someone told me you're the best in the business
Get a quote and win more business. It's that simple. Referrals and word of mouth have always been fantastic marketing tools. However, they can be hard to predict and even more difficult to control. That's where customer quotes can help.
There's nothing better than someone else saying how great you are. It's fairly simple to ask your customer to provide a quote and they're extremely useful. You can include them on your site, in your newsletters and in press releases. Customer quotes will also:
- Add credibility to your business
- Show who uses you and why
- Add user generated content to your mix.
Point three is especially important in the modern marketing environment. People are becoming increasingly interested in user generated content. Just look at the number of blogs, forums and communities people are using online.
One of the first stops for online research is to check what other people are saying about you. If you're not driving your customer comments you'll lose control of them completely. We suggest adding a customer quotes page to your site, just like ours. It's also a good idea to post them online and ensure they're easily found by prospective customers who are researching your products and services online.
here are our top five tips to collecting customer quotes
- Get them while they're hot and fresh. Don't wait too long before you ask for a quote. If you're talking to a customer and they say something that would make a great quote ask if you can use it. The same goes for snippets in an email or letter
- Add asking for a quote to your sales process. If you don't you'll only forget to do it. Ensure you ask everyone you can for a comment. You may need to automate this process. If you deal with a high volume of customers you can create a form online that they can fill in. You could drive them to this form using a thank you email with a link to provide a comment
- You may need to offer an incentive to encourage your customer to provide a quote. This could be a voucher or additional services
- Don't be afraid to guide them. It's inevitable that your customers will say very similar things about you. For example:
"I'd recommend company X to anyone looking for widgets".
If you see this happening you can help guide them by asking a question. For example. How did you find our delivery service? Or what makes us different to our competition?
- Always get permission. It's important to get permission to use the quote. Never quote someone without their knowledge. A simple approval form or email will help avoid any unwanted repercussions.
Hopefully this has motivated you to seek more customer quotes. We guarantee that using quotes from your customers will only benefit your business. Don't forget to use them in as many marketing communications as possible.