10 Ways to Collect Customer Testimonials With Instagram Marketing

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The idea of using trust psychology in marketing isn’t new. Since modern customers are tired of sponsored posts and 47% of people use ad blockers, companies do their best to promote their products and services with positive word-of-mouth marketing.

Research conducted by BigCommerce claims that 92% of people seek out customer reviews before making a purchase decision, 88% trust online reviews as much as personal recommendations, and 72% of consumers say positive reviews and testimonials increase brand trust.

Simply put, customer testimonials matter. People spend a considerable amount of time on social media platforms. What is more, they are happy to express their thoughts–both positive and negative–on your product, so it’s no wonder that more and more brands use social media to collect customer testimonials.

If you know how to use Facebook for obtaining customer testimonials, that’s great. But if you want to make the most out of Instagram, you need to understand why you should collect customer testimonials on this platform as well as know brilliant ways to drive customer reviews with Instagram marketing.

Why Collect Customer Testimonials with Instagram Marketing?

Today, Instagram is not just the 2nd most popular social media platform in the world after Facebook, but it also has the most engaged user base. It’s no wonder that Instagram has evolved from a photo-sharing app into a powerful marketing tool in recent years.

With high sales potential, Instagram offers a variety of ways for businesses to achieve their business goals. And if you want to get more customer testimonials, there are three main reasons to use Instagram for it:

  • Your customers must be active on Instagram: The Instagram community has over 1 billion active users who access the platform from different countries around the globe. No matter who your target audience is, it’s more likely your potential customers use Instagram these days.
  • Users are ready to interact with brands: As of March 2020, 90% of Instagrammers follow at least one brand on the platform and 200 million users visit the profile of business daily. Since people are ready to interact with companies on the platform, the chances are that you can establish a connection with them and get customer testimonials from your clients.
  • The platform has a variety of business-specific features: With 25 million business profiles, it’s no secret that Instagram helps businesses of all sizes and niches achieve their companies’ goals. What is more, Instagram has business-specific features like clickable IG Story links and the question sticker that can help you gather customer testimonials with ease.

The bottom line? Instagram can be a great source of customer testimonials if you know how to collect them the right way. To inspire your marketing campaign, let’s take a look at ten brilliant ways to collect customer testimonials on Instagram.

1. Tell about Your Customer Feedback Campaign in the Bio Section

With a short attention span of 8 seconds, modern people have neither time nor desire to dig into your company’s posts unless they are loyal fans of your brand.

When it comes to Instagram marketing, an Instagram bio serves a business card that allows companies to tell about their values and products. Why? It’s the first thing your Instagrammers see when they visit your profile.

Your Instagram bio is limited to 150 characters and one clickable link. Still, it must be enough to write about your customer feedback campaign and take interested users to your landing page where they can share their customer reviews.

The best thing is that customer testimonials come in various forms–customer reviews, case studies, quotes, user-generated content, etc. When done right, you can kill two birds with one stone and leverage user-generated content to publish on your Instagram profile which also serves as social proof.

Here’s this strategy in action from Lulus:

With the combination of a call to action and clickable link, it doesn’t take much time or effort to understand how to upload user-generated content for a chance to win a $250 gift card. Moreover, the company uses a brand hashtag to collect customer testimonials on the platform with ease.

Make it Easy to Share Customer Feedback

When it takes much time for people to submit their reviews, most customers lose interest in sharing their thoughts on your product or service. Moreover, just a few consumers want to leave their reviews unless you ask them for feedback. Why? All people want to feel heard and valued, so it’s vital for them to make sure you care about their feedback.

To collect more customer testimonials with Instagram, you need to make the process of submitting reviews easier. For example, you can create an eye-catching interactive image that encourages followers to share their thoughts and have fun, just like M&M’s did it in the example below:

Since social media users are interested in two-way communication with brands, not only can you analyze their responses to get a better understanding of your target audience’s preferences, but you can also find new creative product ideas that can help you create a new product.

