Testimonials work because customer comments are more credible than your words. When you say something about your business, your words are viewed as claims. But when your customer says them, their words are viewed as truth.

When a customer says something nice about you, your business, or one of your employees, how you respond is critical. Customer testimonials come in many forms, including conversations, emails, and letters. Few testimonials are ready-to-use, however. Most can benefit from a little effort before you can put them to work.

Although you may receive testimonial letters that include permission to use the customer’s words and name, in most cases, you’re best off contacting the customer, verifying the quote, and asking permission to use their words and their name.

This is especially true if you are going to quote from a conversation or an email. Customers will appreciate your integrity. More importantly, verifying gives you a chance to clean up the customer’s grammar and also improve upon the customer’s original quote. For example, when verifying (or rewording) their comments, you might also ask: “Were there other aspects of buying from us that you might care to comment on?”

Simply showing an interest in the customer’s words is often enough to open the testimonial floodgates.

Here are five ways to get the most from your testimonials:

1. 3-ring binders. Letters and emails tend to get lost. One of the best ways to prevent this is to immediately place the original in transparent sleeves stores in a 3-ring binder.

2. Bulletin board. Hang copies on a bulletin board – or better – frame and display them behind glass in a prominent location in your place of business. Use a colored background to highlight the most recent letter you’ve received.

3. Computer file. Save excerpts from customer letters in a special computer file. Enter just the most relevant words along with the customer’s name and city. (Excerpting focuses on the most important parts of the letter.)

4. Copies and printouts. Copy customer letters and insert them in your press kits and customer presentation folders. Format your customer testimonial file and include printouts with proposals.

5. Newsletter and website. Include customer testimonials in your newsletters and on your website. When appropriate, place testimonials next to descriptions of specific products or services.

Whenever possible, include photographs with your testimonials. Many car dealers, for example, photograph customers taking delivery of their new car. Since this is generally a happy time for customers, displays of these photographs project a positive image.

Even better, create posters for display at the point of sale. Simply create a collage of customer comments and photographs professionally typeset and laid out.

Use testimonials as the basis for your firms’ advertising. Nothing beats ads written in your customer’s own words. The ads inevitably attract attention and communicate with credibility unavailable in any other way. Create a variety of ads reflecting the different marketing segments your business serves.

Thank your customers for their support and time. However, avoid paying customers. This could detract from the credibility of their words. Feel free, however, to show your appreciation with gift certificates or coupons worth savings or discounts.

To clearly understand why testimonials are so powerful, we must first look at the basic perceptions of our audience.

Here’s how “John Q. Customer” might describe his attitude:

“In addition to making me an enticing offer, you must prove to me that you are okay to do business with. Eliminate any fear that I have about doing business with you. The basis of my fear is doubt and skepticism…two essential components for survival in today’s tough business marketplace.

I come by my fears honestly and from experience. I have been conned before. I have been lied to before. The quality of products and services that I have purchased in the past have not always lived up to the claims made for them.

Hardly a day passes that the nation’s press doesn’t reveal some major breach of ethics by business and political leaders. Dishonesty and misrepresentation are commonplace. So, why, in the face of all this negative experience, should I believe your advertising claims?”

These are sobering conditions in which to operate. It’s easy to understand why customers temper their buying decision with caution. They don’t want to lose money and, more importantly, they don’t want to feel foolish. Eliminating this natural fear and skepticism is the job that testimonials do best. The reason is simple: If you say you are good, people ignore your self-serving back-patting. When others say you are good, it’s credible. This goes to the very heart of why testimonials are so powerful, they give us credibility and believability. When you deliver a good compelling offer that is credible and believable, your sales and profits will increase.

TYPES OF TESTIMONIALS

There are four different types of testimonials. They are:

Customer: By far, the strongest category of testimonials is the satisfied customer. In consumer, offers of 30% increase in business are not unusual, and business-to-business offers often double or triple results through the use of good customer testimonials.

Celebrities: Celebrities are not as believable as customers. They are not credible because they are paid. I may not like the celebrity, which could negatively affect my attitude towards your company or product. They generally increase awareness, but it may not be good awareness.

Experts: If you are selling artificial hearts, then a testimonial from Dr. Denton Cooley would probably boost business. Even though he might be paid, he is credible that it would probably work. Your expert must be an expert in a relevant field.

Expert Organizations: A trade association, a magazine in your field, a chamber of commerce, a newsletter, etc. Expert organizations carry a lot of weight because people believe that their opinion cannot be bought.

WHAT MAKES A GOOD CUSTOMER TESTIMONIAL?

To maximize the selling power of testimonials, you should keep a few tips in mind:

Tip#1

Be Specific: Testimonials phrased in specific terms pull more weight than more general statements. For example…

“I increased my companies profits by $78,350 last year using your advice!”

is a lot more effective than.

“I enjoy working with your company.”

Tip#2

Cite Complete Attributions:

“Mr. John Jones, President

SMITH MANUFACTURING

Chicago, IL

rather than

” J. Jones, Chicago”

The more complete the attribution, the more believable the testimonial.

Tip#3

Use Customer Terminology and Phrasing:

Resist any temptation to rephrase your customers’ words. You’ll generally lower the believability factor.

Tip#4

Use Photos of the Testimonial Writer: You will triple the believability and selling power if you print a photo along with the words. Photographs of the person using your product work best.

