Last time we talked about building trust using testimonials.

Testimonials are just one form of credibility builders and this time we are going to look at more of them.

The more you can build your credibility with your prospects the more likely they are too buy; that explains why many professional sales letters spend so much time on doing it – it really improves conversions and puts more money into your pocket.

Great sales copy, meaning sales copy that converts well, always contains many types of “proof elements” and many of them don’t actually have anything to do with your product or service.

Not counting testimonials, I have identified 15 more ways to build credibility so let’s get started!

15 Credibility Builders

Here is a quick look at the credibility builders, we’ll look at some of them in more depth below:

1. Awards won by you, your company, or your product or service.
2. Biographical sidebars
3. Case studies
4. Contact information (address and telephone number)
5. Endorsements from celebrities or public figures
6. FAQ sheets
7. Media appearances
8. Photos of yourself and, to a lesser extent, of your product
9. Press clippings
10. Quotes from experts
11. Referrals and references
12. Sales figures or other “hard” proof that would be applicable
13. Scientific studies
14. Statistics or quotes from credible third parties
15. Tell your prospects you can’t solve all their problems, but you can solve a percentage of them.

That’s a lot of ways to build credibility and that’s good from you because it gives you lots of options and gets you lots of sales!

It All Starts with You

Ultimately, the prospect needs to trust you and that means you have to be out there; be honest and transparent.

Start by showing a picture of yourself. If you are using a persona then you need to find a picture that is representative of that persona.

Make sure the picture is appropriate for your target audience. By that I mean, is you are selling expensive financial information then formal business attire would be more appropriate (not a picture of you playing with your kids) whereas if you are selling sports equipment then an informal, sporty look may be just right.

If you have media appearances or photos/videos of you teaching the information that’s really powerful also.

Include some personal information about yourself, enough to get the prospect to start identifying with you and building a more personal, emotional bond than they would with a boring “sell-sell-sell” type sales letter.

One great thing to do is put your contact information on the sales page. Make sure the prospects feels that can contact you in multiple ways so include your address, your telephone number, your fax number, your e-mail address, even your Twitter name!

You can use excerpts from press releases as credibility builders. Even though they are originally written by you they do increase people’s trust in you.

Finally, use any organizations you’re associated with that will impress your prospects.

Let me give you a real life example of that

My aunt is a consultant to companies on cultural diversity, she has a Ph.D. in the subject.

She appears on TV as an expert, has published books and articles on the subject and she’s been consulting for many years for many large organizations.

She always used “Ph.D.” after her name but after she changed it to “Ph.D., UCLA” her conversions increased nicely.

She made only that change, nothing else.

She was afforded additional credibility and believability because she could now tap into the prestige of UCLA.

What Other Say About You

Testimonials fill this role but you can and should go beyond testimonials.

If you can get celebrity endorsements you’ll have one of the most powerful credibility builders there are. In general, they don’t even have to be associated with the product in any way although some products in some niches it is better to have a person who is a celebrity in that niche.

Note, you can frequently buy a celebrity endorsement and they aren’t as expensive as you’d think unless you’re going after a really big name.

You can get a certain amount of celebrity endorsement that is brand related rather than personal. For example, the “As Seen On …” type of thing still works great and isn’t that hard to get.

Quotes from experts and authorities are very good, particularly I some niche. For example, quotes from doctors and nurses in a health niche can really help build your credibility.

One way that people says things about you that isn’t commonly thought of is awards. If you or your product have won awards these can be tremendous credibility builders; display them and tout them.

Facts, Just the Facts

If you can show sales figures, income statements, traffic figures and other information that “prove” the value of your product or service this build some credibility and also gets people thinking that it would be something they want to have.

Scientific studies, statistics and data from highly credible third parties, even if it is only vaguely related to your product, give your prospects an increased level of comfort.

You essentially piggyback off the credibility of the third party, groups like professional associations (American Medical Association – AMA), government agencies (Food & Drug Administration – FDA), professional media (Wall Street Journal), consumer media (CNN), educational institutions (Harvard) and consumer watchdogs (Consumer Reports).

