OR Anywhere else for that matter...
One of the best things you can include regularly in your newsletter is testimonials from satisfied customers. It shows your other newsletter recipients that you are getting business and they are satisfied with what your products and services. And logically your products and services will do the same for them.
However not all testimonials are created equal. Some are vague and wishy washy. Some don’t really tell you anything. Others are highly believable, create credibility and show that your products or services are delivering results.
If you get enough high quality testimonials you can create 95% of a sales letter out of them. Bestselling author and star of ‘The Secret,’ Joe Vitale did exactly this. He created a sales letter in less than a day and sold $25,000 worth of product in less than 24 hours. Obviously you can’t be doing that with any old testimonials, you need good ones.
So what do the good Testimonials have that bad ones don’t?
The good testimonials that are highly persuasive have 4 things in common:
- Relevant to your target audience. If your target audience is dentists, make sure the testimonials about your product are from dentists or from people they perceive as authority figures. Make sure your testimonials have ‘authentic dentist talk’ in them. You want the readers of your testimonials to think they are the same as the person giving the testimonial or that they should listen to them.
- Believability. Scepticism and trust are at an all time low these days so be sure that the results in your testimonial seem believable in the eyes of your prospects. They lose all of their selling power if your audience doesn’t believe what is said. Add details to make the person giving the testimonial seem real. Full name, location, those sorts of things and before and after photos if they are dramatic.
- One Benefit per Testimonial. This keeps testimonials clear and easy to understand. Too many benefits in a single testimonial dilutes the testimonial’s persuasiveness.
- Specifics. There should be nothing in your testimonials like “your product saved me about 25% off of...” Sounds phoney. “Your product saved me 23%...” It makes your client’s saving sounds more real and believable.
Make the effort to collect good testimonials and make sure you put them in your newsletter as well as in all your other marketing materials.
