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25
How Testimonials Impact Your Credibility
As a real estate agent, your local expertise is the defining factor that inspires people to work with you and not a competitor. Testimonials are the most important evidence you can have for your unique insight into your market.
While many real estate agents know they should follow up with satisfied customers for referral business, it is just as important to get testimonials whenever possible. These can take the form of written reviews on third-party websites like Yelp, or they can be testimonials you gather directly.
Let's take a closer look at the value of testimonials.
Testimonials Do a Job No Other Marketing or Advertising Can
Testimonials are crucial because they serve as a form of social proof. With social proof, prospective customers can feel confident that others "just like them" have had success with your services in the past. The more like a prospect's situation the testimonial is, the more powerful it is for them.
Naturally, every situation is a little bit different. Even when you define your ideal customer and focus exclusively on business that fits, everyone will bring something new to the table. With that in mind, you should never stop collecting testimonials. You may have a library of dozens before you've covered "everything."
The unique benefits of testimonials include:
- Capturing a unique, authentic experience from a customer that future prospects find relatable
- Seeing with their own eyes that your customers support your brand and want you to succeed
- Developing a genuine human connection with you through the person giving the testimonial
It may take weeks or even months for a prospective customer to "take the plunge" and decide to contact a real estate agent. Knowing that, you need ways to establish trust before you've even met. A testimonial stands out as one of the best ways to do that and continues to yield benefits for years and years to come.
Two Kinds of Testimonials and How They Work
There are two basic kinds of real estate testimonials:
Text Testimonials
Review websites collect text testimonials. On a third-party site, these usually include a person's name, location, and profile picture. If you are asking for text testimonials outside that context, then you will need to provide the person's photo — without a photo, text testimonials can look as if they are simply made up.
No matter if a testimonial is from a review site or your own records, there are several ways you can integrate it into your own real estate website. Putting testimonials on a dedicated page is a start, but it doesn't have to be your only approach. You can integrate testimonials and rankings into the footers and other places on a site.
Video Testimonials
Video testimonials are much more powerful than plain text. All in all, people prefer video to text for most of the things they do online. Video is easier to consume, more enjoyable, and actually more memorable than text. So, visitors to your website are far more likely to remember and act on a video testimonial.
While some people are comfortable recording themselves for a video testimonial, most of them will want to come in and have you record them. It's a good idea to upgrade from your smartphone camera to a dedicated video camera for this purpose. Simply ask questions about the customer's experience and capture the answers.
Learning to Request Testimonials in Your Customer Follow-Up
When you're following up with a satisfied customer, it's vital to be clear and direct in what you are asking for.
To start with, be sure no more than two weeks have elapsed since the last time you saw each other (usually on closing day or the day after) so memories are still fresh. After that, determine how to follow up — phone calls, email, and social media are all fair game, so choose the one you know works best for that customer.
If you're requesting a text-based testimonial on an established review site like Yelp or Google Reviews, be sure to mention exactly which website would be most helpful to you. Offer no more than two options. In an ideal world, someone may leave a positive review on two websites, but with three, they may feel overwhelmed.
Remember that you can't incentivize a positive review and shouldn't try to induce a positive review when you make contact. Across industries, it's standard to ask for "an honest review." All review websites recognize this is an ordinary part of doing business.
If you're asking for a video review, you may be able to record a spoken testimonial through an application like Zoom, or you may wish to meet in person. Either way, be sure you have a release form the customer can sign.
Contact us to find out more about effective real estate marketing.
