Why You Need Testimonials
Do you want to significantly increase the traffic to and the sales from your website? You can by using no-cost, easy to obtain, highly effective testimonials. It’s possible, whether you sell directly off your site or indirectly by providing quality information for those researching their purchases to be made offline.
If you’re a professional who uses your website as a credibility tool to tell people about yourself and/or the services and/or products you provide, then you can enhance your business success by placing testimonials on your website.
If you are an Internet Marketer or Retailer, you can even use testimonials within your banner ads to increase traffic to your website where you want people to find your products and/or services and then maybe buy them sooner, because people really do believe more about what about people say about you, your company and your products more than what they believe what you say about them.
The best news is that you can start using Testimonials Today and at NO COST!!!
You can make your website stand out and even get a total stranger, who could even be in another country, to conclude that you are credible and to buy your products and/or services, without having ever communicated directly with a single soul. The most successful (and of course, profitable!) websites that do this—and do it very well—use testimonials from their existing customers, clients and fellow professionals.
Powerful testimonials are going to be ones that specifically address the question: What’s in it for me?
What is a Testimonials
A testimonial is a positive statement, that contains information on how you, your product or service in going to be beneficial to others. Testimonials is where you will often hear, read or see “unpaid referrals and recommendations.” These testimonials are made by people who have appeared willingly because they got their desired results and often even more. They really believe strongly in the product that they have bought or maybe received as a free trial gift.
Benefits of Testimonials
Using testimonials has many benefits and it amazes me how little attention most companies pay to them. Many companies that have been in business for many years have less than a handful of testimonials and the ones they do have are weak and corny. It’s not that they don’t get referral business; it’s just that they aren’t proactively collecting and utilising testimonials to create greater influence in their sales advertising and presentations. Testimonials establish credibility and credibility is the respect you earn when the results you’ve achieved are clearly and publicly communicated. Credibility can be based upon facts you’ve presented that measure past results for your clients or it can be a perception of the customers or clients based on their personal experience with you or your company.
Often in the initial contact with a client, you are seen as the Salesperson and often not trusted, testimonials help you start to break down the barriers and can be the start of building a trusting business relationship. The faster you can build trust and gain credibility, the faster your prospective clients are going to believe and listen to what you are saying. The most important benefit of testimonials, is that they can establish your credibility fast.
Testimonials give credibility to every area of your company, product, employees, website and presentation that potential clients and customers rate you on. If the client has not heard of you or met you before they are going to be asking themselves questions about you and your product. Who is this person? Can I really trust what they are saying? Are they reliable? Do they offer a guarantee? So with testimonials you are looking to establish concrete credibility, you need to offer enough testimonials to create confidence.
Another great benefit of testimonials is “Third-Party” validation, if a friend introduces you to a new product, that is a third-party recommendation – you are not being “sold to” by the salesperson, in fact the referee has done all the work for you, all you have to do is deliver the product or service. So “Third-Party” recommendations are highly effective and you should use them as often as possible.
Testimonials can initiate additional sales, they can also make you strive for a higher standard in your next product or service. They can also give you an insight into what it is that your customers are looking for in a new or additional product. If you ask for their honest evaluation, they may tell you where your product fell short or how it could be improved, giving you great ideas and market research for a new or improved version.
Another benefit is to include testimonials in your offline and online media advertising and articles, when discussing your business, product or service with the media journalist, presenting them with testimonials increases their confidence in writing a better article about you and it can also encourage readers to take more notice of you and what you are offering.
One of the best things about testimonials are they cost little or no money. Your clients
are already know you and talk with you. Capturing testimonials is a way to increase the content and quality of your communications with them. Putting many testimonials on your website demonstrates that you offer superior customer service and validates your product’s excellence. Communicating with your client base probably already is a part of your business
processes, however doing it intentionally to collect positive feedback may not be. I am strongly suggesting and recommending that you include the practice of collecting testimonials to your marketing system as a matter of urgency.
Collecting testimonials is yet another opportunity for customer contact. The more you contact your customer base, the more likely you are to uncover additional needs and sales opportunities. A wonderful side effect of more frequent contact is a direct positive impact on
client loyalty. When you deliver timely and useful information to your clients, they remember and recommend you to their friends, family and colleagues.
