How to write better testimonial quotes
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I keep getting this ad on Twitter:
I like its structure. But there's a big, glaring error - and it's one that I see all the time, in all sorts of contexts.
The testimonial quote. "I would strongly recommend Chargify to all growing B2B SaaS businesses."
On the face of it, it looks fine. This lady strongly recommends Chargify. She's the COO of Sendspark, which I assume is a b2b SaaS company. So she's lending Chargify some credibility.
But apart from the fact that she's recommending Chargify, this quote really isn't telling us anything. All we know is that she recommends it.
This is an opportunity that I see companies miss all the time. Here's why:
Your clients are not Michael Jordan
A recommendation or endorsement isn't that useful, unless the person is someone with so much credibility that their endorsement on its own is valuable - think Michael Jordan endorsing Nike.
But most testimonial quotes are not going to be from Michael Jordan or his equivalent in your industry. The vast, vast majority of testimonial quotes are going to be from regular old customers who your potential customers have never heard of. People who do not have global name recognition or instant credibility. Their names in and of themselves won't be that valuable, so the words they say in the testimonial become a lot more important.
Testimonial quotes are about details
A testimonial quote should have at least one key detail that is relevant to your audience. Could be the outcome the testimonial-giver achieved. Could be what their life looked like before, and what it looks like now. Could be some metric or the other that they've massively improved.
The critical thing is that it is specific. It needs to paint a vivid picture for your potential customers of what their life could look like.
Where weak quotes come from - and how to avoid them
Weak quotes like the Chargify one above are a product of poor interviewing. Interviewing people is hard! People don't just come right out and give you a killer quote that works perfectly in your marketing material; you have to dig in and around the issue to get them to give you good information.
The big mistake people make is to just say "why do you love [our product]?" An open-ended question like this will get you lots of effusive gushing, but when you review your notes later, you'll realise you didn't get anything useful.
Some better questions are:
What was happening in your business before you started using our product/service?
This one is my all-time favourite. At first glance, it doesn't look like it's going to be that useful - but once you ask someone this, they will start to think about what their business looks like now, and what has changed - and they'll tell you about it, pretty much unprompted. Then you can just dig in on individual elements here and there.
What did your day-to-day look like before you started using our product? And what does it look like now?
This gives really powerful anecdotes - especially in software that competes with manual processes and spreadsheets. When you ask this, you'll get really good stories about being overwhelmed, doing lots of paperwork, files being in the wrong place, etc. Then you'll get the contrasting good-news story about how good things are now.
What can you do now that you couldn't do before?
This is a great one for figuring out outcomes you deliver - which is a step further than benefits. For example, let's say someone buys a super fuel-efficient car. If you asked them this question, they might say something like "I'm not spending so much on petrol, so I can go visit my grandma way more often."
That's an outcome from the benefit, and it helps you unearth that more human, more specific story that sits under the surface of benefit statements. Makes for great testimonial quotes!
Back to Chargify - in a positive way
I'll close this out with some examples of good testimonial quotes. And guess who has great ones on their website? Chargify! Take a look at this one:
“A total game changer. . . We turned a 6-hour weekly reporting project into a 10-second dashboard refresh.”
It's just great. Quantitative, specific, with a clear before state (6 hour weekly reporting project) and after state (10-second dashboard refresh).
Anyone who's bogged down with reporting financial information (IE, most finance teams) can connect with this.
Here's another one:
“Chargify BI has taken our speed-to-calculate and accuracy of MRR and financial metrics and reduced it down to a mere dashboard refresh with 100% accuracy”
This one's great because it hits on very specific terms that their target market is going to use - like MRR (monthly recurring revenue, one of the main financial metrics in SaaS).
I also love the dashboard refresh terminology that goes across both of these. It's a good illustration of the point I made earlier - you don't necessarily have to have quantitative information to make a good quote. Rather, you just need to be specific enough to paint a picture for your reader. A dashboard refresh is very quick!
I do wonder why Chargify went with the quote they did on their Twitter ads. Maybe I'm completely wrong, and they did a bunch of a/b testing, and found that the vague is the most successful. If you know someone at Chargify, please forward this to them and ask what the deal is, because I'm dying to know.
Anyway - testimonial quotes. Keep them specific. Ask the right questions. Don't mistake enthusiastic praise for a solid testimonial quote.
That's all! Have a great week.
Sam
PS: Nothing to plug. Nothing to promote. It's December and I'm worn out. I'll start promoting stuff again in 2022.