Testimonials
Testimonials may just be one of the most critical things you can get for your sales copy.
The bad thing about testimonials is you can’t write them yourself. You have to rely on the people giving them to give good ones.
And that’s where the problems come in.
Most people who give testimonials do so out of the goodness of their hearts, and trust me, their hearts are in the right place. Unfortunately, these people are not writers and many of these testimonials just turn out to be plain awful.
So what do you do?
The thing to do is stop the problem before it becomes a problem. That means you have to follow a specific plan of action in getting your testimonials. By following this outline, you should end up with testimonials that will actually help your sales copy.
Step 1
Assuming that this is a new product that nobody has yet, obviously you’re not going to have any testimonials because there is nobody around who even knows what it is. So the first step is to make sure that a number of people actually get their hands on the product to try. This may mean that the creator has to give away samples. That’s the price you have to pay for getting testimonials at the beginning.
I suggest getting at least 10 people to try out the product. Tell them that you’d appreciate a testimonial if they find the product helps them. Most people will be more than willing to do this in exchange for a quality product. If the product isn’t good, don’t worry, they’ll let you know.
Step 2
Send them a form of questions to answer about the product. This way, the response that you get will be structured and will include the details that you need to construct a testimonial worthy enough for your sales copy. Some of the questions you should ask are the following:
1. What problems did you have before getting this product that the product solved for you?
2. What benefits did you get from the product?
3. Would you recommend this product to others and if so, what would you say to them to convince them?
These 3 simple questions should be more than enough to construct a good testimonial for your sales page. You can of course ask other questions that are more specific to the product, if you choose. The more questions you ask, the better the testimonial will be.
Step 3
Send them a letter asking them if you can use their responses as a testimonial and if you can reword them as needed. You’re looking for license not to change the content of the testimonial but simply to word it in a way that makes it flow as well as possible. In most cases, if they answer the questions asked, you’ll have very little editing to do.
Step 4
Ask them if they can submit a photo of themselves to use on the page. Photos carry more weight than having a testimonial without a photo. If you can get an audio testimonial, that’s even better, but not required.
Step 5
The final step is to reconstruct the testimonial in a way that will get the reader’s attention. As I said, if the questions were answered completely, you will have to do very little editing. You may have to leave some things out if they give very long testimonials, but you shouldn’t have any problem getting enough material for each testimonial.
By following the above steps, you should have no problems getting a number of excellent testimonials.
Now, where do you put them?
Again, there is no right or wrong here, however, you want to put your best testimonial FIRST. The reason is because you want to hit people with your best right away. You then put your second best testimonial LAST so that you leave them with a lasting impression. Some people do this in reverse, putting the
best last and the second best first. You can certainly test this and see which converts better, but you definitely want your two best testimonials first and last in the chain.
What about that chain?
Do you put them all together? Do you split them up?
Again, there is no right or wrong here. However, if you have a large number of testimonials, you probably want to split them up.
Why?
The reason you want to do this is because after a while, people are going to start getting tired reading testimonials if they’re all bunched together and you might lose them. That’s why I usually don’t put more than 3 or 4 testimonials in a row.
If you take a look at my Honest Income Program sales copy here…
http://www.honestincomeprogram.com/
You’ll find a testimonial at the beginning shortly after the intro paragraphs, then single testimonials sprinkled throughout the copy and then just before the end of the copy, a string of 5 testimonials. By having this many at the end, it will push people who are on the fence into buying.
As with anything else in your sales copy, test the placement of your testimonials and see what works best. For me, the structure above works just fine.
0 comments:
Post a Comment