How To Collect Usable Testimonials

Collecting usable testimonials should be an organized and ongoing marketing function. First, read the incoming mail carefully and keep a file of customer comments. Follow-up on those with potential and put them in usable form. Second, analyze your customer list and develop a sub-list of your top 10% of customers by sales volume and frequency of ordering. Carefully craft a letter to this select list “Asking for their help.” Suggest what you are looking for in the way of comments, and then let them provide you with the raw material. The important lesson here: You can’t sit casually back and hope for testimonials to come your way. You have to go out and get them.

The reward, however, is always worth the effort. The time you spend nurturing your testimonial program will result in increased sales and profits, and improved image, more sales leads lower sales costs, shortened selling cycles, and improved cash flow.

Include links in your article that go back to your blog and the original post on the topic. Make the title of your blog the permanent link back to the post. Every article will then go back to a different aspect of your blog, and search engines will see that you touch on some different subjects.

Write articles that give product reviews. Provide readers with an unbiased product review and share your feelings and thoughts about the product. Be fair and highlight both the positive and negative points. Just because you think something’s negative, not everyone does. When your honesty comes through in the way your review is written, more people will feel comfortable clicking those links and buying the product.

Find a good article directory to use. There are several on the internet, and if you take the time to find one that will work best for you, it will prove to be quite valuable for your venture. You are likely going to need to create an account with that site.

Have a point and then get to it. Readers want you to do something with your article, whether it be solving problems, answering questions, or devising new solutions. Keep this in mind as you write your article to stay on track and give your audience what they deserve, which is a well-written article, helping them with a subject they’re interested in.

Consider paying others to do your article marketing once you’re off to a good start. This makes it possible to market in volume. Services like Amazon Mechanical Turk make it easy to commission thousands of high-quality articles and have them done within a matter of days. Just remember to pre-qualify your workers, or else, you’ll be drowned in spam.

To gather ideas for your article marketing efforts, review the articles that pop up in your directories’ “most viewed” category. How are they organized? What is their tone? How formal or informal is their language? An example is a powerful teaching tool, and the most-viewed articles in your chosen article directory are very successful examples to study.

The competition among article marketing can be fierce. Everyone who is marketing wants their article to get the most attention and outdo everyone that has already produced articles. Because of the large number of articles that are already out there, one has to make their article get noticed by the consumer somehow.

With the information you have learned in this article, you should feel a little more positive towards your article marketing endeavors. Keep in mind that the information of this article is only a portion of all there is to know to be successful with article marketing. Be on the lookout for more information and form a strategy based on what you find.

Use tracking cookies to see which pages your visitors go to on your website and suggest similar pages they haven’t looked at yet. I love to read an article and find a list of similar articles at the bottom. If that will take me to your affiliate reviews, you can make more money!

If you plan on using affiliate marketing to support your income, be sure to analyze your expectations. Affiliate marketing can earn a decent income, but it will not make you rich. If you devote part-time working hours to it, expect to make a couple of hundred dollars a month; if you work full-time at affiliate marketing, you could make around $30,000 to $40,000 a year.

A great affiliate marketing tip is to offer visitors something special if they purchase an affiliate product through your link. This is a great way to ensure that people buy through your link and not somewhere else. You can offer them something that might tie in with the product in some way.

Every affiliate marketer needs to understand that if you want to make money through affiliate marketing, you must choose a product your visitors will embrace. All the promotion in the world will do very little to sell a product that nobody wants. Take the time to find products your readers will enjoy.

Do not underestimate the power of the product review. A review has so many different benefits. First, you are giving your readers the low down on why they want to purchase this. You are also building more interest in the affiliate brand. You can submit your review to other sites as well with linkbacks and increase both your sales and your site rankings. It’s a strong tool so use it.

Find out which ads are generating business. You can do this by using software designed to help you find this information. If an ad isn’t working out, then switch it up and use something different. Constant tweaking with affiliate advertising is important to help generate as much money as possible.

You should feel a little more comfortable with the subject of affiliate marketing, now that you’ve read a bit. Make sure you apply all of the information you learned in this article, and don’t be afraid to reread, if necessary. The key is to be successful, so you need to do what you think will help you the most.

Any web consumer can tell you that shopping for products and services online can be frustrating and rewarding. On the one hand, the proliferation of web-based businesses makes it easy to find numerous options; however, that same number of available options can make shopping online a nightmare. How does the consumer decide which provider offers the best value for their dollar? While each customer is unique in how they make the final decision about who to buy from, adding third-party product review links to your site can give you the competitive edge in an overcrowded marketplace.

What are Product Reviews?

Consumer product reviews are independent opinions about the products that you sell. While anyone can put up a storefront website and write rave reviews about their products, independent product reviews provide an unbiased opinion about your merchandise that adds credibility to your site. Product reviews are comprised of product details, value measurements, personal editorials and frequently contain favorable comparisons to similar products. Investing in product reviews for your inventory will lead to establishing trust with the consumer, which, in turn, prompts return shoppers, word-of-mouth advertising, and a significant increase in business. Think of product reviews as another avenue of your marketing strategy.

Product Reviews Benefit Your Business

As a business owner, product reviews can increase your business in several ways:

• Inspire customer confidence and instill credibility for your venture

• Positively differentiate your site from other suppliers of similar product

• Provide advertising and links to your site from the Product Review site

• Increase customer satisfaction

Product Reviews Benefit Your Customers

Having product reviews performed on your merchandise produces positive results for both the business owner and the customer. Customers can fully inform themselves as to what they are purchasing, leading to fewer miscommunications and returns. In addition, many customers will appreciate the added confidence in the quality of the product and the reliability of the business. The continuing increase of web scams has made most web shoppers skeptical, and anything you can do to build their trust will increase their willingness to buy from you. Satisfied customers are the key to building a lasting, profitable online business.