Your clients are the lifeblood of your real estate business, and like many other service and customer-based enterprises, their opinions drive your future and testify of your abilities. Not only are client testimonials an opportunity to showcase your success stories, but they establish a legitimate rapport, give you credibility, and can strengthen your position as an authority in your field.
Getting customer testimonials and reviews is a challenge in and of itself, but showcasing them is an altogether different task. Here are some of our tips for client testimonials.
Ask for Testimonials During Every Transaction
It isn’t enough to get only the best customer testimonials no matter the business. After all, there will inherently be customers who either didn’t have an excellent experience or who may be able to offer valuable feedback for improving your overall process, therefore, improving the customer experience for the next person.
For these reasons, it’s all the more important to ask for a testimonial or review during every transaction. Differentiating between testimonials and reviews may very well be splitting hairs, but in order to get quality, public feedback, it’s necessary to reach out to all of your clients, not just the ones who love you and what you do.
Help Clients Frame Their Testimonials
Reviews (think Google or Facebook reviews) are great because they often help like-minded customers locate your business and find you above your competition. As great as reviews are for gaining new business, they can sometimes lack some of the essentials of great testimonials, namely details.
When it comes to approaching customers for testimonials, help them frame their testimony by giving them some talking points. Sure, “XYZ Agent was great!” is an excellent review, but if you can help that same client better elaborate, highlight the things they loved about their experience, and generally expound on how they feel, then you’re going the right direction with your testimonials.
Reach Out to Past Clients
One way you’ll boost your customer testimonials is to reach out to some of those who have already used you as an agent in the past. That should be a no-brainer, but if those clients already have a review “on file” with you, then you already have a foundation for which to build a testimonial.
Use the tips in the section above to help those clients with pre-existing reviews elaborate on those experiences and give you more content to work with. Depending on how you plan on publishing your testimonials, you may be able to get raw thoughts by way of video or a podcast-style interview.
Be Creative with Your Content
Along those lines, don’t be scared to reach out and do some more creative things with how you publicize those testimonials. Naturally, you can create quality images highlighting some of your best testimonials (and you should), but consider having your testimonial candidates come into your office and actually get their testimonials on video or interview them as part of a podcast series.
Having actual video or audio media will infinitely increase the amount of content you have at your disposal and may even give your client an opportunity to briefly showcase their new home or business if the environment suits your style. In the end, play around and have fun with the content you have available to you and see how far you can stretch it!
