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Developing Marketing Street Cred Part 8: The Right Tools for the Job

Guest post by: Traci Hayner Vanover

Article Overview: It is a delicate balancing act – trying to elicit insightful user testimonials without leading your customers. Fortunately, there are some strategies you can employ to help simplify the process, without compromising the validity of the feedback you receive.

Developing Marketing Street Cred Part 8: The Right Tools for the Job

Tools for Gathering Useful Testimonials

It is a delicate balancing act – trying to elicit insightful user testimonials without leading your customers. Fortunately, there are some strategies you can employ to help simplify the process, without compromising the validity of the feedback you receive.

When sending out your product to review, consider forwarding a simple survey or form to complete, with specific questions pertaining to areas of the product in which you want to garner feedback. Bear in mind that some of your reviewers may not have ever done this before. You can avoid receiving short (and often unbelievable statements by using well-structured questions on your survey. A few examples:

• What specific challenges or obstacles did this problem address? How did it impact you with respect to these challenges?
• Who could benefit most from this type of product, and why?

Don’t create a form that will take hours to complete. You have particular objectives in mind when you’re seeking a testimonial; structuring your reply form or survey with well-positioned questions should help you get at the information you need.

Using Testimonials to Support Your Bullet Points

Using bullet points in your marketing materials can be very effective in outlining the contents of your product. When you’re providing information, it’s a good idea to break it down in a way where prospects or customers can identify specific issues that they want to learn more about.

By using bullet points in your marketing, it presents an opportunity for you to utilize your testimonials in a way that provides proof of what your marketing message is trying to get across. Placing a well-written, concise testimonial after a brief list of bullet points can help provide the “nudge” a customer may need in order to make their buying decision.

A Brief Note on Using Forums

Forums and discussion groups provide you with niche-specific market research, and can be an excellent source for identifying quality testimonials. In browsing a discussion forum, your mission is twofold – identifying potential customers to target to review your products; and, learn about any competitive or complimentary products which are currently available.

Want More Testimonials? Ask for Them!

When prospects become customers and buy your products, you have a unique opportunity to collect valuable market information. There are two easy ways to obtain this – from a feedback form, and from a referral form.

Feedback Form

Ask every customer to share his or her experience with your product. You can increase your response rate by offering a discount or free offer for those that take the time to respond. This will not only provide you with ways in which to better serve your market, it will also give you the opportunity to strengthen your rapport with your customers. Knowing that you value and appreciate their feedback goes a long way toward customer goodwill.

Referral Form

Many shopping cart programs offer the “Tell a Friend About this Product” option. This is a very powerful tool, as it provides an immediate testimonial or endorsement on the part of the sender. If you have this feature on your cart, leverage it to make the most use of it. Be sure that the link provided will present the prospect with detailed information, supported by well-written testimonials. Lastly, don’t forget to monitor the statistics of these forwarded messages, so that you can identify which products or pages are receiving the most response from your marketing efforts. Use this information to improve or refine your marketing efforts in other areas.

Keeping the Material Fresh

If you’ve heard it once, you’ve heard it a thousand times – content is king. But what about those testimonials? Should you be updating them as well? You bet you should!

The well-known “rule of seven” in advertising states that prospects must be presented with your message on the average of seven times before making a purchase. You don’t know how often a prospect is visiting your website – a website that doesn’t show any signs of life may be perceived as a red flag by some consumers. Keep your site updated, and rotate your testimonials to keep your page looking fresh.

Update Old Testimonials – have you recently made an update to your product? Follow up with original reviewers, and give them the opportunity to check out the new updates. If you have an ezine, you may want to consider a “Customer Spotlight,” and update your readers on their ongoing progress.

Introduce New Testimonials – you may want to consider adding a new testimonial every 1-2 months, or as updates become available.

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Article Tags: building credibility, customer rapport, gaining customers, testimonials



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