How to Write a Testimonial: Templates, Tips, and Real Examples

If you're like most people, you do your research before making big purchases. You consider your options, research alternatives, and look for customer reviews and testimonials. After all, you want to choose a product or service that's effective and has been proven to solve problems like yours. That's why learning how to write a testimonial is important for any business. Illustrating what your customers experience when using your product or service puts potential customers at ease. Here's what you need to know about writing effective testimonials, plus examples of testimonials that make a difference.

What Is a Testimonial?

A testimonial is a personal recommendation of a company, product, or service by someone who's experienced it. This type of endorsement is one of the oldest marketing campaign ideas. Testimonials evolved from simple word-of-mouth recommendations, and they're just as effective today as they were hundreds of years ago.

Types of Testimonials

• Quote testimonials: Direct quotes from your customers provide social proof and evidence of your quality. 
• Claims testimonials: These testimonials show that you can back up your claims and help you seem trustworthy.
• Competency testimonials: Directly addressing your competence, these testimonials also showcase your authority and credibility. 
• Character testimonials: Good character testimonials make you seem more responsible. 
• Company testimonials: These types of testimonials speak to your company’s reputation and those of your vendors. 
• Social media testimonials: These brief testimonials offer more visibility away from your website.
• Video testimonials: Videos are more engaging than text, and video testimonials can boost conversion rates. 
• Influencer testimonials: Influencers promoting your business help you build awareness with a larger network and build trust among the influencer’s followers.
• Interview testimonials: Longer in nature than a regular testimonial, an interview allows your customer to tell their story from their perspective. These testimonials highlight your business from the client’s point of view and let other potential customers know what to expect.
• In-depth case studies: Case studies are a great way to explain complex products and services by illustrating a real-life solution in detail.  

A single testimonial can cover multiple topics or just one. As long as it's an honest recommendation for your brand, it's a valuable piece of marketing material.

How To Write Testimonials: 8 Easy Steps

Customers don't always know how to write a testimonial that compels and persuades prospects. Luckily, offering guidance and refining customer reviews can be simple. You can work with your clients to write interesting testimonials by following these eight best practices.

1. Determine the Story and the Background

Testimonials aren't written in a void. Most companies develop testimonials in cooperation with their clients and only post testimonials that support their chosen narrative. That's how the best customer reviews become compelling stories.

Testimonials can support narratives such as:

• Offering a boutique service
• Getting things done quickly
• Providing a better quality service than your competitors
• Excellent customer service

Essentially, any marketing success story you want to tell about your brand can be supported by testimonials. You can also solicit multiple kinds of testimonials to cover different topics and stories. The point is to choose the right type of testimonial for your potential customers.

2. Ask Clear, Impactful Questions

Once you have a clear vision for your testimonials, you can ask the right case study questions. Your previous customers take time out of their day to respond to your interview testimonial request. You can make it easier for them to provide quality customer feedback by prompting them with meaningful questions. These questions also help you collect valuable, positive reviews that support the story you want to tell.

Questions that prompt excellent customer testimonials include:

• What was your life or business like before discovering our brand?
• What problems does our brand help you solve?
• Why did you choose our brand in the first place?
• Why are you continuing to work with our brand?
• What has our brand helped you achieve?
• What would you like to tell other potential customers?
• Are there any unexpected benefits of working with our brand?
• What do you like about our brand the most?

You probably won't use the responses to all of these questions in the same testimonial. However, you can choose the answers that work best for your narrative.

3. Highlight the Problem That Was Solved

Now that you've asked the right questions, focus on how to write a testimony that speaks to prospective customer needs. The first thing to include is an explanation of the problem the client was facing. This can be kept short. You just need a sentence or two that covers why the person chose to work with your brand in the first place.

For instance, you can collect client responses such as:

• "We were struggling to achieve our goals."
• "We needed better service."
• "I didn't know where to start."
• "I was losing time and money trying to handle things alone."

These are clear examples of how the customer struggled before working with your brand and will likely resonate with readers facing similar problems.

4. Share the Solution and the Positive Results

Once you've set up the problem, you can explain how your brand solved it. This is where many of the questions you asked earlier will come into play.

When writing testimonials, you want to collect honest answers from your customers. You can never be sure exactly what parts of your service impacted them the most or what they'll choose to write about. By asking multiple targeted questions, you're more likely to get testimonials that support your brand's narrative.

Look for concise responses that sum up the value of your offerings and customer experience, such as:

• "They helped me cut my expenses in half."
• "I received great customer service that made it easy to get answers."
• "They were flexible and reliable, making it easy to get things done on time."
• "We get compliments all the time thanks to the stellar results they produced!"

Two or three sentences like these are all you need to make an impact.

5. Add a Call to Action or Recommendation

Not every testimonial needs to end with a call to action, but it doesn't hurt to include one if your clients do. If you get a response that clearly states something such as, "I'd recommend that anyone new to [industry] get in touch with this brand," don't hesitate to include it. This kind of effusive recommendation guides the reader to their next step of contacting your brand.

6. Include Real Names for Credibility

One of the biggest reasons for a testimonial is building your audience's trust in your brand. However, testimonials aren't foolproof for building buyer confidence. After all, anyone can figure out how to write a testimonial. Scammers can and do write fake testimonials, and your audience is aware of that.

