6 Types of Customer Testimonials to Use on Instagram (with Examples)

In recent years, Instagram has become one of the most powerful social media platforms for brands of all sizes and shapes. Not only can brands spread the word about their products, but they can also increase ecommerce sales which means better revenue growth.

According to one report, more and more people discover new products on Instagram: 36% of the U.S. Instagrammers surveyed say that they love to shop, 70% of users turn to Instagram for product discovery, and 130 million Instagram accounts tap on product tags to learn more about featured products.

However, modern customers are savvy: 97% of consumers read customer reviews and seek peer recommendations on Instagram before making purchase decisions. 

For brands, this means that showing off your product from all angles isn’t enough to convince Instagram visitors to buy from you. It’s important to offer a great customer experience, so more and more brands realize the power of customer testimonials on Instagram. 

Case in point: An innovative skincare brand, Hanacure, has a separate testimonial page on Instagram. Sharing before & after photos of real customers, the community has grown to 62.5k followers.

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This case proves that customers turn to Instagram to find trust signals, so brands of all sizes and niches need to publish customer testimonials to influence consumer behaviour and convince them to choose your company over your competitors. 

Peer recommendations come in various forms, but we’re going to share six types of customer testimonials for Instagram and the best examples from brands that use them. 

6 Types of Customer Testimonials to Use on Instagram

1. Customer Feedback

In the era of sponsored posts and paid ads, people realize the importance of genuine customer feedback, so they share customer experiences to inform other potential consumers who seek out opinions before making the purchase. 

Instagram allows customers to express their thoughts individually and within a community without being interrupted, so people often share their opinions and beliefs on the platform.

Big brands often get comments from satisfied and dissatisfied customers. The more followers you have, the more customers will share their thoughts about your product to help you make it better.

If your customers are dissatisfied, you can solve their requests and give them a reason to buy from you in the future. But if your customers are satisfied, you can share their thoughts on your profile to ease the minds of worried consumers who seek social proof.

However, 96% of people talking about your company do not follow you on social media and do not tag your company’s profile. Thus, it’s important to use a social media monitoring tool like Crowdfire App to track all brand mentions and collect customer feedback with ease. 

Here’s a good example of customer feedback from Jane Williamson:

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Once you have found what your customers say about your company, you can connect with the person and ask for permission to use their feedback as a testimonial on your Instagram profile. 

2. User-Generated Content

Common people are content creators. Just imagine: people upload around 1.8 billion photos a day. For brands, this means your customers can produce user-generated content (UGC) as customer testimonials. Moreover, consumers find user-generated content 9.8x more impactful than branded content. 

If you want to start selling on Instagram, you need to ensure your potential customers that your product is worth giving a try. Thus, it’s a good idea to show off user-generated content: When people use your products and take photos of them, this means they are satisfied with the quality of your product. As a result, it gives other people a reason to pay close attention to your company. 

Many companies create branded hashtags to collect user-generated content on Instagram. Pepe Jeans, for example, shares user-generated content via Instagram Stories and then adds them to Instagram Stories Highlights so that visitors and followers can find these visuals with ease:

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The brand also adds some photos of their customers to the main feed, using a branded hashtag #MyPepeJeans and an author tag:

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When you collect and share UGC, not only do you provide social proof, but you also save time and effort on content creation. All in all, user-generated content is an important type of customer testimonials that all brands should utilize.

3. Success Stories

When buying a product or service, people want to find something that can solve their problems, so they are looking for solutions, not the products themselves. Thus, it’s important to show how your product has helped other customers who have the same problems as your target audience, and sharing success stories is a great way to do it.

Client success stories show real customers who use your product to meet their needs and wants, and this type of customer testimonials inspires other consumers to rely on your company. And if you sell services rather than products, sharing success stories is a must.

Just look at Tailwindapp. The company constantly shares success stories of its customers with a special hashtag #membermonday. The company publishes a photo of the featured customer, includes a quote, and inserts a clickable link in the bio so that interested followers can read more about the story, as in the example below:

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If you have customers who want to share their stories, that’s great. But if you need to encourage your customers, offer them a branded freebie or a discount in exchange for sharing their success stories. 

4. Customer Reviews

Online reviews have a great impact on customer purchase decisions. Today, people pay close attention to what other customers say about your company, so you need to post customer reviews on Instagram if you want to help your buyers make the purchase decision faster.

And if you run a local business, sharing positive customer reviews is even more important. According to BrightLocal, 82% of customers read online reviews for local businesses, with 52% of people aged between 18 and 54 saying they ‘always’ read reviews. 

Check out how Ohana restaurant uses customer reviews on Instagram:

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If you want to share customer reviews as a regular post, ask a customer for a quote and turn it into a simple graphic, like how ASOS did it:

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Once you’ve found customer reviews on the web, you can take screenshots and share these visuals via Instagram Stories to avoid clogging the main feed up or Instagram posts to ensure it won’t get buried in the feed.

5. Influencer Testimonials

If your customers tell you what they think about your product, that’s great. However, only 1 in 26 customers will tell a business about customer experience unless you’re a big brand with an army of loyal followers.

But if you’re not a big company, brand endorsements can help to get customer testimonials that will set an example for other customers to share their thoughts about your product. Moreover, spreading the word about a product or company is one of the most common Instagram monetization ideas influencers use.

Here’s how Carolina Herrara works with niche influencers to promote their products and encourage other people to speak about their brand:

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The good news: There’s no need to work with expensive influencers to get customer testimonials; you can turn to nano- or micro-influencers to ask them for product endorsements.

6. Video Testimonials

If you want to hook the attention of your target audience, think about using video testimonials on your Instagram profile as this format is more engaging, human, and relatable. What is more, people love video content. Instagram has an 80% increase in time spent watching videos on the platform, so it’s no doubt that the popularity of Instagram video content is on its rise.

Although video testimonials add extra value, it can be daunting for customers to make a video. Thus, it’s important to choose rewards that will encourage consumers to share their videos with your company. For example, a chance to be featured on your profile and win a prize can motivate customers to send their video testimonials. If you use IGTV for business as Beach Body does it, you can upload long-form videos. Here’s an example of this strategy in action:

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There are many types of video content on Instagram: posts, Instagram Stories, IGTV, and livestream. All of them have different specifics and lengths, so it’s you who decides which type of video content your audience will love.

The Bottom Line

The days when Instagram was a simple photo-sharing app are far behind us. Today, customers use this platform for product discovery and they want to understand what other consumers think about your company or product. Thus, brands need to share customer testimonials to improve the customer journey and satisfy customers’ needs. Luckily, there are various types of customer testimonials that fit well any Instagram marketing strategy. So, don’t miss your chance to provide social proof and bring your business to the next level.

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This is a guest post by Val Razo. Val Razo is a freelance SMM consultant with 5+ years of experience who helps small and medium businesses. Val claims that Instagram has great sales potential, so she recommends both big and small brands to use this platform for business growth. Follow her on Twitter to stay tuned for more.

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