1 Easy Way You Can Achieve Success with Your PR Agency

Nov 21, 2019

The one simple way to achieve success in your agency is to ask for testimonials from your clients. That may sound oversimplified but the way you ask is important to receiving evergreen testimonials.

The best clients I’ve had in my agency were leads through existing clients.

Either they see the work we’ve done with a current client and want similar results for themselves or they know one of our current clients and those clients give a referral.

We also get great results when we ask clients for testimonials which we use in various ways to help get new clients in the door.

We’ll use testimonials sprinkled throughout our website which shares the client’s experience working with us. We use them in case studies as well.

There is a distinction between a testimonial versus a case study.

The Definition of a Testimonial

A testimonial is like a quote from the client about their experience working with you.

To secure a testimonial is not as simple as saying, “Hey, what’s it like working with us?” and the client says, “They’re great and their team is great!” That doesn’t get the job done. You have to be more strategic about it.

Where to Use a Testimonial

You can use it in multiple places and keep them in your arsenal forever.

Use a great testimonial to serve as the foundation in your proposals and case studies. Also, sprinkle them throughout your website and other sales efforts you make.

You can even use them on your social media and position them in a way that you can put a quote card in a story or on your feed. Testimonials in social media marketing can really show anyone searching for you or checking you out that your clients have had great experiences working with you.

How and When to Ask For a Testimonial

You won’t get a well-rounded, goal purposed testimonial unless you ask for it. You have to be proactive with it.

Find the Right Moment to Ask

Maybe the right moment is after getting a great piece of press for them. It can be when the sentiment is high and really positive. Asking for a testimonial at the end of the 3-month mark lets them see some great results in a short amount of time.

Or maybe you just did an event for them or some kind of influencer engagement. The results were great and the clients are really pleased. That can give you the boost of confidence you need to ask for a testimonial when you know the client is feeling good about working with you.

Make it Easy For the Client

The key part of asking for a testimonial is making it super easy for the client so that they don't have to overthink it.

Write the testimony yourself and put in what you want them to say about their specific experience working with you. Then ask them to edit it to their voice, approve it and add anything if they want.

What to Ask In a Testimonial

You want to ask about something specific that focuses on a client's experience with you so that it's tailored to the results you got for them.

You ask for testimonials that center around you understanding their messaging and their objectives. Also, include how you used the media to further their brand goals with their specific messaging and how you were able to land press that shares that messaging.

The testimonial rounds out the client's objectives, your approach to landing their objectives, and the results you got for them.

You Can Ask About a Specific Strength in Your Agency

Every client's experience is going to be a little different. The great thing about this strategy when asking is that you can use each client’s unique situation to help speak to one aspect of your strengths as an agency.

Some specific examples you can put in your written suggestion when asking for a testimonial are:

You’re immediately responsive.
You have really great creative story ideas.
You’re excellent at converting placements quickly.
You come up with clever strategies that nobody else has thought of, not even their company.

Write about whatever you feel the client would speak specifically about their experience working with you.

Here’s a specific example we’ve used in our agency.

We had a client who left a large agency that got them no results and then they came to us. We offered them a more strategic personalized approach. Everyone on our team had more than a decade of experience whereas they felt the other agency had farmed out their services to junior people and the people who could’ve moved the needle in their business were not assigned to this client’s case.

With us, as a smaller agency, everyone had strategic input and the client had access to everyone on our team.

This client was able to speak specifically about that part of their experience with us in their testimonial. Since then, we’ve had clients that are looking to leave a large agency and who wanted to understand the experience coming to a smaller more boutique agency.

We use their testimonial to position our agency as having the resources, contacts, and expertise of a large agency. Except we had the added benefits of a great client customer-service experience, a more personalized strategic approach, and being a more nimble and responsive boutique agency.

Use Their Unique Experience

Think about the client’s unique experience they had working with you and what problem you solved for them. Use those testimonials to your advantage and sprinkle them everywhere.

The testimonial then serves as the foundation for creating a case study.

How to Write a Case study

The testimonial can support the case study and can be a foundation for positioning it because everybody's needs are different.

A case study is different than a testimonial. We position case studies in 3 parts which are:

What does the client come to you for?
What is their objective?
What results do they want and what goals do they have?

You want to know what your approach is to help a client secure a certain goal or objective.

It’s not a one-size-fits-all service. You come up with a strategy and the various tactics you’ll use to help further their objective or achieve the client’s goal.

Then you want to know what the results were. You want tangible metrics for a case study.

This is where you share metrics like specific ROI.

For example:

Increase in sales.
Increase in growth and followers.
The number of impressions you’ve secured from the media.
Show specific media mentions you’ve landed.
Show visual examples of how you changed their social media feed.

Part of the case study is wrapping it up talking about how the client feels about what work you did for them.

Feel Confident Asking

You can feel confident asking for a testimonial because you’ve earned it and you have the right to ask. You’ve seen the results you brought the client so you can feel confident in what you’ve accomplished.

The benefit of asking for a testimonial is that you’re taking all the work you’ve done for the client and you’re wrapping it up in a tidy little bow and showing them what you’ve done for them. Then you ask if they will sign off on it and they will because they don’t have to write it themselves and the work you did was so beneficial to their company.

If you want to achieve success in your business, be sure to use testimonials as an important part of your strategy to secure clients. Don’t be afraid to ask for them. Clients are more than willing to give you a great testimony especially if you’ve prewritten what you want it to say. Don’t wait around for them to think about sending you a testimony. You have to ask and you have to be specific about it.

Are you ready to start using this strategy?