That's why you should avoid posting anonymous testimonials if you can. The more details you can give about the authors of your customer testimonials, the better. At a minimum, list a first name and last initial. This makes the testimonial seem more personal. Just make sure you always get permission to share the author's information before posting it.

Better yet, if a testimonial is offered by a company, name the company, the author, and their professional contact information. Clients willing to put their name behind their recommendation make prospective buyers much more comfortable. Furthermore, including contact details lets prospects follow up with the author if they're genuinely unsure.

7. Use Photos, Quotes, or Specific Examples

The best format to present testimonials on a website combines text, direct quotes, and multimedia content. Pictures are excellent if your business is in any way a visual medium. For example, a bakery could add photos of past cakes, or a graphic designer could display past projects.

You can include both staged photos of your completed work and client pictures of the results after you've handed over control. Staged shots are great for putting your products or services in their best light, while client photos are more realistic and give prospects a sense of genuine connection.

If images themselves don't work, try pointing to quotes and specific examples. The point is to show readers precisely what the testimonial author is complimenting so they have a better idea of what to expect. For instance, a web designer can link directly to other websites they've created.

8. Keep It Concise and Focused

You'll notice that all the examples in this article are relatively short. There's a good reason for that. A testimonial isn't supposed to be a piece of content marketing. It's supposed to be a concise explanation of why a past client loves your brand. Keeping customer testimonials short and to the point keeps the reader from getting distracted.

Ideally, keep your testimonials to just two or three paragraphs. That's enough space to give a short overview of how you solved the customer's problem and explain why they want to promote your business. It's also short enough to fit comfortably on many types of marketing materials and keep the reader interested.

Benefits of Testimonials for Businesses

When you understand how to write a testimonial in an impactful way, you can develop valuable assets for your business. Well-crafted testimonials demonstrate your real-world value through the voices of satisfied users. As a result, they can reinforce positive brand awareness and influence purchasing decisions.

Testimonials can ultimately drive sales by:

• Increasing trust and credibility with potential customers
• Offering social proof that validates your product or service
• Demonstrating value in real-life situations
• Reducing purchase hesitation by addressing common objections
• Enhancing your marketing materials across channels and campaigns

Key Components of an Effective Testimonial

Testimonials are powerful when they sound real and offer value. Use these essential ingredients to craft one that resonates with your audience.

Authenticity and Sincerity

The key to writing a strong testimonial for a product or service is sending an authentic message. It should reflect your customer and their real experience, rather than sounding like an ad. The tone and narrative of the testimonial should also stay true to your brand.

Steer clear of stiff language, technical jargon, and phrases that sound like sales copy. Readers respond best to genuine, down-to-earth stories that feel human and relatable.

Specificity and Details

A testimonial is effective and trustworthy when it provides specific details about the customer experience. Vague positive reviews like “It was great!” don't carry much weight. Instead, strong testimonials get to the meat of the story fast. Highlight specific features of the product or service, describe how they were used, and mention what made them stand out. These details help potential customers understand exactly what they can expect.

Including Quantifiable Outcomes

Whenever possible, good customer testimonials include measurable results. Numbers lend credibility and help prospective customers visualize benefits. For example, a testimonial might mention saving 10 hours a week, increasing sales by 25%, or cutting operational costs in half. These quantifiable outcomes make the testimonial more persuasive and provide evidence of real-world impact.

Great Testimonial Examples to Study

Many digital marketing case studies demonstrate the value of knowing how to write a testimonial. Use these short, personal testimony examples as a starting point when you get ready to ask your happy customers to advocate for your brand. 

Zendesk’s Video Testimonials and Case Studies

Zendesk classifies its testimonials using industries, case topics, locations, and other categories. These testimonials and business case studies are laid out on the website like a news page. Potential customers can filter the stories by industry or location. They can also search for specific stories. 

This company has its own content production team tasked with collecting customer reviews and testimonials. While you don’t have to have someone whose sole job is to get customer reviews, you can make it easier by laying out goals for each testimonial and asking relevant questions. 

Bizzabo’s Quote-Based Testimonials

Bizzabo is an event planning software firm that works with a variety of clients to plan and execute events. The company’s Customer Stories page highlights metrics from each successful event, demonstrated by a short personal testimony example. 

By adding a quote to the beginning of each success story, Bizzabo boosts its credibility. Potential customers get an idea of how the company was able to solve a client’s problems rather than looking at a page full of metrics. 

Slack’s Customer Stories Page

Slack is an employee collaboration platform that positions itself as helping teams work together more efficiently. To prove it, the company has a Customer Stories page with a mix of successes and testimonials. Potential clients can filter testimonials by industry, department, region, and business size. Any potential client can find testimonials to suit their business needs. 

With these case studies, Slack can make a case for most potential customers by offering numerous real-world examples of how other similar clients have benefited.  

Unlock the Power of Case Studies for Business Growth

Satisfied customers give you everything you need to develop compelling testimonials. Consider the customer story you want to tell, ask your clients the right questions, and structure it appropriately. Once you've done those things, you can create persuasive, authentic testimonials. Start today by creating your story and begin seeing the benefits of an effective testimony.

Don’t have time to interview your clients? Have Compose.ly help. Our professional writers can help you create engaging and informative case studies that clearly highlight your benefit to potential customers. Get started with our case study writing services today and see how we can help you grow.

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