4 Ways to Use Testimonials to Get More Coaching Clients

Whether you have one testimonial from a successful client or one thousand testimonials from successful clients, those testimonials aren't going to do much for you unless you actually use them.

In this episode, I talk about the four main ways you can and should leverage your testimonials to help you get more coaching clients:

• Getting and using testimonials on LinkedIn
• Turning testimonials into attractive social media posts
• Using testimonials on your website
• Incorporating testimonials into your marketing emails

Then, I offer three bonus tips for maximizing those testimonials, including creating case studies, sharing them with your warmest leads, and conducting video interviews with successful clients.

 In today's episode, we are going to be talking about how to actually use testimonials that you have gotten from your clients, and how to use them in a way that's actually going to help you get more clients. One of the beautiful things is that once you have a testimonial, it doesn't mean that you can only use it once in one place. In fact, there are really four main places where you can and should use testimonials so that you can demonstrate social proof. And that's really important because people buy not just based on the logic or emotions of the situation, but they buy when there is proof that what you're selling works. That’s why people pay so much attention to, for instance, Amazon reviews or testimonials in general, because they need that kind of reassurance that what the person selling is actually telling the truth. They look to testimonials for that validation. 

That's why, in this episode, we're going to be talking about the four main things that you should do with your testimonials. After that, we'll also look at several other bonus things that you can do to enhance your results even further. To start off with number one, we're going to talk about LinkedIn, and this is really only important if you are using LinkedIn actively to attract clients and generate leads. If you're not using LinkedIn, this one won't matter as much to you, but I want to highlight this one first because this one actually helps along the way with the process as a whole. 

LinkedIn has this great feature called Recommendations, where you can request recommendations from your clients. You can send them a quick message saying, “Hey, I'd love it if you'd write me a recommendation.” The benefit of making this the way that you gather testimonials is that once it's in LinkedIn, it's going to show up on your LinkedIn profile, whereas if you gathered a testimonial from somewhere else, say email or a Facebook message or something like that, you're not going to be able to add it to your profile in the same way. So number one is that if you're using LinkedIn, request the testimonial on LinkedIn so that it shows up on the front of your LinkedIn profile. 

Tip one and a half is that you can then not just copy and paste that text of the testimonial to use elsewhere, but you can also screenshot it. It looks more official if you screenshot it because it's clear that this is that person's own words, and it adds a layer of credibility to it, the actual act of just using the screenshot of the LinkedIn recommendation. So to recap the first thing really quickly, if you're using LinkedIn, make sure you request the testimonial through LinkedIn, and they call it Recommendation. 

Then, once you have that, screenshot it as well as copy and paste the actual text somewhere so that you can use it later on in, for instance, step two, which is around how you can actually take that text and create a social media graphic. This can be done simply in Canva, for instance, and once you have that graphic, you can post it on pretty much all of your social media platforms. It could be a Facebook or an Instagram story, or a Facebook or an Instagram post, or a LinkedIn post. This is really simply just creating a simple graphic in Canva with the actual text of the testimonial in it, and it's a really good way to display your testimonials on social media in a way that looks pretty. 

And when you post one of those graphics, make sure to actually tag the client in there if you can and also add your booking link because, when people are seeing this, we want to make sure that they actually book a call with you. A really simple thing you can do is to just say something like “If you want to chat with me, hop on over to blank,” and you can just pop your booking link in there. If you don't have a booking link, you can say, “If you want to chat with me, just send me a quick message and we can talk,” something simple like that, a simple call to action with that testimonial. 

The third thing you want to do is if you have a website, make sure that you're sprinkling testimonials throughout all the pages of your website. You’re sprinkling them across all the pages, and in addition to that, what we want to do is also make sure you have one page that has all of them. That's going to be really useful and important when you're talking with prospective clients because you can simply say, “Here's a link to a bunch of testimonials from past clients. You can see what results similar people have gotten.” That's number three—putting them all throughout your website, and also making sure you also have all of them grouped together on a single page. 

The fourth and final big thing to do is if you are sending out emails to your email list, make sure that pretty much every email has at least one testimonial that relates to whatever you're talking about in that email. That's a really good way to get that testimonial in front of a prospective client, and oftentimes, that will make the difference. 

And while those are the big four things that you definitely want to make sure you're doing, there are three other things I want to at least mention in this episode because they can also help you a whole lot in terms of how best to leverage the testimonials that you have. The first is that when you actually get a really, really strong testimonial, or you have a client who gets really exceptional results, dive deeper into it and create a case study that includes a little bit more question-and-answer from the client, interviewing them, for example, to really get clear on where they were before, the process that you took them through, and where they are now—the results. A case study is essentially a much deeper dive into a testimonial. It is a much more detailed testimonial that's not just “Wow, this person is great; they helped me get this result.” It actually tells the story of how they got that result and how you helped them along the way. 

The second quick thing you can do is to, when you're on a discovery call or a strategy session, generally after that call, follow up with them via email, even if you have a follow-up call already scheduled. What you can do is send them a link to a page or a document that overviews the offer—the program, for example—and also provides testimonials so that a really warm lead who is actively considering working with you can have reinforced in them the idea of the results that you could help them achieve. 

The third quick thing I mentioned is similar to a case study, but it's to actually go live on Facebook or Instagram, for example, and just have an informal conversation with a client, which is similar to a case study. Talk to them about the process of working with you and what it helped them achieve. It's always really useful to have that in video form because, when a prospect sees you talking with this really successful client of yours, it's going to build even more trust in you. And the benefit for the client is that it actually gives them visibility to your audience, so going live with a client, or even just doing a case study on a client, actually does have a tangible benefit for them, which is that it helps your existing client, your successful client, get in front of even more people, get in front of your audience. 

The main takeaway for this episode is that when you have one testimonial—even just one—there are plenty of ways that you can use it, plenty of different ways. And you can use each of these testimonials in different ways, multiple times. Then, of course, when you have even more testimonials, you can use those in these different ways and use them over and over and over again. Thank you so much for joining me for today's episode of the Client Attractor Show. I really appreciate having you here today, and I look forward to seeing you tomorrow for our next episode. Take care.