:
Already have lots of social proof, but want to put it to good use in a case study? ⬇️

Brittany writes case studies (rooted in SEO & story)!

Want to DIY a case study? ⬇️

Join Brittany’s 4-day email course all about “Who & How to Interview for a Case Study”

Connect w/ B: YouTube, Website, LinkedIn, Instagram

Transcript

Brittany Herzberg: 0:00

Well hello and welcome to SEO shirts a private podcast by the very same co host of the simple and smart SEO show, Brittany and

Crystal Waddell: 0:08

Krystal. Here you can experience way more actionable episodes, give them as many SEO masterminds. Each week we'll be walking you through a different tasks that support your SEO strategy.

Brittany Herzberg: 0:21

You will learn exactly how to take simple and smart action with step by step walkthroughs and quick explanations of how your effort will impact your business's search ability.

Crystal Waddell: 0:31

And now it's time for this week's SEO short.

Brittany Herzberg: 0:36

Welcome back. I don't know where that came from. But hey, getting into as you should, I feel like these things are just like awkward stuff like whatever, we'll get it out of the way. Beautiful, thank you. That's good to know. I usually when I've been nannying and babysitting, I'm like, I'm not gonna sing to you because I don't feel like I have such a great voice. So we're just gonna make this goofy. And that's kind of the angle that I take with it.

Crystal Waddell: 0:57

I don't know how I feel about that. I don't know if you feel like you're nannying and babysitting me or if you're making reference to a memory, but that's okay.

Brittany Herzberg: 1:06

memory for clarification. All right, let's just let's just get into this, shall we? Actually, you know, here's a good segue, actually go back and ask the children that I needed babysat. If they liked my singing, and you know what that would be? That'd be a testimonial. Ooh, nice tie. My work here is done, friend. Okay. Well done. We are talking about testimonials today, the importance of them? How do we get good ones? And then how do we use them? This is something that's come up a lot. And if I may be so nice, I mean, to put you on the spot, and Crystal was saying that she kind of feels like this is an area she's working on. So I was like, let's workshop this.

Crystal Waddell: 1:40

Yeah, so I was thinking, you know, ideally, just like anything else, it's really important to start with the end in mind. Kind of like, okay, what's the outcome I'm trying to experience here. But I also want to point out, just like we talked about in a previous episode, you know, you can always go back and optimize what you have. And you can always go back and pull from what already exists. But if I'm thinking from the mindset of, okay, how can I make this better for the future? You know, there's been a couple of different ideas I've had, that I haven't really followed up on. So one of them is creating some sort of back in email sequence, to to get testimonials and reviews highly recommend. Yep. And also using ADS to do this. I know this is going way crazy. But I think about what Ashley Chanel said back in one of our simple and smart SEO podcasts. And you know, just like retargeting people who have purchased from us, and you know, just saying, Hey, thank you for purchasing from us. And then hey, would do leave a review. And you know, something really fun like that, I thought that might be kind of cool. Because they say your best customers a lot of times or you return customers. And if you can increase their lifetime order value, particularly in ecommerce, then, you know, that's where you want to focus. So those two things. And then the last thing was actually using a video app to you know, send a personalized message to a customer to say, Hey, thanks for purchasing from us. We'd love to hear what you thought how it's going. Could you leave a review here, that type of thing?

Brittany Herzberg: 3:21

Oh, my gosh, I love that. And actually, what you made me think of is I use Voxer a lot. I got you over. I love Voxer. And there's a way that our friend Brennan McGowan uses Voxer memos in her emails, and I loved it so much. I was like, how do you do this thing? And she was nice enough, she created a template. And she was like, Oh, here we go. So I've done that. I did that with a case study training. I don't think I've done that in a while maybe ever with my regular email list. But that would be something I could do. It might not be like face to

Crystal Waddell: 3:49

camera. So you're saying you would send them a boxer? Yeah, you're able to like

Brittany Herzberg: 3:53

walk through some steps create a URL with I'm laughing because we just recorded something about URLs, and I didn't know what it stood for. So something locator

Crystal Waddell: 4:02

Uniform Resource Locator.

Brittany Herzberg: 4:05

You create this URL for the boxer. And then you wait the Voxer like voice memo, and then you link it in your email copy. So you don't have to write like a longer email, you just like write into Hey, I left you a message about blah, blah, blah. And then you can link them out to listen to it. So yeah. Oh, yeah, that's cool. This is, but let's get back to this thing. So I love that idea. And when you were talking about repeat customers, I was thinking of watching Shark Tank, and how they're always like, well, how many of them are returned people? I feel like I've heard that.

