Testimonials Will Boost Your Sales - If You Can Get 'EmTestimonials Will Boost Your Sales - If You Can Get 'Em Copyright 2002 lessworkmoremoney.com By Armand Melanson It's a proven fact that testimonials radically improve sales. That's why every single infomercial & marketing website is peppered with them. They build the essential CREDIBILITY that is required for the buy response. Are all these testimonials real? Definitely not. And that's because testimonials are not easy to get. Think about it. You buy a product from someone. At that point, the seller has already made their money from you. Even if what they deliver is far beyond your expectations, you are not likely to go out of your way to let them know about it. You have your own agenda & your own set of goals to achieve. Who's got time to go around slapping everyone on the back for a job well done? So the notion of "unsolicited testimonials" is a rare one indeed. In fact, 95% of unsolicited testimonials are highly solicited. And we'd all do well to copy the method the big boys use to get their testimonials. Let's take, for example, Marlon Sanders. This guy is one of the e-marketing giants. I bought one of his products & he put me on his autoresponder newsletter. I also signed up to resell his products. > > Dear Arm, yadayadayada with a bunch of questions & then this: > > 11. May I have permission to quote your comments in > > marketing and promotion? I will NOT quote your address > > or phone. Only name, city and state. > > yes[ ] no[ ] Did you get that? This is how the big players get their testimonials... Here are some techniques you can use to get testimonials: ===> Always offer an incentive for participating in a product survey. If you don't offer something in return, most people won't even think about doing your survey. The better the incentive, the more motivated your prospect will be. Marlon offered a free version of a new product. I bet that product will get test marketed to all the people who took the survey & then they'll be asked to take another survey. With that data, they'll tweak the product to correct the problems encountered in the test group. The they'll really launch to the public. Brilliant! But not everybody has a family of related products to offer. So here's what I recommend: ===> Use free eBooks as an incentive to participate. Free eBooks are all over the net & some of them are really valuable. If you are selling a digital product, embed the survey offer in the product. If selling hardgoods, provide written instructions in the packaging on what the incentive is & how to access the survey. The offer can be like so: "To get X benefit for free, go to Y URL & take our product survey". Make it simple & easy to do. As well, whenever you make a sale, you should be putting the buyer on an autoresponder series. 2 or 3 weeks into the series, have the AR fire off the same survey offer. There are several ways to do the survey. Marlon chose email. I prefer a webform. Here's how the webform works: Every webhost offers FORM/CGI mail in order to have forms send email to a designated email box. Set up your survey form using your HTML editor & have the form submit the data to whatever email box you want to receive the survey data. If you want to see a sample, go to You want to capture some basic feedback about your product & more importantly, give the user a chance to tell you what they like about the product. FORM/CGI Mail offer some cool features. The most important ones are: ===> a redirect to a thank you page This is where you put the link for downloading the eBook incentive. ===> a required field option Use this to make sure that your key fields have data. Many people will try to zip through the form without entering real data just so they When the form gets submitted, here's what you would get: Below is the result of your feedback form. It was submitted by (----@msn.com) on Monday, August 6, 2001 at 16:42:30 A1: excellent Q2: comments A2: This is the absolute best ebook I have ever purchased. I am very impressed with all the additional information in this ebook. A must own for anyone serious about an online business! Regards, Q3: other products A3: better Q4: sections rating A4: dropshipping business plan and e-product guide Q5: GUI A5: excellent Q6: SE A6: I found lessworkmoremoney.com thru a newsletter. Q7: recommendations A7: none If you are not comfortable with setting up a web form, then use email. Setup an autoresponder which will kick off an automatic email with a link to the download when people submit. Here is a sample form: To complete the survey, follow these instructions: 1) Click the "REPLY" button in your email program. 2) Type your responses between the brackets. 3) When finished, click the "SEND" button. Once we receive your comments, the free gift will be on it's way! To answer, type an X between the two brackets like this [X] 1.What is your overall rating of this product on a scale from 1 to 5 ( 5 being the best)? [ ]1 - poor and so on... Whether via email or webform, make sure you automate the process so that it all happens without human intervention. You don't have time to be manually emailing people & with autoresponder software, you don't need to. You may be asking yourself how to sell any products in the 1st place if you need testimonials to sell your product & you need to sell your product to get testimonials (makes me dizzy just thinking about it)? You make 'em up of course ==> NOT!!! You setup your website to sell, but you test market your product initially. Offer it at a reduced price or even for free. Offer powerful incentives to get people to try the product. If you have an opt-in email list ( YOU HAVE TO HAVE ONE) & it is pulling in some subscribers, offer them (via email) an incentive for participating in a product survey. If your survey feedback tells you that your product stinks, then improve it & re-start the cycle. This should happen throughout the life of the product. Once you have a few testimonials under your belt, pop them onto your website & set your price to what you really want. But keep prompting for testimonials as long as you sell the product. ==>MARKETING TIP This article courtesy of http://theasseenontvsite.com. You may freely reprint this article on your website or in your newsletter provided this courtesy notice and the author name and URL remain intact. |
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