The Truth and Nothing But the Truth

You can also build credibility by telling your prospects that you can’t solve all their problems but then showing them how you can solve most of them.

For example: “We can’t solve all your debt problems but imagine what your life would be like with the 94.5% we can help you with.”

What this does is make you seem more credible and not just some scam artist trying to take them for everything they have; your claims won’t be as unbelievable and they’ll be more confident in you and what you are offering.

The use of a specific percentage increases the trust because it sounds like a real number that was actually calculated which makes a bigger impact on the prospect.

Ultimately, the truth is the best thing you can do. If you aren’t truthful it will come out in your copy and it will be noticed by your prospects, even if it is subconsciously.

Don’t give false or misleading figures.

Don’t give false or misleading deadlines.

Don’t give false or misleading promises.

Be truthful.

Once you lose your reputation of being honest then people will always wonder when you’re telling the truth and when you are not. This will hurt you more than anything else.

Conclusion

It is simple, the more credible you appear to your prospects the more cash you’ll get.

There are many ways to improve credibility and you should include as many of them as possible because there aren’t many individual credibility builders you can use that will be enough to get the sale.

Here are the 15 ways to build credibility we looked at:

1. Awards won by you, your company, or your product or service.
2. Biographical sidebars
3. Case studies
4. Contact information (address and telephone number)
5. Endorsements from celebrities or public figures
6. FAQ sheets
7. Media appearances
8. Photos of yourself and, to a lesser extent, of your product
9. Press clippings
10. Quotes from experts
11. Referrals and references
12. Sales figures or other “hard” proof that would be applicable
13. Scientific studies
14. Statistics or quotes from credible third parties
15. Tell your prospects you can’t solve all their problems, but you can solve a percentage of them.

Don’t neglect these. Make more money!

What credibility builders do you use?

What new ones can you add that have helped you?

Leave a comment and let me know.

Talk soon,

David

The Shameless (Ethical) Marketer
http://www.Twitter.com/DavidHusnian
http://www.8-8-8Sale.com
http://www.MusicForInternetMarketers.com
http://www.SecretsOfGoogleAdWords.com
http://www.MadMondaySale.com
http://www.2ForTuesdaySale.com

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Explode Your Sales by Building Trust with Credibility Builders

If the prospect doesn’t trust you it will be very hard to make sales; emphasis on VERY and HARD.

There are various ways to build trust, some of which we’ve talked about in the past, but one of the strongest ways to build credibility and trust are testimonials.

If you’re unfamiliar with the term testimonial, basically it is an independent 3^rd party verification that your solution does, in fact, do what you say it does.

Or, in other words, it is people raving about how great the product and you are.

When it comes to persuading prospects about how good your product is, testimonials are right at the top of the list.

Scattered throughout your sales copy, you continuously strengthen the various sales copy points you’re making, just make sure the testimonial supports the sales copy the prospect just read or is about to read.

We’re going to look at the various types of testimonials, how to create powerful testimonials and how to get testimonials even if you don’t have any customers yet!

Types of Testimonials

Testimonials can be so much more than the typical “your product is great” letters from customers.

Sure, those are great and you should use those that are believable and interesting; but enhance them by giving it an attention getting headline and be sure to include as much name, location and contact information as you can get; don’t forget that pictures really add to the believability.

But there are other testimonials, the ways are really limited by your own creativity but here are some ways that have proven highly effective to get you started:

• Write a “breaking news article” by interviewing some customers, about 4 to 6, about their experiences with your product.
• Get someone to interview your customer or do it yourself if you can’t find anyone. Ask tough questions about your product, play devil’s advocate and let the customer overcome your questions and objections; use the audio (or video) as the testimonial. This is a remarkably effective way of building trust with your prospects
• Create a case study about some of your customers, that is, a story about how a customer used and was helped by using your product.
• Ask your customer to create a video of them actually using your product or of results they’ve achieved (before and after work particularly good in video).

Creating Powerful Testimonials

You’ll find that many of the testimonials you get aren’t really that good. They might be poorly written, vague, sound insincere or just boring.

The obvious solutions it that if you don’t like them then don’t use them but, with a little work, you can get great ones or turn less than great into great!

