Raise Your Visibility by Sharing Your Success Stories

 In Blog

Every once in a while, business owners and organization leaders get notes – or emails – offering praise for good work from clients and customers. In the PR and communications world, we call these thank yous “testimonials,” and we recommend that they be shared – trumpeted even – with your audience.

The first step in any good marketing plan is raising visibility, and one way to do that is by sharing your success stories. Growing a business depends on visibility, and there is no one better equipped than you – the owner of a business or the leader of an organization – to tell those stories.

Let people know that you have a great product, that you provide exceptional service, that you have made someone’s day better or brighter or that you have transformed a life.

Don’t be shy about that. Be smart.

Here are some tips for sharing testimonials:

  • Get permission. When a client, customer or volunteer sends you a communication – or calls you on the telephone – to thank you for good service or a great product, make sure that after you thank them for taking the time to pass the feedback on, your next question is, “Would it be okay to use your thoughts in our promotional materials?” Don’t worry that it may seem in poor taste. Self-promotion is very effective when it’s done well. And doing it well begins with making sure you have permission.
  • Take it one step further. When you receive a positive testimonial and have received permission to use it, ask if you can tell the whole story. Perhaps you’re a web designer, and you were praised by a client for developing a new site for the business that is now earning income. Ask if you can tell the story that compares his or her previous website experience to this one, expanding on the compliment to show the transformation. In this example, also ask if you can include a link to the new site in your promotional materials. That will offer the client a nice promotion as well. Perhaps you’re a nutritional therapist, and your advice made someone feel better. Ask if you can tell the story of what life was like before he or she came to you.
  • Tell the story on multiple channels. Keep these testimonials short, under 300 words, pair with a photo if you can, and share them in your enewsletter, your blog or on a flyer you post in your office. Condense the testimonial into several short sentences, and offer up several posts on Facebook over a period of a week or more. If you’re a nonprofit helping to transform a community, turn the testimonial into a press release and send it to the media. Create a postcard that pairs the testimonial with your upcoming schedule of events or your latest product and send it to your clients and prospects. Create a video in which your client speaks the testimonial!
  • Ask for testimonials. Sometimes – actually, most times – our clients don’t think to thank us or offer words of praise. But many times, they would be happy to share their story if asked. If you know a client or customer who had a great experience, ask him or her for a brief testimonial, ask if you can tell the story.
  • Respect privacy. Don’t be upset if clients or customers don’t want you to share their testimonials, but do ask if it’s okay to use the testimonial without their name. We ghost write blogs for business owners on occasion, and they, of course, don’t want their audience to know that they are not writing their own pieces, so these clients wouldn’t want to be named. But at least one such client has been more than happy to let us share her words of praise anonymously.

To learn more about how Beetle Press can help you turn your success stories into visibility for your business or organization, call us at (413) 374-6239 or email janice@beetlepress.com.

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