If you have a customer satisfaction survey, you can add a link to it in your bio section and tell about it in your posts. When you write a call to action in the caption, you invite your followers to fill it out. And if you offer something valuable (discount, brand freebie, gift certificate, etc.) in exchange for leaving their feedback, the chances are that more customers will be interested in taking a survey.

3. Publish Customer Reviews on Your Profile

There are many reasons why customers are reluctant to write customer reviews: Some of them believe that your company doesn’t bother about their feedback and others may need an example from your clients to start writing a review.

Luckily, the solution is simple: publish customer reviews on your profile. Not only does it help to look more trustworthy, but you also set an example for other customers who are ready to leave their reviews.

It’s no secret that UGC photos are one of the most common customer testimonial types people share on social media. If you have fan-made content from your consumers, you can upload these images to your profile and therefore encourage other clients to take photos of themselves for you.

Whether you run an ecommerce company, have a local business, or sell SaaS products, you may receive customer reviews from your happy clients. To get more customer testimonials from your Instagram following, repurpose these reviews into Instagram posts, just like in the example from Sellfy:

If you want to WOW your followers, you can create motion quote videos that draw the attention of your target audience. However, you can also publish photo reviews:

Obviously, the type of customer testimonials you publish on your Instagram depends on your marketing strategy a lot. However, all positive customer reviews influence consumer behavior and motivate other consumers to share their thoughts with you which means more testimonials.

4. Run an Instagram Giveaway

As a marketer, it’s more likely you know the power of Instagram giveaways. Since most people love the idea of getting free stuff for nothing, many users take part in giveaways and these contests generate higher engagement rates. A Tailwind App study has found that Instagram contests get 3.5x more likes and 64x more comments than average posts.

Want to know the best part? It’s you who decides the goal of your contest as everything depends on the participation requirements.

If you want to get more customer testimonials, you can add something like “fill out our customer satisfaction survey” or “send product reviews” as one of the participation requirements.

Example? One pet company created a short survey to understand what followers want to hear from them on social media and organized a giveaway that allowed all participants to get a chance to win a 6-month supply of their products:

And here’s how another company uses an Instagram giveaway to get more UGC photos and reviews from their customers:

Instagram giveaways are extremely popular among users. When done right, you make the most out of a social media contest and get customer testimonials.

If you want to save time and effort when organizing Instagram giveaways, use online contest software like Wishpond to create and run a giveaway and choose the winner with ease.

Need help with your next contest?

Book a free call to learn how our team of contest experts can help you create high converting social media contests today.

5. Set Up a Customer Referral Program

Word-of-mouth advertising is one of the most effective marketing techniques these days. Modern customers don’t trust brand ads, so they pay close attention to peer recommendations.

Having a referral program is a great way to motivate your customers to tell their friends and family about your product in exchange for brand rewards.

When your loyal clients spread the word about your company, you can also acquire more customers as people share their referral codes that help potential clients save money.

The best thing is that most people who share referral codes leave positive reviews as they need to encourage other customers to choose your product. As a result, you get customer testimonials.

6. Offer Bonuses in Exchange for Customer Testimonials

One of the best ways to motivate your Instagrammers to share customer testimonials is to motivate them with bonuses. Simply put, it’s a good idea to reward people who share their thoughts on your product.

It doesn’t matter what bonuses you want to offer, whether you want to send brand freebies, share digital downloads, or provide customers with free shipping. But if you don’t have a budget to reward all customers who share their reviews, you can offer a discount:

Or you can also feature them on your profile to make them feel valued:

If you want to understand how to tell your customers about these bonuses, you can either write about it in your captions or send informative emails with customer review samples to your email list.

However, when offering bonuses in exchange for customer testimonials, you shouldn’t tell them to leave positive reviews; you just need to learn more about their customer experience. After all, people trust authentic customer testimonials.

