How to use your first customer testimonials to grow your business

In the early days of building a company, you don’t have brand recognition, partner logos, or years of customer success stories — yet. What you do have is a handful of early customers who took a chance on you. If you can get them to share their experiences, they can convince other people that your product is worth exploring. 

Testimonials are a signal to prospective customers that your product delivers on its promises. They’re proof. Evidence. And they can be far more compelling than a flashy website and well-written copy. When you use them strategically, your first five testimonials can help you grow to your next fifty paying customers (and more).

Here’s how to collect meaningful testimonials — and how to make sure you get the most use out of them. 

When you're still in the early stages, everything about your product is hypothetical. You believe in the idea. You’ve built something that solves a problem. Maybe you’ve found a small group of early adopters who were willing to test it and provide you with feedback. But the market hasn’t validated it yet, and that lack of “proof” is where some prospects get stuck. 

Testimonials are your real-world proof, and they can have a huge impact on buyers. “If a buyer sees that your product works for other people, it builds trust,” says Gerhard Jacobs, customer content marketer at Mercury, “They think ‘This person like me believes in this product and has validated it.’” This is true no matter what type of business you’re in — SaaS, e-Commerce, services, and others.

Small business testimonials also give you a credibility boost. Before you’ve built authority or established a well-known brand, testimonials give potential buyers confidence in what you’re selling. 

A good number of early testimonials to target is five. Try to get testimonials that are as varied as possible, like customers using different features of your product or who bought different products. You can get a lot of momentum with five early testimonials (and then continue to build your testimonial library).

The biggest mistake founders make is centering the testimonial on their company or product. “You’re not the hero of the story,” says Jacobs. “People came to you because they had a challenge and you’re one of the leading solutions.”

Keeping the customer front and center, here’s how to ask for testimonials for your business.

1. Identify who to ask

You want to find customers who can speak to specifics about your product, rather than in vague generalities. You’ll want them to articulate real outcomes so that the testimonial speaks to your potential customers.

If you’re a SaaS company, usage data makes power users easy to spot. For other companies, you can look for customers who buy repeatedly, send referrals, or consistently engage with your company (like talking about your products on social media).

Once you’ve identified the right people, start thinking about how their stories would attract additional customers. When you put customer stories into public view, they should inspire the next wave of customers to move forward — whether that’s sparking curiosity, creating FOMO, or helping additional buyers move past their initial hesitation.

2. Reach out to the customer 

The last thing you want is for your testimonial request to feel transactional. It should be “value-based,” as Jacobs puts it. “They’re already paying you,” he says. So when asking for something additional, “You have to respect their time.”

When you reach out, consider including:

• An acknowledgment of something specific that the customer has accomplished
• Why their perspective would be meaningful to others
• Emphasis that it’s a low-lift (“A 10-15 minute chat” or “Just a few sentences”)

When you position the testimonial as a chance to highlight the customer’s success, the conversation becomes collaborative, like you’re celebrating their wins along with them.

3. Make your request specific 

Good testimonials don’t come from asking, “Can you write a quote?” They come from telling a story. You can guide that story with some thoughtful questions:

• Start with “day one”: What problem were they trying to solve? What wasn’t working before?
• Ask why they decided to try your product or service
• Dig into a recent milestone or initiative where your product supported the outcome

You can also lean into anything the customer has talked about your product online. For example, if you saw the customer mention your product on LinkedIn or in a Reddit forum, start there. Ask them to expand on what they already shared.

Additionally, always get explicit permission before publishing a testimonial, and ensure it accurately reflects the customer’s real experience. And disclose any material relationships that exists or if the customer received discounts or incentives for providing a testimonial.

Once you get testimonials for your business, the next step is making them easy to find. You’ve got to know how testimonials help your business at different phases of the customer journey, so potential buyers are seeing the right testimonials at the right time.

You can use varying formats, such as quotes, case studies, and video clips. Consider embedding testimonials in the following ways:

• Website: Homepage, pricing page, or product pages
• Emails: Onboarding flows or nurture sequences
• Sales or demo decks: Tailored to the target customer, industry, or use case
• Social: Snippets in carousels, video clips, or founder posts
• Launch platforms: Product Hunt or AppSumo

Your potential buyers should be able to find validation specific to their use case. When you’re starting with five testimonials, you want to target the most common use cases or the most popular products or features. Over time, you’ll expand your testimonials so you can add the most relevant testimonials to the best “spots” in your content and company assets.

Your next step is putting the testimonials to work. In addition to where you’ll put your testimonials, you want to think about how the testimonials will draw in new customers.

Share in public 

The most obvious growth tactic is that public testimonials validate your product. Potential buyers feel like they are missing out.

But consider also that people want to learn from their peers. The more you elevate a use-case testimonial, the more curious other people will be to learn more. This works especially well if the testimonial comes from a well-known person or company, when the testimonial is shared in a community or creative circle, or in niche markets. 

Host events or roundtables

Some customers aren’t participating in a formal case study, but they are interested in sharing their experiences in other ways. You can bring customers together for a roundtable, virtual Q&A, or “how we use this product” sessions.

Jacobs points out that these events can turn into additional written content (with the appropriate media release consent forms). “You can write an article, publish something on a website like Medium, or even publish an opinion or thought piece,” he says. Just because it isn’t a “formal” testimonial doesn’t mean that events can’t serve the goal of providing social proof to prospective customers.

Create a “Wall of Love” or social proof feed

Collecting testimonials shouldn’t be a “one and done” project. A living, expanding feed of customer love shows momentum. It shows potential buyers that your product is continuously delivering value, not just producing the occasional win.

A Wall of Love on your website can be displayed as a revolving stream of logos, a page of featured snippets from customers, or screenshots of shout-outs you’ve collected from social media. It’s also easy to repurpose content from a Wall of Love across your marketing channels.

One of the biggest mistakes companies make is treating testimonials as single-use assets. You can do a lot more than put a customer quote on a product page or sales deck. “If all you’re doing is creating one piece, you’re wasting your time and your customers’ time,” says Jacobs. Instead, you should treat testimonials like a collaboration between you and your best customers, and give them the attention they deserve.

The first five testimonials are only the beginning. By collecting testimonials thoughtfully, sharing them widely, and repurposing them continuously, they become assets that help you grow your customer base.