October 13, 2021

Sabir x Bernadette Butler Part 1

TL; DR

Customer testimonials are an essential part of any online customer-centric business. The problem is that most testimonials are faked.

Business owners often go to sites like Fiverr to get cheap testimonials from actors following a script. They also invest in celeb testimonials, which follow a similar process but cost much more money.

If you want your customers to respect you and buy your products/services, you need genuine testimonials, and that’s where Bernadette Butler comes in.

She is an expert in gathering genuine customer testimonials and this guide contains some of her most helpful tips and tricks, including the following:

Make Sure It’s Relatable: Testimonials work because your customers can relate to the reviewer. If they have problems with dry hair and the reviewer is praising a product that helped them with their own dry hair, it adds extra weight to the statement. Your testimonials need to speak to your target demographic in a very specific way, as generic statements like, “Great customer service” and “I love this product!” just won’t suffice.
Be Authentic: As noted above, it’s important to stay honest and authentic. Customers are not stupid. They know when they are being lied to. Unless you can write a professional script and hire a skilled actor, no one will believe that testimonial. Butler’s process is all about authenticity, letting the reviewers decide what they say and how they say it, and giving the businesses the decision to post it or not.
Listen to Bad Reviews: Don’t dismiss bad reviews. Don’t aggressively slate the reviewer and insist that they don’t know what they talk about. Listen to them, heed what they say, and use their critical comments to improve your product or your services. You can learn more from a bad review than you can from a good one.
Go With Videos: Video testimonials have more of an impact than written testimonials. They can also be used to advertise your business on YouTube and Facebook. Customers pay more attention to videos and tend to overlook written content, so if you want to attract new customers, make it possible for old ones to create video reviews.
Use Video SEO: SEO is not just for blog posts and guides. You should incorporate it into your video posts, as well. Some of the things you need to think about include transcripts, appealing thumbnails, titles/descriptions, and original content. You should also embed the video into a page that has relevant content around it.
Replicate the Retail Experience: Land-based stores have much higher conversion rates than e-commerce stores, so the goal of an online business is to replicate that retail experience. Testimonials can help you with this, assuming the role of a shop assistant and other shoppers and providing answers to common questions, along with social proof.

For more information about customer reviews and testimonials, read the full guide below. And make sure you read to the end, where Bernadette Butler gives her most valuable insight, a tip that could generate over $100,000 in value for your business.

The internet is an ever-evolving machine, with new technologies, trends, and world events shaping it on an almost daily basis.

A couple of decades ago, everything was text-based, search engines were in their infancy, and the average internet user was little more than a curious participant usurping their landline, paying $0.10 a minute, and pretending they were Jonny Lee Miller or Angelina Jolie in the film Hackers.

Fast forward half a decade, and it was all about images and concise data. A couple of years after the first iPhone launched and the mobile revolution began in earnest, it was about apps, interactivity, and social media.

In the modern age, video has taken over.

We have an entire generation of adults who have no idea what a dial-up modem is, have never experienced life before the internet, and want everything visual and fast. They’re joined by older generations that want their content in an easily digestible form.

Video testimonials, video reviews, and cinematic marketing campaigns are a key part of the modern e-commerce industry.

If you have an ecommerce business or are trying to build a personal brand, you need to embrace brand storytelling. If not, you risk being left behind and could miss a great opportunity.

I sat down with Bernadette Butler, the co-founder and CEO of StoryTap.com, to discuss the importance of using video in content marketing and retail marketing.