If you’re a real estate investor who’s constantly on the hunt for motivated sellers, you know how satisfying it feels when you’re finally able to close a sale with one of them. There’s a lot of work that goes into prospecting, connecting, evaluating, and closing deals. At the end of the day, you want your efforts to pay off, and you want people to know about it.
That’s why creating engaging and effective real estate testimonials is paramount to success. Without testimonials, you’ll be left to compete with all the other real estate investors at the same level. If you take the time to create high-quality testimonials that you can share online, you won’t need to worry about the competition.
Although both written and video testimonials are important, there’s really only one type that provides unparalleled value, and that’s video.
If a prospect is browsing your wholesaling website and comes across a video testimonial, they can both see and hear the satisfaction you brought into someone’s life. That’s invaluable, and there’s no reason you shouldn’t be capitalizing on video as a medium for your marketing strategy.
We’re going to show you what an effective real estate testimonial looks like, and how you can start creating them yourself.
If you need more help, feel free to contact us.
Step 1: Have a General Testimonial Script Outlined
Before you start recording testimonials with every person you successfully closed with, it’s good to have a general outline or script written out. This will help keep the flow of conversation moving smoothly and it will make the testimonial seem more natural.
The questions you have for a testimonial should be good questions. Good questions receive good answers. Asking a client “Did you enjoy working with us?” is not going to get you a good answer. Asking “What was the best part of working with us?” is much better. It is more specific than the first example and doesn’t allow for a simple yes-or-no answer.
The best thing to do when coming up with questions is to keep writing them. If there’s a question that could be better, leave it be or elaborate on it. The questions will get better as you go down the line. Then you can pick and choose the best questions. Those are the questions that will get you solid answers that could have a future client convert.
In the meantime, here are a few questions to get you started:
- What made you choose to work with us?
- Why did you choose to work with us?
- What was the highlight of your experience?
- What was the best thing we did for you?
- What was the most effective thing we did to buy/sell your home?
Step 2: Take Advantage of Closing Day
Closing day is one of the best times to get an engaging testimonial. Your clients should be excited; they’ve either bought or sold their home. These are huge milestones for you and your clients, who are probably on cloud 9. Clients in a very good mood are more likely to agree to do a testimonial and sing praises about your services.
Closing day is also an excellent time to get B-roll footage (video footage that’s played over audio of someone talking) and photos. You may want to take pictures of the house and maybe even a photo with you and your client outside the house. Film B-roll footage as you walk through the house using a high-quality video camera or possibly with your smartphone and a tripod. When you go back to edit the testimonial, you can play that walkthrough video over the audio of your client speaking.
House flippers should also film a walkthrough of the house before starting renovations for a quality before-and-after video.
Step 3: Have Other Content Options Available
Some clients are going to be camera-shy and may not want to be featured on your website. Sometimes technical issues happen in the filming and/or editing process. Technology isn’t perfect, which is why it is always a good idea to have other testimonial options available.
When technology fails or a client isn’t comfortable being filmed, send them your script or outline with the questions intended to ask over email and ask for a written response, and if the client is comfortable to do so, a photo of them. Edit the responses for misspelled words and add them to your testimonial page. Don’t worry too much about improper grammar — this actually makes the testimonial believable. (However, if poor grammar makes it too difficult to read or understand, then by all means, clean it up.) Written testimonials are not the most ideal, but they do have a place when things go haywire.
Even in cases where the filming and editing go well without any issues, it may be a good idea to go back and transcribe the testimonial. You may find some powerful quotes you can highlight on your website’s testimonial page or on other promotional material.
If you’re dealing with several clients at once, send out a survey with a nice incentive (a chance to win a gift card in a drawing) to make them follow through with a survey. Google Forms and SurveyMonkey are easy tools you can use to create and send surveys and review answers.
Step 4: Make Testimonials Believable
If you have to rely on written content, you’ll want to make it as believable as possible. This does not mean it is acceptable to write a fake testimonial. People are smarter than you may give them credit for and are pretty good at telling apart a fake testimonial from a real one.
That said, you’ll want to use a client’s full name — first name and last name — whenever possible. If you can, include a brief bio, the city and state name of a client’s residence, and their photograph.
Testimonials should also be specific and include information that can identify you: your name, your location, what you did and how you did it, etc. It’s difficult to force that information, but you may be able to request that they include your name and general location somewhere in one of the questions.
Step 5: Motivate Your Clients to Create Testimonials
There are many ways to encourage your clients to review your service and create testimonials. Consider entering them in a drawing, giving a housewarming gift with a note attached, or taking them out to dinner.
The ball’s in your court, so get moving and motivating!
Step 6: Upload Testimonials to Your Website
Whether you’re working with video or simply with written testimonials and a couple of photos, your website should have a testimonials page that is easy for prospective clients to find and link to the testimonials page on your website’s main navigation menu or part of a drop-down list on that menu.
You’ll want to update this page whenever you’ve completed editing a testimonial. If you have photos, be sure to resize them so they don’t take up the entire page and slow down your website as a whole.
Do not directly upload videos to your site — videos are typically large files that can slow down your website’s performance. Save bandwidth on your website by uploading your video to a video hosting and sharing platform, like YouTube or Vimeo, and embed the video to your website. We recommend YouTube because more people tend to use it and are more familiar with it, and it makes embedding videos a breeze.
Once you’ve updated the page, your testimonial is good to go!
Need More Testimonial Tips?
If you need more ideas or assistance for creating engaging real estate testimonials, drop us a line or fill out our free digital audit form today.
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