Having a proper and effective client testimonial strategy is an important and essential element for your business to grow, convert more visitors to clients and create trust around your business - and that you can deliver on your promise.

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Your strategy should be formed from the following steps:

• Suitability: Why is a strategy important?
• Goals: Set clear goals for your review strategy
• Exploration: How do I find the right platform or product to collect reviews?
• Timing: When should you ask for reviews?
• Collection: How should you ask for reviews?
• Publishing: How do you get the most out of your reviews?

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Suitability:
Why is a customer review strategy important and what are video reviews?

Reviews hold the power to make or break your personal brand and is a testament to the effectiveness and results that your services offer. In essence, reviews are the most powerful marketing content you can have for your business.

In fact, 88% of consumers trust online video reviews as much as personal recommendations and 97% of all consumers consult reviews before taking a decision.

Having a proper strategy around collecting and using your reviews to better your business, automatising the process, will let your clients vouch for your services. If your clients can speak for you, always choose that.

We also know that the most uncomfortable part of collecting reviews is asking for them and hitting the right timing. We’ll try and help you in these next steps.

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Goals:
Set customer goals on how to get video reviews

To make sure you run your strategy as effectively as possible, start by setting clear goals.

Identify the priorities and purpose - such as displaying happy clients that have experienced a positive effect by your services provided. This will allow you to focus your efforts.

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Ask the following questions:

• How many customer reviews should you aim to obtain?

This is essential especially for SimplyReview as the rating is based on number of reviews and what the actual rating given is. 10 reviews that are 5 stars, will give you a 5.0 Excellent rating.

In the website widget carousel, you will also need at least 4 reviews for it to look properly. Worry not - you can display text and video reviews in the same widget.

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• Which customers or clients should you ask for reviews?

SimplyReview is as much a review software as it is a testimonial or case study software - you want to show the happy, satisfied customers, and you preferably want them to give you a video review so that prospects see real, genuine people talking about you and your business.

Unlike competitors like Trustpilot and many other review softwares who are focused around eCommerce to assess the validity of a business, our focus lies on happy customers that can share their experience with you, which is why the personal relation is also essential.

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Exploration:
Choosing the right platform to collect reviews & customer testimonials

Figuring out which platform to collect your reviews can be a jungle. Different softwares have different purposes, but know this:

We originally made SimplyReview for health coaches, fitness professionals and personal trainers.

Working out where online to collect reviews is the first step to building out your Review Strategy.

Important factors to take into account when looking for the right software is:

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Price vs Quality (and design)

You need to balance out whether the price is an important factor for you, and how you will take full use of the products offered.

• Trustpilot is incredibly expensive and only has text reviews - but is the biggest platform and has a history of many years and is used in many countries globally.
• Facebook, Google Reviews are free, but limited to those platforms and don’t offer any proper widgets or content plays for your brand to use the reviews.
• SimplyReview offers beautiful widgets and video reviews for businesses that value the personal aspect of their client relationships.

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Video vs Text

How you’re going to use the reviews is essential here. Video short form has taken the world by storm and is the most consumed medium.

• People love short-form video and according to The Sprout Social Index 66% of consumers say short-form video is the most engaging type of social content in 2022.
• Video provides many more types of content that you can use. One video can turn into multiple types of content:
• Use the video as a whole
• Split the video up for certain quotes
• Take out textual quotes from the video
• ...and a variety of other ways

Text is the most commonly used for reviews, but we believe video will win for non-ecommerce businesses in the end, due to the short form format, the personal aspect and the engaging part of watching a video over reading a text review.

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Convenience

When building SimplyReview it was essential for us to create a superb user experience both for you and for your clients.

Convenience for you

Setting up SimplyReview takes 2 minutes and requires just a few clicks. The flow is straight forward and works like this:

• Set up your Company & Review page
• Send out the first invitations directly through the platform (through either email or SMS)
• Add the widget to your website with one single code
• Connect to the integrations and make sure you’re notified on when to send reviews
• …and you’re good to go!

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Convenience for your clients

Giving a review should be the best and easiest user experience possible. Smooth, fast and trustworthy.

• Receive an invitation to review on either mail, SMS or through chat.
• Click the link, and be met by your welcome page as well as prompts on what to give feedback on in the review.
• Choose between text and video review
• Record or type in their review and give a rating
• Verify it with their phone number
• …You will now have received an email that you got a new review (which you can also see in the platform)

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Suitability for your content

• Choose which platform best suits your needs in terms of design for widgets and content
• We like to highlight the beauty of our review widgets, ease of use along with our features like subtitles, thumbnails, integrations and sharing possibilities.

You can see our earlier blogpost - Top 5 Trustpilot alternatives here: https://www.simplyreview.com/blog/top-5-trustpilot-alternatives

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Timing:
How do you collect customer video testimonials and reviews?

Identifying the right time and place to ask for reviews is essential. You’ll want your client to know pretty early on that you’d like a review at the end of the period - you can do this slowly during your weekly communication.

Good practice is to start warming them up 3 weeks before their period ends, when you know they have reached their goals and are satisfied with your services. If you use Zenfit, you can connect with our integration there, and you’ll get notified when a client is ripe for giving a review.