7. Make the Most Out of Instagram Stories Features

At first blush, it seems that using short-lived Instagram Stories isn’t the best idea to collect customer testimonials. With a lifespan of 24 hours, it can be a waste of time and effort as your customers can miss out on your customer feedback campaign.

However, it’s important to use Instagram Stories when collecting customer testimonials with Instagram marketing. First, over 500 million users create or watch Instagram Stories.

Next, ephemeral content creates a sense of urgency that encourages your target audience to watch this content type. Lastly, there are many Instagram Stories features that make it easier for your customers to submit their customer reviews.

Let’s take a look at how Starbucks uses the question sticker to understand what questions customers have.

To bring your business to the next level, you can use the question sticker to collect customer reviews or you can also add a clickable Instagram Story link that takes interested viewers to your customer satisfaction survey.

8. Highlight Customer Testimonials under the Bio Section

It’s no secret that customers seek social proof before making a purchase decision or even sharing their thoughts on your product.

You must know that publishing testimonials on Instagram helps to get more reviews from your customers. But if you want to get better results, you need to make it easier to find all testimonials in one place and Instagram Stories Highlights can help you a lot.

Although Instagram Stories disappear within 24 hours, you can save the best Stories to the Highlight album that appears below the bio section.

As a result, it’s easier for visitors to find all customer testimonials without scrolling your Instagram feed. Here’s how Clek highlights customer testimonials:

What makes this example so good? The company uses brand cover images and keeps album names short and sweet to help users read the whole name on the profile.

If you want to create unique Highlight covers that fit your brand identity, you can use a graphic design tool like Crello that allows non-designers to make stunning visuals in just a few clicks.

9. Team up with Niche Instagram Influencers

Most marketers (92%) find influencer marketing effective and many turn to Instagram when they want to team up with opinion leaders.

Instagram has become the most favorite social media platform influencers use for growing their community. The number of Instagram influencers is constantly growing and they come in all sizes and shapes. This means every business can find a niche influencer to team up.

If you want to collect customer testimonials, Instagram influencers can help you a lot. How? When you collaborate with Instagram influencers, you can ask them to review your products and include a call to action that encourages followers to share their thoughts, too. For example, you can get a similar post:

When influencers tell their community about your company, not only do you gain more Instagram followers, but you also get an opportunity to receive customer reviews from customers for two main reasons.

First, customers see an example of a customer review. Second, followers want to discuss their experience with other users, so they can tell their thoughts on your product in the comment section.

10. Spy on Your Customers’ Profiles

Not all your customers follow you on Instagram. In fact, 96% of people who discuss your company on social media don’t follow the brand’s profile. This means you can miss out on a significant number of customer testimonials unless you spy on your customers’ profiles.

When you use social media tools that allow you to track brand mentions, you can find customer reviews and repurpose them into customer testimonials to feature on your profile. Here’s how FrankandOak does it:


The Bottom Line

With a great number of active users, this platform is also a great source of customer testimonials. Since users are happy to interact with their favorite brands, it’s important to request testimonials from your Instagram followers.

Having customer testimonials helps to increase brand loyalty and trust and therefore convince more people to buy from you.

Here’s a quick recap of the ten brilliant ways you can use to collect customer testimonials!

  1. Tell about Your Customer Feedback Campaign in the Bio Section
  2. Make it Easy to Share Customer Feedback
  3. Publish Customer Reviews on Your Profile
  4. Run an Instagram Giveaway
  5. Set Up a Customer Referral Program
  6. Offer Bonuses in Exchange for Customer Testimonials
  7. Make the Most Out of Instagram Stories Features
  8. Highlight Customer Testimonials under the Bio Section
  9. Team up with Niche Instagram Influencers
  10. Spy on Your Customers’ Profiles

About the Author

Val Razo is a freelance SMM consultant with 5+ years of experience who helps small and medium businesses. Val claims that Instagram has great sales potential, so she recommends both big and small brands to use this platform for business growth. Follow her on Twitter to stay tuned for more.

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