Using Testimonials for Maximum Effect

by Early To Rise (03/13/2007)

Issue #1988

  • WEALTHY: When not to celebrate a company’s "good" news (Andrew Gordon)
  • HEALTHY: 2 ways to fight age-related cancers (Dr. Al Sears)
  • WISE: Will Rogers on word-of-mouth advertising

ALSO IN THIS ISSUE:

  • How to get your customers to sell your product (Michael Masterson)
  • Michael Masterson on the importance of a single Big Idea
  • It’s Fun to Know… about ETR’s "patron saint"
  • Add "cinema verite" to your vocabulary

== Highly Recommended ==

The ETR 2000th Issue Celebration!

Incredible Bargains on Our Most Popular Programs

In celebration of our monumental 2000th issue, we’re having a giant SALE.  These are our lowest prices ever, guaranteed, so there’s not better time for you to take advantage.

Whether you want to start your own profitable business, invest in real estate or simply become more productive and proficient at the things you’re already doing – there are programs to help you get there faster.

These bargains will move fast – and when we run out of product, we cannot guarantee you’ll ever get the chance to buy at these prices again.  

Stop by our 2000th Issue Celebration SALE now.

The Bullish Indicator That Never Was

By Andrew M. Gordon

If you don’t understand stock splits - possibly the most misunderstood event in the market - you could end up making misguided and costly investment decisions.

Let’s say Company X just did a 2-for-1 stock split, and Company Z did not. You know nothing else about these two companies. Which one would you invest in? Company X, yes? Everybody knows that a company which has just split its shares must be very optimistic about prices rising in the immediate future, right?

Wrong.

Splitting stock is a bookkeeping move - no more, no less. When a company doubles its number of shares, the price of each one is cut in half. If you own that stock, you’d own twice the number of shares, but the dollar amount would be exactly the same.

Stocks that split from 1988 to 2005 had performances nearly identical to those that didn’t, according to Zacks Investment Research. So the fact that only 37 companies in the S&P split their stock in 2006 (40 percent below the average since 1979) is a portent of absolutely nothing at all.

[Ed. Note: Andrew Gordon, ETR's financial expert, is the editor of our new investment service, INCOME. Each month, he uncovers income-generating stocks that promise safety (first and foremost), along with much higher-than-average profit potential.]

 "Get someone else to blow your horn and the sound will carry twice as far."

Will Rogers

Using Testimonials for Maximum Effect

By Michael Masterson

Anyone who’s been in marketing for more than a day understands the value of customer testimonials. Better than any other form of proof (logical argument, data, endorsements), they can prove particular claims that the marketer wants to make about his product.

But, like any marketing tool, the strength of a testimonial is greatly related to the effectiveness of its presentation. If you give your customers typical testimonials in a typical way, they will have very little effect, because they will neither attract attention nor deliver an emotional message. But if you can find a way to make the testimonial new - either with the language itself or with the presentation - the effect can be powerful.

When I teach young copywriters the power of proving their claims, I stress the importance of not using testimonials that "sound like" testimonials. When a customer tells you that your product is "far and away the leader in its field" or "the best thing since sliced bread," you may be thrilled because it sounds like something you might have written yourself. But that’s precisely why you shouldn’t use it.

The best testimonials are those worded in a way that catches your attention, conveys a positive message, and does so with credibility. "Damn good eatin’ fish!" is a testimonial I’d much rather use than "Succulent and tasty." The "damn" arrests my attention, the choice of words is believable, and the effect of making "eating" an adjective conveys an immediate benefit. It almost makes the mouth water.

So that is one thing - selecting, finding, or creating language that meets these criteria:

  • attracts attention
  • conveys a benefit
  • achieves credibility

But that’s not all. To make your testimonials do their job, they need to be presented in a format that supports those three objectives. In a sales letter, for example, testimonials are typically presented as one- or two-sentence quotations that are placed either in the text itself or at the margins. If you have a bunch of one- or two-sentence testimonials, it doesn’t hurt to use them that way.

But if you have a really good testimonial, one that’s distinctive and believable and strongly conveys the chief benefit of your product, you should find a more creative way to present it. You can, for example, turn it into a big bold headline and bolster it with an eye-catching photo of the customer enjoying the benefit.

Perhaps the best way to achieve both powerful, unique language and a captivating presentation is to show actual customers in their natural environment speaking their own words. Infomercials selling wealth-building programs often present real customers talking about their success, but they are usually in a staged setting - in front of the beach or a swimming pool - and their comments seem to have been coached out of them. A much better approach would be to have these people walking around their homes or businesses, interacting with other people and talking candidly and in an unrehearsed way about how their lives changed by following the system that is being sold.