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Peak hype and excitement

If you can identify when your client is most satisfied, happy and content with your services, this is when you should strike for the absolute best review you can possibly get.

People are much more inclined to give a review - and a good one - if you catch them when they are at their happiest state. So even if this is before their period has officially ended, ask for it anyway. Don’t forget, you’ve usually changed their life for the better - big or small - and that is something that reasons with people and they’ll want to give something in return.

The reason why this also gives you the best reviews is that the experience and feeling of success is fresh in mind. We have experienced, that even waiting 1 or 2 months will significantly reduce your chances of getting a review by the day.

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Collection:
How should you collect customer testimonials and reviews?

First, setup your review page in SimplyReview.

• Choose which language you want your review page in (we’re currently expanding to many more languages)
• Upload an image or video: We recommend a video, where you can welcome the clients to the page and give them instructions.
• Pick a caption and a message: Let the clients know what you expect them to do and write a message around what it means to you to receive these and how it helps you. Providing an incentive in exchange for a review is worth its weight in gold and gives them that extra nudge.
• Create instructions so that people that are not too familiar with giving reviews can get some inspiration on what to say or write, and know what to say in a video testimonial or review.
• Choose your brand color, so the page is fully on-brand for you.
• You can also choose to only accept video reviews, but we recommend giving the clients the choice to choose between both of them. (This highly depends on your review strategy)

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Choose which clients you want to ask

Sometimes the best type of reviews come from selecting specific clients and issuing out review invites to them. A combination of peak hype and excitement, proven results, and extrovert personalities makes for excellent reviews that speaks into the power of your business.

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Make sure clients know what is expected of them

Prompts are a great way to make sure people know how to give a video testimonial or review. Give instructions and even add a video of yourself in the review page to highlight factors:

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A good list to keep in mind for quality reviews:

• Clients are positioned in a good light
• Camera or phone is not shaking
• Keep the videos to 60-90 seconds max
• Start by introducing themselves and how they used you or your product
• Follow the prompts
• End with a recommendation

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Ask for reviews - then follow up

Send invitations for clients through Simply or send them a direct link to your review page. Tell your clients why this is important for you. If you have not received the review within a few days, follow up and make sure they’ll get around to do it (this makes sure you do not lose the peak hype and excitement timing that is so essential).

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Publishing:
Get video testimonials and reviews on your website

Once you received the review, people will want to know that you received it and what you thought of it. Make sure to reach out personally and appreciate their efforts. Here’s two templates you could use, depending on the review received:

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Respond to the review

If the review is great: Give thanks

Thank you so much for the review {NAME}, I appreciate it so much and it means the world to me that you have taken your time to share your experience.

The past few weeks/months have been great working with you and seeing the results and goals we have achieved together makes me so proud. I wish you all the best and look forward to guiding you in the future.

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If the review is not a full 5-star review: Ask how you can do better

Hello {NAME}. Thank you so much for taking your time to give feedback on the experience of the work we’ve done together. As a small business, it’s essential to receive feedback and get input on my work. I truly value your transparency and it’s great to hear what you liked and what you think I could improve on. My goal is always to provide satisfaction and provide a positive experience. I wish you all the best and I hope we can work together again in the future.

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Make the review look great

We offer AI-powered subtitles with 95% accuracy that works in almost all languages, this is of course a big win for accessibility, but also lets people consume the review content on their own terms with sound on or off.

You can also choose which thumbnails to display in SimplyReview, making sure that every video looks as good as it possibly can. (and that it isn’t an awkward still-frame that is shown!)

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Publish your review

Website

• Install our widget on your website, so that new reviews are automatically shown in the widget.
• The widget fits right into the existing design on your website, and you can also use SimplyFlow to highlight a particularly good review.
• Make a block on your website with a text review if there’s a review with a particular quote you’ll want to highlight.

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Social media

Regardless of your preferred choice of social media, there’s a variety of ways you can use a review.

• Instagram: Share in posts, stories and make sure to add highlights to your profile so people can always check your client reviews when visiting your profile.
• PS - make sure to tag us, we love seeing the outcomes you get from using our product!
• Facebook: Engage your Facebook audience by sharing your reviews, either aggregated or one-by-one.
• YouTube: Increase the quality of your video content and publish full videos or use reviews as snippet testimonials to new videos.
• TikTok: Start trends, go viral and advertise your business through real genuine people.

Other

• Add reviews to your email signature and other documents you’re using for client dialogues (e.g. your company page)
• Use the reviews to push ads or sponsored/boosted posts. Nothing is stronger for content marketing than a good testimonial.

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Key takeaways and conclusion for the best video testimonial and review software

The stats speak for themselves; reviews work.

Video performs better than text, but both have a reason for existing within your marketing material as a testament to what you’re doing works and how you are making a difference for your clients.

Remember to also check our earlier blogpost out - The best tools and softwares for health coaches and fitness trainers here: https://www.simplyreview.com/blog/the-best-tools-and-softwares-for-health-coaches-and-fitness-trainers

Try out SimplyReview today and get 30 days free trial - create your account here

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