How to Get Testimonials
People have a natural tendency to reciprocate. If you give them a gift or invite them to a show, then they feel compelled to give you a gift in return or invite you to another show in the future because they have the “I owe you” feeling. If you have delivered great value with your product or service, then your customers will probably want to reciprocate. They want to help you with testimonials and even want to contribute to a common good and help those investigating a similar purchase. If you commit to quality and customer service, then your satisfied clients will be happily volunteering to help you because they are reciprocating.
It is a good idea to constantly collect testimonials, that way you can select from a wide variety to fit almost any marketing campaign, targeting a specific group of clients. Take the best ones and get them up on your web site as soon as possible and with the rest either put them aside for later use or even better set up a new page on your site for all of the testimonials you receive, that way prospective customers see you have a lot of clients who have been happy with your service or product in the past, which gives you that third-party credibility again.
One way and probably the most common way to get testimonials is to wait for the happy client to write you a letter or an email these days and thank you or your company for the great product or service that you have provided to them. A problem with this method is you probably are not going to receive that many and they are likely to be all very similar. You should always use and encourage these letters, however this approach is not an effective method of collecting great testimonials.
Many of the best testimonials occur almost daily, these are the positive things your clients say without giving any thought to it, on the telephone or in your store, but it goes without being recognised because nobody writes it down and saves it. The Big Hint here is to learn to listen intently (listening in my opinion is the most important put of communication) and recognise when you are being GIVEN a GREAT testimonial.
Regardless of your business, whether it is online, whether you work for yourself or for someone else, begin to train yourself now to get into the habit of “Spotting the Testimonials.” Even when you are introduced before speaking, often people will say some great things about you or your business.
TAKE ACTION POINT – Here is where I want to get you in the habit of listening for and collecting Testimonials. Write yourself a note now, that says something like “Today I am going to watch out and LISTEN for testimonials” place this note on your desk, or in your diary or as an appointment reminder in your calendar on your computer, but make it a priority to begin to learn the habit. I have been told by a qualified behavioural therapist, that it takes just one full cycle to create a new habit, and to maintain it takes three full cycles. (a full cycle is equal to approximately 3 weeks). So by the end of nine weeks this should, if practiced regularly be a habit that is coming naturally to you. Of course, you still need to continue, that way it will become a part of your long term memory and you will begin to do it without even thinking about it.
Now lets remember we are promoting our own business, so it is our responsibility to collect testimonials, so ASK and you need to make it easy for your clients to give you that testimonial. If you ask and then leave it with them, the chances are you are still going to be waiting for that testimonial six months later. Your clients are busy people too, so we need to ask them direct questions or give them some type of incentive.
The Questions to Ask
Some of the questions I recommend you ask are as follows (you can ask in person, via email or by telephone, where possible take notes, but more importantly LISTEN intently.)
Question #1 – “Sue, do you mind if I ask you quickly, how has your experience been with our product?” - This is an open ended qualitative question, you are not actually asking them for positive comments, but you are leaving it open for them honest with you about their experience.
Question #2 – “Sue, you could have purchased a similar book from another author, is there any reason why you selected this particular book?” Now it could be any reason they selected your book, let them tell you in there own words. It may have been the title, or the colourful cover, it may have been the table of contents, or it may have been the testimonials.
Question #3 – “Sue, is there anything that you would like to see included or improved upon?” This is the what I like to call the “Back Pedal Question” This is where you are saying “I am not perfect, so if you can see any area that needs improving, please tell me” Your product may be great, but the process of ordering it from your web site, may need to be made a little easier, again it could be anything, let them give you their honest feed back. Inviting constructive criticism is a great way for self improvement and market research. Customer feedback is vital to success, remember to validate and act on your clients concerns, after all you asked for it because you care. Build trust and shown sincere interest and concern and you will be rewarded with loyal, repeat clients.
Question #4 – “Sue, since you have purchased and used our product, can you tell me what it is you like best about it?” “What result did you achieve after using the product?” or “What benefits did you discover?” You have eased into these questions, but this is where they tell you all the good things about your product, company or service.
Question #5 – ” Sue, who would you recommend our product to and why?” This is where you should do your best to get a referral within your testimonial, you may even consider offering an ethical bribe, like an added bonus if they give you names, addresses, telephone numbers, email addresses or whatever it is you require to contact the referred prospects. This may also be a general referral like “I recommend that all businesses looking for quality business cards with unique designs in Australia, see Printing Solutions as the owner obviously has many years of experience and has an ability to understand what it is that you want and need.” or for a parent who bought a book on nursing new born babies, they might say something like “I really recommend this book for all new parents, it really helped explain the stresses and thoughts that we are having is similar for all new parents.”