In a world full of messages pelting us every second of the day whether you are watching TV, using the internet, driving on the expressway, or even walking through your neighborhood, it’s often hard to deliver a message that truly grabs your target audience. After all, people do business with companies and people they know, like, and trust.
There are fewer better ways to develop the trust factor than to have your own army of walking billboards–people who have nothing but nice things to say about your company. I’m writing about TESTIMONIALS!
Try to solicit testimonials from people with whom you’ve done business on a frequent basis as well as from new clients or customers. A written testimonial is great because, with their permission (of course), you can use it in all of your marketing.
In print, you can use it in your testimonials can go a long way. Try including a couple:
- In your newsletter
- On a postcard mailer
- In a letter
- Within a personalized note card
- On a giveaway scratch pad
- On your office signage
- Within your display ads
- Use them in press releases
On the web, there are so many incredible ways you can solicit and use testimonials. Here are just a few:
- Use LinkedIn to both solicit and display your testimonials or “Recommendations” in LinkedIn-speak
- Display your testimonials on your website. This adds content the search engines eat up and, again strengthens relationships.
- Take video testimonials to plaster on YouTube and your your website
- Get people to review you on Yelp and Google Places!
- Ask your client if, in addition to a testimonial, you can create a brief case study of a project so you can create a whitepaper as a premium for signing up for your email newsletter
- Include them in your email newsletter
- Post them to your blog
- Tweet and post to Facebook your newest testimonials
Whatever you do, make sure that you reciprocate by thanking your customer somehow. A nice card, a coupon, or a testimonial for their product or services is definitely in order.
Keep Moving Forward!