The Art of Testimonial Writing: Crafting Compelling Narratives without the Superlatives

Testimonials are one of the most popular forms of “social proof.” Social proof is a word you have heard repeatedly, but do you know where it comes from?

Dr. Robert Cialdini first used the term in his book “Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion.” Great, now you know.

Social Proof comes in lots of forms, but testimonials have become some of the easiest to gather and implement. Many businesses rely on testimonials from Google Reviews and Facebook Reviews. Other important platforms like Yelp help as well, especially for service businesses.

At MainWP, we simply call it “love.” It’s true.

Many people have professed their love for MainWP and we got the page to prove it. More on that in a bit. But, testimonials have a low barrier and often they have issues such as people using superfluous and superlative language.

Or, people tend to use words that say nothing at all. Today, we are going to talk about three things you can do to write a better testimonial.

These types of testimonials are what Neville Medhora calls “Ego Testimonials.”

He says,

“An ‘Ego Testimonial’ is a testimonial that sounds great to YOU and YOUR COMPANY, but it doesn’t serve any benefit to the customer.”

Outline your story.

Is there a before, during and after? Document them. If you think about it in terms of your use of the product or service, you are less likely to use language someone else uses. Also, pretend you are at a coffee shop or a pub and telling a friend how it helped and you are now convincing him or her to use the same product.

Follow your story with the product in your memory. How did you hear about the product? What hangups did you have before buying? What finally convinced you to make the purchase?

Recall those things, write them down. These will help you form your thoughts. In fact, a great exercise is to write it down as a story. Forget about writing the testimony at this point. You are simply recalling the story, pulling out from the story the outcomes that you had.

Share the outcome you gained.

With testimonials, think in terms of outcomes. Some might say think of your benefits, but outcomes are better. It changes the thought process a bit.

Here’s the thing: use the outcomes that YOU had. It might be easy to copy what another person is saying, but it may not be the outcome you had.

In fact, open up an empty document that has fewer distractions (I like Notepad in Windows). Think back to your time with the product or the service. What improvements did you see? Did it save you time, money or make you money? List those things out in your document.

Add proof to your proof.

You want your testimonial to be something that has a concrete understanding. How do you do that? With specificity.

To do that, we will look at three options: Data, Image, and Comparisons.

First, let’s look at data. When I talk about data, I mean concrete numbers. Don’t get complex. Give an easy-to-understand number. Notice the example below.

That may look like, “We are making around 2000-3000 dollars extra per month because of MainWP’s ability to use our time more effectively (actual testimonial from Laust Kehlet).”

Use numbers that are easy to understand and visualize.

Next up is using an image. By image, I mean be willing to use your image! Either use a profile picture as the founder

of the company or your company’s logo. It adds to the credibility.

When I see one of those 90s looking robot avatars, I immediately wonder if the testimonial is fake. You can see with most MainWP testimonials, those who submit use an image or a company logo. This is the way, my friend.

Now let’s look at comparisons. This is a bonus value-add. If you can compare the product to another product that you tried and relay the difference, that adds more persuasion power to the testimonial. Check out this example from a MainWP customer.

We have been using MainWP for a few years, which has been an integral part of our business. We’ve checked out other similar services, and this is the one that makes the most sense to us. We value flexibility, privacy, efficiency, and reliability, so it’s a no-brainer that we chose MainWP.

Gerson Lacdao

Owner at GSL Web Solutions

Notice how he compared MainWP to other services and MainWP was the one that won.

Once you have made your story outline, extracted the outcomes your team had, and added proof to your proof, you are ready to write your testimonial.

There is no need to write a blog post. A paragraph summarizing succinctly is sufficient.

ChatGPT Prompt for Testimonials.

Here is an example of a prompt you can use with ChatGPT. You will need three answers to execute the prompt: A short story of a benefit of the product/service; A data point to serve as proof, and a problem that was solved.

Write a testimonial up to 150 words (you can change this if you want fewer words) using the following information:

[Product/Service] made a difference in our business by [tell a short story of benefit], improved our company by improving our [data point], and helped us solve [a pressing problem].

Example Output:

“MainWP has been a game-changer for our business. With its efficient platform, we’ve been able to expand our customer base while significantly reducing costs compared to our competitors. Gone are the days of logging into hundreds of websites individually; MainWP streamlines the process, saving us a staggering 20 hours per week. This newfound time has allowed us to focus more on delivering quality service to our clients and growing our business. The intuitive interface and robust features of MainWP make it an indispensable tool in our arsenal. Thanks to MainWP, we’re not just saving time and money; we’re also delivering better results for our customers. It’s a win-win situation that we’re grateful to have discovered.”

Wrapping it up

MainWP has a page of testimonials and they call it Love. We are thankful for the love all around the globe. There are many reasons people have given that they are thankful for MainWP and they are mentioned in the testimonials.

If you want to express your love for MainWP or just see the testimonials, visit the page by clicking the link below.

Check out all the MainWP Love.