I’m grateful to long time member Nigel Morton for stimulating this month’s marketing lesson. You see, Nigel is a smart guy. He’s an accountant with attitude – and he drives an old VW camper called Alice!
He’s also got a finally tuned palate and appreciates nice food, which is why one of his friends got him a cookbook for Christmas called “Pitt Cue Co.”.
Now, if you’re a foodie then you might know that the Pitt Cue Company is kind of a hip, British take on classic Americana, but it’s properly nice and, like Nigel, has a bit of attitude, as well as great attention to detail (but don’t go if you don’t like pork!)
Anyway, back to the book, which Nigel describes as “A fantastic business book. No “how to” in there…but loads of “why to”.
But Nige didn’t write to me to tell me about this book because of its recipes and subtle business lessons. He wrote to me because of the back cover where, taking up the whole space, is what Nigel describes as “The best testimonial I have ever read”.
You can see it for yourself opposite – and it does indeed stack up very highly in the all-time-great list of things other people have ever said about a business.
But, of course, very few of us will be fortunate enough to receive a letter like that.
These things are not handed to us on a velvet cushion with all the work already done, but that doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t, all of us, give considerable thought to the collection and collation of an overwhelming number of utterly compelling testimonials about our business.
Once we have them, they become an asset that we can deploy across pretty much all of our marketing material. We can sit them in our email signatures, we can propagate them on every single page of our website (by all means bring them all together under a “What customers say” tab) but don’t only put them there. They need to be sprinkled liberally, like a fine seasoning, around the beef of your substantive messages.
They need to be woven into your newsletters and email copy. They need to be omnipresent in your leaflets and flyers.
They probably should – and could – be on your business cards because, you see, we all know that what others say about us is way more powerful than what we say about ourselves, but so many business owners forgo any attempt to exploit that opportunity.
But, of course, there are testimonials and testimonials. Not all are created the same. And, of course, it’s hard to get customers to leave you a testimonial isn’t it?
Well, no. It isn’t actually…
…Not if you do the work.
You have got a lot of happy customers. People who rate your work, who are pleased with what you do and who will come back to you, often time and time again, to spend their money with you.
The way to build your powerful bank of testimonials is to simply ask for them – without expecting the customer to do the work.
You have the conversations, you know that people are happy, find out what it is that they liked about what you do, that made them choose you or bring them back to you or, alternatively, which part of your service they appreciated the most or liked the best.
Then write the testimonial for them.
That way you can make sure that your suite of testimonials covers all of the different elements of what you do and together they’ll also deal with every objection that a potential customer might have as well. I call this the intelligent gathering of testimonials, as opposed to the arbitrary collection that most people embark upon.
To be clear, you shouldn’t ever use a testimonial until you’ve gotten the approval of the person to do so but, in my experience, that’s a very easy thing to do.
To be clear, you simply write the testimonial that you’d like them to say and you then send it to them, on an email with a message that says:
“Good to talk to you earlier on today. I’m pleased that you liked the job/work/service (delete as applicable) and I was just reflecting on what you said.
Would it be okay for me to use the following quote from you in some of our marketing material?
[INSERT TESTIMONIAL HERE]
I’d really appreciate it if you were okay with that. Obviously, if you want to tweak anything then please feel free.
Thank you again for your help…”
Honestly, it works pretty much every time. I promise. The only changes I can recall in recent memory was when the individual concerned had actually rewritten what I’d sent them and come back with something even more brilliant. Win-win.
Then, of course, when you’re using the testimonials you must always use the name of the person that’s given it to you and, ideally, some other information as well to give it credibility.
A business name might be appropriate for your sector or industry, or it might just be the part the country that that person lives in.
For the ultimate testimonial you’d also have a small photograph of them.
The truth is, ladies and gentlemen, that there is an opportunity here for you to ramp up your marketing by quite a few notches.
If you want to acquire new customers they’ve got to have confidence and trust in you – hearing not just one or two or three past customers say it, but being able to see 21, 22 or 23 testimonials, all properly presented, completely transforms the perception of that business, which is why it’s this month’s Big Lesson…