Most people give the same type of testimonial, either one that says how great the product is or a sort of “before and after” testimonial; that is, they tell you their problem and how the product solved it, generally with some raving about greatness thrown in.

There’s certainly nothing wrong with those (get as many as you can but, to stand out and be more believable, you can’t stop there, go one step further.

What you want are much more powerful, more “get them where it counts” testimonials.

In particular, you want testimonials that talk about specific benefits and that tell a story about a real person who had a real problem and who is absolutely elated with the product that, finally, gave them a solution.

Now, you’re probably wondering how to get such a perfect, “dream”, testimonial.

Luckily, it’s easy. It’s just a matter asking for it. Here’s what to do:

• Contact your customers and interview them; don’t spend more than 15-30 minutes; use this to get that interesting, real-life story that your prospects will relate to.
• Then ask the customer if you can use the interview as a testimonial.
• Assuming they say yes, say that you’d be happy to create it for them but they will have final approval before it’s used; emphasize they will be able to say yes or no.
• Then take the interview and craft as compelling, heartfelt testimonial as you possibly can. If the interview was good you should have some great material to work with.

Here are some things you can do to help you:

• Figure out what you angle will be after you hear the story, comments and
• Decide what key benefits to you want to emphasize in this testimonial; don’t always emphasize the same thing unless it is the sole or wildly most important benefit. This could be about the product, the results or about the experience; all are important, necessary and can be powerful.
• Decide how you can best position this testimonial for maximum impact
• Decide what will make your ideal prospect say “I am just like that” or “hey, that’s my situation”

Getting several of these will allow you to judiciously use them throughout your sales copy since they are likely to focus on different things. Plus, you’ll probably get lots of little tidbits that you can weave into your sales copy!

Getting Testimonials When You Don’t Have Customers

If you have a new product that doesn’t have any customers you’re probably wondering how you’re going to get any testimonials.

Not a problem!

Here are a few ideas you can use to get testimonials if your have no customers yet:

• Provide free copies of the product to a select group of people with the understanding that that are expected to provide testimonials, good or bad.
• Send out review copies to people in the your niche and have them review it for their Web site, mailing list or an independent review site like e-opinions.com. Then quote those reviews giving proper attribution. This can be a good thing to do even if you do have testimonials.
• Do a small private launch at a drastically reduced price to get some customers and then get testimonials from them for the public launch.

Conclusion

We looked at how to use testimonials in a sales page to build trust and, ultimately, skyrocket your sales.

We saw some of types of powerful testimonials you can create, well beyond the standard “you’re great” letters.

We also looked at how to get testimonials when you don’t have customers yet.

Before I finish I want to show you how powerful testimonials can be I want to tell you a very short story I heard.

There is this star copywriter who put together a 24-page tabloid promotion that was about 80% testimonials; which is almost unheard of!

He really had to convince the company to try it because it wasn’t cheap to create and send out and there was great risk.

The copywriter felt that testimonials were so critical and powerful for this product because the main obstacle was trust in the product so he wanted lots of proof.

When I heard about it, it was about 15 months after and the client had mailed out over 10,000,000 copies and was still sending them out by the boatload.

Oh yeah, it had made them a substantial profit.

I wouldn’t suggest you try that except in very rare cases but it does point out the power that testimonials can have in making you lots of money you wouldn’t make otherwise.

Do you use testimonials?

If so, how and if not, why not.

It’s important enough to think about how and why/why not so leave a comment explaining it to help you understand your thinking better or to ask questions that will help you understand.

Talk soon,

The Shameless (Ethical) Marketer
http://www.Twitter.com/DavidHusnian
http://www.8-8-8Sale.com
http://www.MusicForInternetMarketers.com
http://www.SecretsOfGoogleAdWords.com
http://www.MadMondaySale.com
http://www.2ForTuesdaySale.com

O.Y. Don’t forget to retweet this! Use the button on the page or Tweet this:
Explode Your Sales by Building Trust with Testimonials http://bit.ly/2iicwi (via @DavidHusnian)
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This post from: Street Guide to Copywriting. To read more post like this, head over to Street Guide to Copywriting

Explode Your Sales by Building Trust with Testimonials