As you’ll probably know, customer reviews and testimonials are similar but with important differences: reviews being published by third parties such as Google, whereas testimonials are typically collated by your staff for marketing purposes.

So why should you focus your energies on collecting both?

Well, the answer is that for long-term business growth you need your reviews and testimonials to be working in partnership, with reviews sending you a steady flow of warm leads, while your testimonials help to convert them into sales.

Why reviews are important

The more positive Google reviews you receive, the more leads you should get.

Hungry? Burst pipe? Moving house? It’s unlikely that you’d choose a restaurant, a plumber or estate agent without first checking their reviews online. In fact, these days, most people now look at recent reviews before making a purchase. And this applies to insurance brokers as well.

Testimonials improve your conversion rates

In marketing, you need to tell prospects what you want them to know (your proposition), then why they should believe you, before then encouraging them to get in touch.

The support for ‘why they should believe you’ is usually supplied in the form of positive client testimonials.

So, to sum up: reviews drive potential clients to your website, from which point testimonials then take over, encouraging potential new clients to pick up the phone. Testimonials lead to more positive reviews - and reviews lead to more testimonials.