Home Depot just released three commercials that do a very good job of this. So good, in fact, that I’d recommend you study them to get an idea about what is possible - particularly nowadays, when just about every business should be working in mixed media, incorporating video into their advertising program.

Home Depot’s new commercials feature documentary-like accounts of customers who have fixed up their homes. One features an African-American mother, her sister, her daughter, and her son. Seated in front of her children and beside her sister, the mother is obviously proud of the painting and spackling job she did on the living room. She says something like, "Now my kids say Mom did this and Mom did that"… and is interrupted by her daughter saying, "At first we were, ‘Mom, you’re messing up the house.’" The commercial flashes back to the mother getting tips on spackling at Home Depot and features impressive before-and-after shots. It ends with the mother saying, "This is a building that I made into a home."

Another one begins with a young mother saying something like, "I’m going to try to tell this story without crying." And then, "Two weeks after I bought my house, Dad died. He remodeled every house we ever lived in." And then she starts crying.

According to a review of the ad series by Stuart Elliott in The Wall Street Journal, the commercials were directed by Jeff Bednarz, a documentary filmmaker. "We started with the notion that nobody can tell a home-improvement story better than the customer can," said Gary Gibson, creative head of the Richards Group, the ad agency handling the Home Depot account. "They tell them better than we write them."

I agree. The message of these little films is empowerment and the effect is sentimental - but that sentiment is successful because it comes without a script and without professional actors. The cinema verite style that Bednarz chose to depict the customers’ stories makes them at once dramatic and believable.

The bottom line is this: Testimonials work well if they are true - and the closer you can get to truth, the stronger your sales message will be. When working with testimonials, ask yourself, "How can I show this customer experience as dramatically and truly as possible?" You’ll get a much better response.

On Friday, I’ll describe four specific ways you can use testimonials to make a big impact on your sales.

[Ed. Note: Learn how you can be part of an exclusive group of 25 to 50 ambitious businesspeople that Michael will be leading through an elite 5-day program that can help you dramatically increase the profitability of your business here.]

== Highly Recommended ==

The $2.7 Million Difference 24 Hours Can Make

Ten days ago, I met Walter G. at an investors’ event in Dallas.  Walter is a relatively new real estate investor from Atlanta.  He told me that, like a lot of “newbies,” he was scratching and scraping practically every day, trying to build up just a little more cash and credit to do his next deal. 

But that was ten days ago… nine days ago, Walter was in a whole new league as an investor. Read On….

Anti-Aging Tip: Try These Cancer Fighters for Lunch and Dinner

By Al Sears, MD

New research is giving us a window into the world of phytochemicals - compounds found in many fruits and vegetables. Cruciferous vegetables (broccoli, Brussels sprouts, cauliflower, and cabbage) and leafy greens have two particular phytochemicals - indole-3-carbinol (I-3-C) and chlorophyll - that are proving to be powerful weapons in the fight against aging.

I-3-C, abundant in broccoli and spinach, can affect key stages in age-related cancers like prostate, breast, and colon cancers. When a cell in one of those tissues mutates and becomes cancerous, I-3-C can actually program the cell to "commit suicide" and die before the cancer spreads.

Acting at a different stage in cancer protection, chlorophyll connects to cancer-causing toxins in the gut and prevents them from being absorbed. Chlorophyll is present in all green leafy vegetables, but is especially high in spinach.

Both I-3-C and chlorophyll are available as supplements, too. I-3-C comes in a pill form. I recommend 100 mg to 200 mg daily. Chlorophyll comes in both a powder and a pill, and is present in "green drinks," like chlorella and spirulina. If you’re taking the pill form, look for chlorophyllin - a powerful derivative of chlorophyll. An effective daily dose is 100 mg to 200 mg.

Treasures From the ETR Archives: Michael Masterson on the Importance of a Single Big Idea

[Ed. Note: This is the second in a series of excerpts from the Early to Rise Archives to honor ETR's  upcoming Issue #2000 - a milestone we're very proud of. To read each full article, click the link embedded in the text.]

"If you want to lead - to become wealthy and wise - you need an imagined treasure. You need to see its richness in your mind and communicate that richness to others. You’ve got to do that and also come up with a treasure map. Not necessarily a detailed map, but a plan that points your people in the right direction.

"Your Big Idea must be desirable. It must offer benefits to you, your customers, and your employees. It must also be appropriate. It must reflect your company’s capabilities, as well as its particular strengths and weaknesses - and the plan to achieve it should take advantage of your product’s Unique Selling Proposition (USP).

"If your Big Idea is good and your map to make it happen is sensible, you will succeed."

