Audio Testimonial Definition, Benefits, and Use Cases

What Is Audio Testimonial?

An audio testimonial is an audio clip in which your happy customer tells about their positive experience. 

By definition, testimonials feature people who are satisfied with the service or product they received and are willing to endorse the company.

Testimonials are effective, as they are a form of social proof = a phenomenon that makes people follow the pack and do what other people do.

An example of how social proof works in marketing and sales: your potential customer comes across your company. Maybe someone they know recommended your business, in which case they are likely to try collaboration with you.

In case you are a completely new name to the person, you must do something to awaken their interest and trust. Otherwise, they will just move on with their search.

One way to do that is to showcase testimonials from previous happy clients. When potential customer sees that other people are happy with your work, they will be more willing to try your services as well.

Customer testimonials and user-generated content are cost-effective ways to swoon potential customers.

You have to spend barely any money and time on them after you have established a functional routine and process for collecting them.

Let’s see what unique benefits there are about an audio testimonial.

Benefits of Audio Testimonials

Audio testimonials have special benefits compared to other types of customer testimonials. 

When leaving a text review, people might be self-conscious about whether they write correctly. People are also generally quite lazy when it comes to writing and can start overthinking it easily.

With written testimonials, you run the risk that people will not complete the task, or give very short and generic responses.

Video testimonials, on the other hand, can be scary for people. You have to record yourself and give permission to use your face as marketing material for a company. I must admit, that I hate recording myself, and I can’t think of anything that would convince me to leave a video review.

Audio testimonials are something in between.

Benefits of Audio Testimonials

1. More personal than text reviews, as they include the person’s voice and tone.
2. Eliminate the trouble of writing grammatically correct language. 
3. Don’t require the customer to show their face, thus lowering the threshold of leaving a testimonial.
4. Compared to text reviews, they are hard to fake.
5. Listening to audio makes people spend a longer time on a website compared to reading (or skimming through) a snippet of text.
6. While people listen to the testimonials, their eyes are free to look at other content on your key pages, making e.g. copy and CTAs more noticeable and effective.

Benefit	Audio	Video	Text
Social proof	✅	✅	✅
Visual	❌	✅	❌ / ✅
Personal	✅	✅	❌ / ✅
Low threshold	✅	❌	✅
Hard to fake	✅	✅	❌
Emotionally effective	✅	✅	❌
Increases time on page	✅	✅	❌ / ✅
Lets people focus on your page (copy, CTAs)	✅	❌	❌

Characteristics of A Great Audio Testimonial

How do you make a great audio testimonial that will truly affect your conversion rate, get you more sales, and boost your brand’s credibility?

Here are key features to look out for.

Credible

Credible and authentic testimonials come straight from the heart. It needs to be a pleasant task for your customer to give a testimonial. 

If you know that the customer experience was not the best for some reason, don’t ask for a testimonial, but offer to fix the problem and listen carefully to the feedback.

Most importantly, you should never ever ask for fake testimonials or buy them! It will shine through and you will lose the trust you have previously gained.

To add credibility, the customer should reveal something about their persona, like a name, or at least why they decided to choose the company.

Specific 

Part of what makes an audio testimonial credible is that it is specific. It points out details about the customer’s journey, and even addresses a specific issue. Generic testimonials are not as effective, as they are easier to fake.

Solve this issue by asking customers to answer a specific question, like “How did our company help you overcome your challenge?” or “What would you say about the quality of our work?”

Concise 

People are busy and impatient. They won’t stop for a long time to listen to your client testimonials. Around 30-60 seconds is the optimal length for an audio testimonial.

Depending on how you will use them, you can even crop and edit the audio testimonials into shorter snippets.

Quality

No one wants to listen to echoing, quiet, noisy, or just plainly bad quality audio. Your client testimonial needs to be clear and intelligible without too much background noise.

Instruct your customers to record the audio clip in a quiet place, preferably indoors so that there is no wind, traffic, or other noises around them.

Collecting Audio Testimonials

Collecting audio testimonials doesn’t have to be complicated. Here are some examples of how you can get them.

1. Interview Customers

You could interview your customers after a successful experience, especially if the relationship with the customer has been longer or more intimate due to a project or personal issue.

However, this might feel a bit awkward. Imagine the situation: you have a recorder on your hand and you ask the customer to give a testimonial. The customer awkwardly tries to come up with something to say while you are standing right across them.

