Asking your customers to talk about the benefits of working with you is a valuable resource for creating believable and credible advertisements for your business and one that many small businesses don't take advantage of. Yet it's one of the easiest and most effective ways to create more effective ads.

The best way to get sales-worthy copy for your advertisements is to interview your customers or clients, letting them know that your intention is to produce an advertisement (with their approval of course).

Make sure you record or video the interview.
 
Here are 7 questions you might ask your customers in order to get the most compelling customer testimonial story possible:

The 7 Questions

1. What was your single biggest result or benefit from using our product, purchasing our services, or doing business with us?
2. What is your background? What do you do for a living? Have you been in the industry for a long time? Do you have a family?
3. What was your life or business like before you discovered our product or service?
4. How did you discover us? Were you skeptical at first? How long did you know about us before you called?
5. What was the immediate result of using our product or service for the first time?
6. What were some of the secondary benefits you discovered later from our product or service?
7. Do you know of other people who have benefitted from using our product or service as well? 

If you write the ad in roughly the same order as these questions unfold, you’ll be well on your way to a compelling testimonial-type ad. As well, write the ad from the point of view of the reader, who is always asking "So What? What's in it for me?" If you answer that question in your ads, the response will be strong.

Try to spend about half an hour interviewing your customer. This way, you will get complete information that will increase the credibility of your advertisement. Remember to repurpose! You can use the testimonial as written copy, as an audio recording and as a video testimonial.