In a recent article I shared the 5 things effective home staging testimonials need to get maximum marketing value from them.

Today, I’d like to share various ways you can use your home staging testimonials.

Basically, you’re trying to make prospective customers feel like they’re making a good decision choosing you. An important way to do that is by showing how you’ve helped others, just like them.

In other words, your testimonials are providing “social proof,” rather like those star ratings you see online for hotels and restaurants.

I don’t know about you, but I never book a hotel without checking the comments on TripAdvisor. I like to see what rooms really look like when the photos aren’t retouched to make the beach look like it’s just outside your window, and what real people have to say about the service they received.

So once you have the solid home staging testimonials I described in the last story, where and how can you use them?

5 Ways to Use Home Staging Testimonials

1. On your home staging website, blog or Staging Diva Directory of Home Stagers listing.

You can use the home staging testimonial as a testimonial (with quotation marks around it and the person who said it) and you can also use the example it provides as a success story in a proof home staging works article or blog post.

For example by saying, “For one recent project, the client’s home was on the market for a whole year without a single offer. Once staged by Six Elements Home Staging, it sold the following week with multiple offers.”

2. Home staging testimonials as “pull quotes” in a company brochure or article, or online too.

While you might include the testimonial in the main part of your text, it won’t necessarily get noticed by someone just skimming through your content. “Pull quotes” draw special attention to the home staging testimonial and can often pull a casual skimmer into reading the rest of your text.

You see pull quotes used a lot in newspaper and magazine articles where they know their readers are flipping pages quickly.

Pull quotes draw attention because they’re in larger type and graphically set away from the rest of the text, like I did here with what CNNMoney said about me in an article.

3. As part of an article or press release about your home staging business.

Your article or home staging press release will have more credibility if all the words aren’t coming from you. For example, knowing what CNNMoney said about me, don’t you see my home staging abilities in a new light?

When Better Homes and Gardens interviewed me for an article on home staging, they also asked to speak with some of my clients. That way they had independent 3rd parties saying how well home staging worked for them in the sale of their home, not just my version of events.

You can do the same when you’re writing your own articles and press releases. Include some of the testimonials from your clients, but only the ones where you can use their full names. Otherwise they won’t seem legitimate.

4. On a Rave Reviews page on your home staging website, or even as a rotating “widget” in your sidebar (see the example on the right of this page).

Once you have a ton of testimonials, you can even build a whole website for them as I did with StagingDivaReviews.com. It took me years to get there but we all start one testimonial at a time!

5. Scatter home staging testimonials throughout various pages of your blog or website.

Website visitors don’t necessarily land on your home page and work their way through your home staging website in a logical order. So you want to make sure you’re including a mix of home staging and redesign testimonials scattered across various pages.

This way, no matter where your visitor is on your home staging website, they are reminded of the great work you do. This helps them start to believe you can do the same for them.

And isn’t that what home staging testimonials are all about?

Testimonials as Confidence Booster

A key side-benefit of gathering and using testimonials from your clients is that they will also help boost your own confidence. We all have down moments when the negative voices in our heads make us feel like our business is hopeless.

Full disclosure, despite being a home stager since 2002, I still have those negative thoughts too. There’s nothing like reading rave reviews from your clients to pull you out of your slump and snap you back into a more positive and productive mindset!

In my next article on the topic of home staging testimonials, I’ll tackle how to get (and use the ones you have) in social media.

Please share how you’ve used home staging testimonials in your own marketing efforts.

What are your best methods for gathering them from past clients and real estate agents? Have you run into any challenges I can address in an upcoming article? Do you sometimes read your rave reviews when you’re discouraged?