Might work for some, but for others this is overwhelming.

Interviewing customers on the phone might be a less awkward option. If you opt for this tactic, keep your local call recording laws in mind.

2. Voice Message or Voicemail

Multiple platforms offer the possibility to leave voice messages. I do that almost daily with WhatsApp and Snapchat, among others.

You could send an automated message to your clients on WhatsApp (or any messaging platform that you use and that has this feature) asking for a voice message testimonial.

Remember to formulate the request well. Here’s an example:

“Hi Matt!

It was a pleasure doing business with you. Hopefully you feel the same way!

I would greatly appreciate your feedback in an audio form. Please feel free to record an audio message and send it to me.

Have a great day!”

Another often used method is to collect voicemail on the phone, for example through Google Voice.

3. Embedded Recorder

There are tools that let you embed an audio recorder on a website. 

When you install one on your own website, you can direct customers there with a link. Send the link via email or text message, and see the audio recordings pouring in!

Another way is to include the recorder on a confirmation page after a customer has completed a purchase in an online store. Ask for their impressions on the experience.

4. Software

Another way to collect audio testimonials is to implement testimonial software that includes an audio feature.

This is the most effective choice for your overall customer testimonial strategy, as the software helps you with much more than just recording messages.

It allows you to request, collect, store, transfer, and showcase testimonials.

Trustmary is a nice tool that helps you collect video reviews, but with the right prompts you can use it to collect audio testimonials.

Using Audio Testimonials

How can you use the collected audio testimonial? Here are some use cases.

1. Radio Advertisements

The first thing that comes to mind when thinking about how to use audio testimonials: radio! Of course!

Featuring short and concise endorsements by your real clients makes a different kind of impression than a jingle or advertisement created by a marketing agency.

They are also quite cost effective compared to professionally produced advertisements.

Try to get one of those playing on your local radio station (don’t forget to add other relevant info, like where you are located or how you can be contacted).

Look into our guide on testimonial advertising to avoid the most common mistakes.

2. In-Store Announcements and Advertisements

You know those announcements that you hear in a shopping mall?

What if you could include a testimonial from your product or store in one of them?

That is possible when you use audio testimonials.

Prefer a very short audio testimonial, about 1-2 sentences. If they are short enough, you can even compile multiple testimonials into one announcement.

3. Social Media

You might think that audio testimonials are not visual enough to be featured in your social media channels.

However, who says you can’t pair the audio with images or video clips?

You can use stock photos, photos of your product or team, or make a beautiful quote image out of the customer’s story. That adds another dimension to the testimonial.

4. Website

If you have a separate testimonials page on your website, audio testimonials can be included in the list as well as any other types of testimonials.

Feature a profile picture and name of the customer (if possible) and feature the audio file on an audio testimonial list.

If you feel that audio file is not enough, make the audio clip into Youtube video and embed that to your website.

You can even use software and include the audio testimonials in a widget.

Real Life Audio Testimonial Examples

Bust a Move

This moving company utilizes audio testimonials paired with an image. This way they get the visual appeal to the clip as well!

Hairmax

Hairmax collects customer audio testimonials from their satisfied customers via phone calls.

They are uploaded to Youtube and from there embedded to the separate audio testimonials page.

Natural Balance Medical Center

Natural Balance Medical Center has a different solution to audio testimonials.

They have connected the customers’ stories and a professional narrator, making the testimonial a bit more salesy and adding more information about their services.

Best Testimonials Are Authentic

It is no surprise that audio testimonials are especially popular in fields like health care, where people must talk about very personal, intimate, and even somewhat embarrassing problems to endorse a brand.

Audio testimonials are a low threshold option for those who do not want to write text testimonials (as we are quite critical towards our own writing) or record video testimonials (as one would have to reveal their face in a company’s marketing materials).

An audio testimonial is personal, credible and difficult to fake, which makes them highly effective compared to traditional written testimonials.

If you haven’t tried them out yet, it’s time to start!

Don’t forget to check out Trustmary’s free testimonial and video testimonial tool.

Further Reading

• The Ultimate Guide for Collecting and Using Testimonials
• The Definitive Guide to Creating and Utilizing Video Testimonials
• Automatic and Authentic Testimonials Generator

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