Crystal Waddell: 4:33

Oh, yeah. Well, no, you're right. You probably have a lot because people talk a lot about lifetime value of a customer. And I don't know about you, but when someone asked me that I'm like, I don't really know for my product. I have a lot of one off customers, you know, because it's for a special event. But then there in lies the opportunity. It's like okay, well then what products can you create for that person in the future for them to purchase from you again. So yeah, all of that kind of aligns. And if you get a review from somebody, they're more likely to remember you and then probably want to purchase from you again, if they had a great experience. So

Brittany Herzberg: 5:11

yeah, I love that. And I feel like we could brainstorm other ideas that you could create. But let's come back to testimonials. So you had talked about including quotes from people in the headline on your product listing page, I think that's brilliant, because the stat is somewhere around like 80% of people online buyers, treat a review or a testimonial equal to that a friend or family member, referring them. And I think that's just like, it shows you the power of these testimonials are the reviews of the social proof like they matter. So when it comes to gathering testimonials, there's a few things that I like to recommend people to do. And really, it all comes back to like meeting your person where they're at. So you're thinking of doing the ad copy. Amazing idea, are you thinking of sending out an email survey, amazing idea. When you're thinking of doing the video or the boxer note, I'm totally doing this. There's a few different things that I like to do though, I like to offer to have them voice my mommy back and forth, which I can do an Instagram DMS inbox, or if they have my phone number, we can text and do that. So people just like to talk it out. And then you can take that and turn it into something. We'll talk about that in a minute. Also the gathering. So you can do the voice memos you can do maybe they just want to text back and forth and just text you in short little blips. Maybe they want to respond in an email. If you're doing it in an email, though, be specific with your question. There's a reason you want them to write something for you. Was it that they were like a standout client? Like what is it that you want them? Do you want them to talk about their experience? Or like how amazing you were like, what is it? Do they have a win to share. And then the last one is doing video or a survey, actually, you've got video or survey, some people like doing video testimonials. Some people are uncomfortable with that. Some people like filling out surveys. And I actually have a resource, I'll link here, because I created it because I wasn't getting responses back from my people. So I was like, let me figure out how to meet them where they're at. And then I'll give this to them. So that's how I walk through collecting them. And then when it comes to using the testimonials, be creative, if you have a pricing guide, you can add it there. If you have an email sequence, which you should like a welcome sequence. You can see it in these testimonials and their sales pages. Of course, like we want to have it in there. Something that I like doing on any website page, but particularly with case study pages, I like having I'll make a point, and then in the copy, and then I will back it up with a testimonial. So I might say I'm terrible with on the fly examples. But I might say like, you could have something about like this is my process for making curtains. And then the testimonial will come after that since I made the best curtains ever. Again, bad example. But you just want to use the testimonials to support your point. So that's how I would gather and use those pieces because your clients say things better than you ever can even like dream up.

Crystal Waddell: 7:57

Yeah, I like that point that, you know, use testimonials to support your process or your product or whatever it is. That's a really good statement there.

Brittany Herzberg: 8:06

Yeah, so I am curious how it goes with you maybe like running the ads, like the retargeting ads or even doing the survey to your email,

Crystal Waddell: 8:15

peoples. Yeah, yeah, I am to and it's fun because like when you're retargeting, the idea is that only a certain number of people are going to be able to see it, you know. So it's like, it's not an accurate ad. Yeah, it's not an ad that anybody should be able to see, it should only be the people who, like saw the checkout page, or whatever. So it will be interesting. And I thought, you know, how fun to make it like personalized is to get in front of the camera and just say, thank you so much. I appreciate you. Your business means the world to me and to my family. And we hope that you know, your family is enjoying your collage or your number or whatever, you know, and it would also just mean so much if you had just a few minutes to leave a review for us so that we can continue to grow. And yeah, thanks again. You know, just something like that. But could you imagine if my face was on the cameras on me, so thank you, you know, that pops up on Facebook because it's a retargeting ad. I mean, that was so crazy.

Brittany Herzberg: 9:13

I love that. And I would just say to like, think that's a wonderful idea. First of all, and again, just like, the more specific you can be with questions, the better responses you're gonna get. So even, like, even when we're asking for reviews for the podcast, we could even be more specific, like, what's your favorite takeaway? Because that's like the number one thing people are like, I don't know what to say, I don't know what to share. What do you want me to talk about? So be specific, ask your people follow up, and then go and use those testimonials because they're just going to do so much for your SEO. Thanks for being here with us friend.

Crystal Waddell: 9:45

Yeah. Thank you. Thank you, Marty. Thank you, Leah of the podcast effect they produce this private podcast. We're very grateful to you. And if you need a private podcast for any reason, make sure you check them out over at the podcast. effect.com

Brittany Herzberg: 9:59

go do it. and we'll see you next week. you're well on your way to being the answer to even more Googled questions.

Crystal Waddell: 10:06

Thanks so much for joining us this week. Have you noticed them SEO wins since listening to SEO short? We want to know email us at Hello at simple and smart seo.com Or share an episode conversation thread