Testimonials. What Others Are Saying

Right To Your Face

It’s a fact of life, what others say about you has infinitely more impact than what you say about yourself.

It’s important to take the positive comments of past customers and use them in the all your sales material. People want to believe what you say, but they are skeptical. Reading or hearing what others say about you or your product will help them feel like they can have a satisfactory experience with you or your company as well.

Testimonials are one of the most powerful things you can use to give your marketing message that extra bit of credibility that will convince your audience that you are the only choice. In this section I’m going to tell you about a powerful way to use the principal of “OPP” (other peoples praise) for you.

It’s been said that a picture is worth a thousand words. I’ve also told you that long copy outsells short copy almost 100% of the time. So if we make a small logical argument here we could say that combining a picture with proven copy can do wonders for your response.

The most memorable example in my mind is that of a past client in a service business who took a letter that had been working very well for years and put a picture of his entire team on the front page. This allowed the recipients of the letter to see that there was a face, in fact a whole company of faces behind his incredible offer of a free service. Now, all he did was add a picture. But then we put in an extra page full of client testimonials with a headline something like this:

“Here’s What Other Fine Folks Like You Have To Say About XYZ’s Cleaning,” then we filled that page front and back with as many testimonials as we could get. One or both of these ideas may make a tremendous difference in your promotions.

Now here’s where it all comes together. Let’s say you write a letter to qualified prospects, from say — a purchased list. This list identifies the top characteristics of your ideal prospect so you know you’ve got a good target. You send out a letter that offers a contest to win a something that you sell, either a product or a service FREE. You could create a contest based on your own set of rules, but here’s some ideas.

• The entrants need to send you a letter detailing what they like or dislike about your particular service or product when they’ve dealt with another company. What their experience prior to doing business with you.
• You could enclose a survey that was designed to address specific questions that will allow you to better market to that target audience.
• You could set up a free recorded information line and have them call and respond via voice mail so they don’t even need to write or mail something to you.
• You could even simple enclose a BRE (which is a postage paid card or envelope) on this It could simply say, yes I have an interest in _____, please enter me in your drawing.
• Also write that no telemarketer will call you and all winners will be notified by first class mail.

Now from all the respondents you pick a winner. Unless you’ve got a lot of cash in your marketing budget, you’ll need to pick a winner in your geographic location for the next part to make economic sense. You notify that winner and mail them out a packet that explains the deal.

You go to the house of the winner and take lots of pictures, before and after, pictures with them in front of their house, you send a press release to the local media to tell them about the blessed event and then you get ready for phase two.

Phase two comes by sending out letter #2 in the sequence to all the people who didn’t respond to letter #1. But on the front page you have a big headline and pictures of you and the winners of the contest. Then you add a page with some of the other photographs in with it and a bunch of testimonials from other clients as well.

This should create a lot of attention and will definitely give your offer credibility. Now phase three kicks in. You hopefully will have gotten the newspaper to write up a story on this, by this time if not then pay to have a small article published and then make copies of it and enclose it in your third letter with a headline that makes the reader think, Gosh, I’m the only one missing out on this, I don’t want to be left out, I’d be an idiot not to call these guys.

With this combination you will have a powerful way to use comments and pictures of those who have already used your services to compel those who haven’t yet, to give you a try.

Testimonial Do’s and Don’ts

1. Don’t use the first name and last initial only. Anybody could make that up and it won’t hold credibility
2. Do reprint letters that are sent to you as is, provided they are glowing testimonials.
3. Do use as many as you can get, you never know which one will convince the skeptical prospect.
4. Put your most powerful testimonials up front where they are seen first.

Here Are Some Sample Questions You Can Use To generate Testimonials From Your Clients

If you were to describe your feelings about the product/service provided for you by_____ what would you say about the quality/ work we did for you recently?

If you were to describe your feelings about the service you received from _____ what would you say to a friend?

If you were to tell a friend about _____ what one or two good things would you say?

If you were to describe your first feelings when you saw your _____ what would you say those impressions were?

Imagine a time in your future when a trusted friend or coworker asks you who to call for ________. And if you were to look back on today and remember those good feelings you had after doing business with us, what words or feelings would you say to them?

I hope that gives you a jump-start! You can see some examples of testimonials on my “What Others Say About Me” page