* * * * *

"Coming up with the Big Idea is a big task. It must be important enough to inspire followers, useful enough to create benefits (for your customers, your employees, and yourself), and cost effective. And, ultimately, it must be right. There is nothing so dispiriting and financially damaging as a Big Idea that changes systems, drains resources, taxes everyone’s patience, and then falls flat on its face."

* * * * *

"Entrepreneurs have big ideas, grandiose ambitions, and endless options. Line up 10 of them against a wall and you’ll have a truckload of ‘what ifs’ but only a pocketful of ‘how tos.’

"’Don’t bother me with the small strokes,’ they like to say. ‘I’m a Big Idea guy.’

"Indeed, success in business starts with the Great Idea. But it won’t get any further than that until someone gets down to the little tasks. Nothing happens until the first sale is made. And the first sale can’t be made until someone does something."

* * * * *

"Whether it’s your Big Idea or someone else’s, there are five very simple questions you can ask that will help you quickly determine its strengths and weaknesses: 1. Whom does it benefit? 2. How great are the benefits? 3. Does it take advantage of the company’s market? 4. Will the benefits outweigh the costs? 5. What do we do if it doesn’t work?"

"There are some incredible ideas, resources, and knowledge in every single issue of ETR."

"The most important lesson I learned from ETR was more of an important reminder. At our first ETR Internet Bootcamp in 2005, many people sounded me out about their individual ideas. Everyone was enthusiastic, passionate, and had doubts about whether their ideas would work. Eighteen months later, one idea in particular worked out really well.

"The idea that grew is a project that Christine Banks, an avid photographer and concert-goer, wanted to put together. Christine loves going to concerts and taking photographs of bands. Would a website like that appeal to other live music fans?

"Hers is a website dedicated to concert photography and gig reports. Christine started the project in her spare time, and the site now gets the same amount of daily visitors as a number of sites that clients of mine have run for years. She now gets official photo passes from small and major music labels and bands (including a recent gig for the band Incubus, where Christine shared the photographer’s pit with Incubus’s official photographer). Christine has a stack of events lined up for this year, and told me how excited she is about how well the idea worked out and her future prospects.

"So, what’s the lesson?

"There are some incredible ideas, resources, and knowledge in every single issue of ETR. But they’re just that - ideas. And you could sit spinning your thoughts in the mud for a long while with just ideas. The only difference between Christine’s idea and those of most everyone else at that Bootcamp is that she took action. Action transforms ideas into results."

David Cross

Senior Internet Consultant to the Agora Publishing group of companies and regular ETR contributor

 

It’s Fun to Know: About ETR’s "Patron Saint"

Ben Franklin, whose key phrase "Early to bed, early to rise, makes a man healthy, wealthy, and wise" is the inspiration for ETR and many of our precepts, has made many appearances in our pages over the years. In fact, in nearly 2000 issues, he’s been mentioned over 100 times.

== Highly Recommended ==

Start Making Money Today

Interested in getting a nice little side-business going on the Internet? Or maybe even from your living-room table?

But you don’t have too much money, you don’t have too much time, and you’re not exactly Bill Gates when it comes to technology. Sound familiar?

A lot of people are in the same boat. The good news is that ETR has heard you. And now we’ve done something about it…

We’ve asked our colleague Marc Charles to be on the lookout for profit opportunities that can be run from a kitchen table, your desktop or out on the road.

Criteria? They’ve got to be inexpensive, easy to start, and still have great income potential, but without a lot of red tape.

They say when you’re first getting your feet wet with a side-business, the most important dollar to make is the first one. Well, Marc is an expert at taking beginning entrepreneurs and showing you how to make that first buck. He knows, because he’s done it dozens of times for himself, his family and his friends.

If you’ve been dreaming about starting your own business … now you can get started for about the price of 2 lattes.

And get this - you could be making money literally just hours from now. Imagine the feeling of finally getting a side business launched - TODAY!

Why not go for it?

- Patrick Coffey

Word to the Wise: Cinema Verite

"Cinema verite" (sih-NAY-mah VAY-rih-tay) - French for "cinema-truth" - is a technique of documentary filmmaking in which the camera records actual people and events without directorial control.

Example (as I used it today): "The cinema verite style that Bednarz chose to depict the customers’ stories makes them at once dramatic and believable."

[Ed. Note: Become a more persuasive writer and speaker... build your self-confidence and intellect... increase your attractiveness to others... just by spending 10 VERY enjoyable minutes a day with ETR's new Words to the Wise CD Library, on-sale now through the 28th to celebrate the 2000th issue of ETR.]

Michael Masterson
Copyright ETR, LLC, 2007

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