If you want to grow your business as much as possible, you need to master the art of marketing and persuasion. If you don’t, you could be leaving a lot of money on the table. One key element of marketing is the testimonial, or review. As a tried and tested method, it can help you boost your conversion rate to get more sales and signups. Here’s what you should know:

Place it Prominently

When you have a testimonial, you literally have gold in your hands. Do not waste it. Instead, use it early and often. In fact, one of the first things that your customers should see when they hit your page is a testimonial. It gives you trust right off the bat. This is because people are usually social animals and look to others’ actions to determine their own actions.

Leverage this social proof by using testimonials every chance you get. However, the reason you should put it at the top (or bottom) is that a testimonial follows the ‘primacy and recency’ effect. Essentially, when someone is consuming information, they are more likely to remember the first and last thing they observed. So you want one of the last things they see to be a happy customer raving about your product.

Be sure to align your website design with your review planning, as you want to be sure that the reviews don’t stick out like a sore thumb among the other parts of your site.

Admit a Negative and They Will Credit You a Positive

People tend to trust a set of reviews containing some negative responses more than they trust a list of rave reviews. This might seem like a risk. After all, why would you want to say something bad about your product or let that on your site? But the answer is simple. It builds trust to admit a fault of yours. If you are willing to do that, you must be telling the truth after all.

But if you do decide just to highlight one really glowing review, be sure that it’s at least detailed. Here’s an example of a success story shared by a personal injury lawyer on their site: “One of our litigation attorneys won a hard-fought arbitration in March against insurance giant Allstate, walking away with a $51,000 award for his client, after Allstate’s paltry offer of $5,200…”. There are numbers and there are mentions of when and why it happened. If you’re going to have a customer talk well about your business, just be sure that it’s going to talk extensively about why they sought your product and service, and their full experience with it, details and all.

Lets You Align with Celebrity

If you have someone famous, or at least famous within their own little community, always have them give you a testimonial. You can use this attention and validation as a way to convince people that you are just as important as this celebrity. Mainly, you borrow their credibility which is always a plus.

In today’s world trust is more scarce than ever. You need your customers to trust you; otherwise you won’t stand out from all the other marketers who say their product is the best. So use the element of social proof and testimonials so your business can have the best chance to succeed, now and into the future.