How to Grow Your Print Business with Customer Testimonials

Would you like to increase your credibility, boost your lead generation, and secure longterm customer retention?

Of course, you would. And so would just about any other business. The question is, how.

While most small business owners head straight over to marketing and advertising, it’s vital to recognize that the most powerful and effective advertising happens when your print buyers do the talking – as in, providing a glowing recommendation of your business.

Help Them Show Their Love

If a large part of your audience is repeat business, that means that your print buyers already love you. And if they love you, it probably means they’re thinking nice things about you as well. All you have to do is ask them to share their feelings with others.

While many wayward printers climb the mountains to toot their own horn, you’ll save yourself a lot of work and build credibility by reaching out to those satisfied customers of yours and asking their permission to help them share their story. It’s time to let others tell your story for you and get some testimonials working for you!

Start with Feedback

It’s an exhilarating feeling when you get to the end of a job knowing you’ve done your best, and your customer is excited by the results.

When that happens, it’s the perfect time to ask them to provide you with some feedback. Don’t ask for a testimonial; ask for feedback.

If you ask for a testimonial, there’s a good chance your customer is going to try extra-hard to use the perfect testimonial-sounding words, and that will come across as unnatural and insincere.

Instead, ask for feedback. Your customer’s response will be much more conversational. Then, you can then use that “feedback” and craft it into (you guessed it) a testimonial.

How to Gather Feedback

First things first, gather the feedback. Ask your customer to answer some leading questions like these:

“Why did you decided to choose us to be your printing provider?”
“How did the printing we did for you help you become more successful?”
“What are the three biggest benefits of working with us?”

Make sure to finish by asking one more fundamental question: “May we use this feedback in our marketing materials?”

Converting Your Feedback Into a Testimonial

Now that you have your print buyer’s feedback (and assuming you obtained permission to share the feedback, of course!), it’s your turn to convert the feedback into a testimonial.

Take your time and make sure it’s well-written. Read it out loud and make sure it captures the excitement and essence of what your customer is saying. It needs to appeal not only to you but also (especially!) to those that will be reading the testimonial. And, remember, it doesn’t need to be novel. It can be simple, short, and sweet.

Sharing Your Testimonial

Now that you have a fancy-dancy new testimonial, how do you share it?

For starters, get that testimonial on your website. Make sure you get your customer’s photo and include that in the testimonial as well. And, please, make sure it’s a high-quality photo. You know the saying, “A picture is worth a thousand words,” right? A low-quality photo is also worth a thousand words, but those are words that shouldn’t be said in public!

Once you’ve published your testimonial on your website, go pro! In his article 5 Ways To Incorporate Testimonials Into Your Website Todd Giannattasio offers, “…how many people are really interested in clicking to your testimonial page?” Not many, at least not without a bit of direction.

There’s more you need to do to squeeze all the juice out of that hard-earned testimonial. Take a moment to read Todd’s advice about nudging people’s eyes closer to your new testimonial. For our website clients, it’s pretty easy to follow his advice:

First, get the testimonial on your website. There’s a section right in your website’s Control Center that will allow you to publish the testimonial in minutes; go to Web Pages > Featured Pages > Testimonials. Follow the prompts to add the testimonial to your website.
Now that you have the testimonial added, draw some attention to it using your website’s Sidebar Links (Web Pages > Sidebar Links) and/or your homepage Callout Boxes (Web Pages > Home Page > Custom Callout Boxes).

There’s more you can do too. How about grabbing a small teaser from the testimonial and publishing it in your monthly direct mail advertising? Clients of Direct Mail For Printers can easily do this. All of the monthly mailers available from Direct Mail For Printers are fully customizable; the Printer’s Press newsletters, in particular, lends itself nicely to adding your own custom content: Convert one of the newsletter ad spaces to a testimonial teaser by adding your customer’s photo, a juicy teaser quote from the testimonial, and a link back to the testimonial page on your website.

That covers your website and your monthly direct mail. Make sure you publicize your testimonial through your email newsletter and social media too. Rookies stop at just adding the testimonial to their website. Don’t be a rookie; make sure you “Go pro!” and share your testimonials!