How to Write an Effective Testimonial (Including Examples)

Testimonials can be a powerful tool to earn the trust and confidence of your customers. But the kinds of testimonials that inspire confidence and pull customers off the decision bubble and towards your product or service don’t always appear organically in your inbox.

They have to be carefully crafted.

The marketing team has to edit testimonials to ensure they appeal to specific target audiences. In this way, you lay the foundation for creating rapport with your clients and improve the rate you convert interested clients to paying customers.

Here’s how to write a testimonial, who should write it, and some examples of what they can look like.

What are testimonials, and who should write them?

A testimonial is a statement made by a customer expressing why they feel a brand, product, or service is exceptional. An effective testimonial can both improve your brand image, boost brand awareness and increase your conversion rates.

In fact, 62% of U.S. internet users say they’ve taken online reviews into account before committing to a purchase. As such, it should play a central role in your content marketing efforts.

Who should write a testimonial?

While it may seem awkward — or even disingenuous — to “testify” on someone else’s behalf, it’s often best for someone on your marketing team to write your testimonials, perhaps with the help of the appropriate product manager.

Like other marketing collateral, the grammar, spelling, word choice, and even structure of a testimonial can reflect on your company and its offering, so you want to use it as another chance to put your best foot forward.

Another reason why you should write a testimonial in-house is that you want to get the content just right. This is because your key value-adds may not be what first pop into the mind of a customer typing a testimonial.

But if someone on your team does the writing, you can ensure the statement checks off all the marketing boxes.

This doesn’t mean you write a statement and slap a customer’s name at the end of it. You still use their opinion and words — but you edit them slightly to fit your brand better. Here’s what that process may look like.

How to write a testimonial

You should start with the foundational element of your testimonial, the story you want to tell.

Here’s a common format:

• The problem the customer was facing
• The solution your company used to fix it
• The benefit the customer experienced
• A brief call to action encouraging others to use your company as well

Here’s an example of what a testimonial may look like using this format:

“Our web app wasn’t doing a good job of serving customers. It was successfully processing customer requests only about 96.7% of the time—far below the 99.8% we needed. NetworkOptimizers used their observability and root cause analysis system to automatically identify where problems were coming from, pinpoint the systems that were impacted, and isolate the root cause.

As a result, our IT team was able to fix issues faster and make changes to the app that improved its performance. Soon, our successful processing percentage climbed to 99.9%. I highly recommend anyone who needs a comprehensive observability and RCA system to sit down with NetworkOptimizers”.

Here’s how that testimonial breaks down, according to the four elements we mentioned:

• The problem the customer was facing: Our web app wasn’t doing a good job of serving customers. It was successfully processing customer requests only about 96.7% of the time—far below the 99.8% we needed.
• The solution your company used to fix it: NetworkOptimizers used their observability and root cause analysis system to automatically identify where problems were coming from, pinpoint the systems that were impacted, and isolate the root cause.
• The benefit the customer experienced: As a result, our IT team was able to fix issues faster and make changes to the app that improved its performance. Soon, our successful processing percentage climbed to 99.9%.
• A brief call to action that encourages others to use your company as well: I highly recommend anyone who needs a comprehensive observability and RCA system to sit down with NetworkOptimizers.

Even though this is a short testimonial, the success story it tells is compelling. By using these four points as the backbone of your testimonial template, you leave very little room for error.

How much detail to include

You may notice that there isn’t a lot of detail, but that doesn’t mean it’s not a high-quality testimonial. You have to toe the tightrope when it comes to detail, finding an appropriate balance between too much and too little. Your goal is to include enough to make the story tangible for your target customer, but not so much that it alienates them when you write a testimonial.

Use specific questions to guide your testimonials

Most customer testimonial examples you see online may look like someone sat down for a few minutes, hammered out a quick statement, and then went back to work, but the best ones often begin with questions posed by the company.

For example, you can ask questions like the following when you write a testimonial:

• What was the biggest challenge you faced before we provided our solution (please include at least three important details)?
• What aspects of our solution do you feel made the biggest difference?
• Was there anything particularly impactful about the service we provided? Please include at least two examples.

Get a name and photo

A name and a picture add personality to the testimonial. They make the words relatable, trustworthy — more human. Even if the person doesn’t want to share their picture, you can ask if you can include their company logo instead.

Also, if they would rather not share their full name, you can include an initial and their last name, just their first name, and title, or simply their full title.