heartharmony.com.au

Last week my colleague Donna-Marie Coggins and I attended a 4 day conference and heard a range of brilliant speakers talk about the latest and greatest in internet marketing.

Of course all of the speakers had a package for sale (hey they have to make more money some how!) What was interesting was watching each of them build their credibility with the audience through testimonials.

Most showed slides of their earnings and their fancy cars (yawn). Many had slides of written testimonials of people who had been successful. Some had written testimonials and photos of the people who had followed their programs to success. But there were two who really stood out.

One had people in the audience come forward and live on stage give their testimonial about the product and then backed it with film of exactly what the person had achieved. Pretty powerful to a group of 700 people.

My favourite speaker had a couple of films from a few people. Nothing exciting except that these people were famous people such as Mark Victor Hansen. These famous people raved about the speaker and the difference he had made in their lives. His program sold out in a few minutes as a result.

So what can you learn from this? Credibility is vital in business and testimonials are a great way to show what you can do.

There’s a sliding scale of testimonials. All testimonials are good – so start with written ones. Ramp them up with the addition of a photo. Ramp them up further by recording either the voice or film of the person.

You get extra bonus points for live testimonials (people can ask them in breaks their experience). However the cult of the famous person is alive and well – so celebrity testimonials from “famous” people really carry weight.

How did they get the testimonials in the first place? They asked for them and rewarded people for their words.

We watched at the end of the conference when speakers gave away extra bonuses for people who filmed testimonials on the content of the seminar.

How could you borrow these ideas and apply them to your business?

Until next time

Ingrid Cliff

We put your business into words

Heart Harmony – Freelance SEO copywriters