Testimonials,Will,Boost,Your,S marketing Testimonials Will Boost Your Sales - If You Can Get &#39

Awhile ago, I got an email from one of the "gurus" I follow and it shocked me. The gist of it was this person wanted to trade services for a household item.To say it floored me would be an understatement.What was worse was a few days later t Automation technologies represent a fundamental aspect of any modern industry. The major types of industrial automation solutions, such as DCS, PLC, SCADA, and MES, are used on a large-scale in process and discrete industries.DCS technologie

Testimonials Will Boost Your Sales - If You Can Get 'EmCopyright 2002 lessworkmoremoney.com By Armand Melanson It's a proven fact that testimonials radically improve sales.That's why every single infomercial & marketing website ispeppered with them. They build the essential CREDIBILITY that isrequired for the buy response. Are all these testimonials real?Definitely not. And that's because testimonials are not easy toget. Think about it. You buy a product from someone. At that point,the seller has already made their money from you. Even if whatthey deliver is far beyond your expectations, you are not likelyto go out of your way to let them know about it. You have yourown agenda & your own set of goals to achieve. Who's got time togo around slapping everyone on the back for a job well done? So the notion of "unsolicited testimonials" is a rare oneindeed. In fact, 95% of unsolicited testimonials are highlysolicited. And we'd all do well to copy the method the big boysuse to get their testimonials. Let's take, for example, Marlon Sanders. This guy is one of thee-marketing giants. I bought one of his products & he put me on his autoresponder newsletter. I also signed up to resell his products. Here's what I got within 1 month of signing up: > > Dear Arm,> >> > I need your opinion yadayadayada with a bunch of questions & then this: > > 11. May I have permission to quote your comments in> > marketing and promotion? I will NOT quote your address> > or phone. Only name, city and state.> > yes[ ] no[ ] Did you get that? This is how the big players get theirtestimonials... Here are some techniques you can use to get testimonials: ===> Always offer an incentive for participating in a productsurvey. If you don't offer something in return, most people won't eventhink about doing your survey. The better the incentive, themore motivated your prospect will be. Marlon offered a free version of a new product. I bet thatproduct will get test marketed to all the people who took thesurvey & then they'll be asked to take another survey. With thatdata, they'll tweak the product to correct the problemsencountered in the test group. The they'll really launch to thepublic. Brilliant! But not everybody has a family of related products to offer. Sohere's what I recommend: ===> Use free eBooks as an incentive to participate. Free eBooks are all over the net & some of them are reallyvaluable. If you are selling a digital product, embed thesurvey offer in the product. If selling hardgoods, providewritten instructions in the packaging on what the incentive is &how to access the survey. The offer can be like so: "To get Xbenefit for free, go to Y URL & take our product survey". Makeit simple & easy to do. As well, whenever you make a sale, you should be putting thebuyer on an autoresponder series. 2 or 3 weeks into the series,have the AR fire off the same survey offer. There are several ways to do the survey. Marlon chose email. Iprefer a webform. Here's how the webform works: Every webhost offers FORM/CGI mail in order to have forms sendemail to a designated email box. Set up your survey form usingyour HTML editor & have the form submit the data to whateveremail box you want to receive the survey data. If you want tosee a sample, go tohttp://www.lessworkmoremoney.com/survey_example.htm. You want to capture some basic feedback about your product &more importantly, give the user a chance to tell you what theylike about the product. FORM/CGI Mail offer some cool features.The most important ones are: ===> a redirect to a thank you page This is where you put the link for downloading the eBook incentive. ===> a required field option Use this to make sure that your key fields have data. Many people will try to zip through the form without entering real data just so they can get the download. So make email address & the general comments required. You can use JavaScript to do this as well - whatever works best for you. When the form gets submitted, here's what you would get: Below is the result of your feedback form. It wassubmitted by ([email protected]) on Monday, August 6, 2001 at16:42:30-----------------------------------------------------------Q1: rating of this product A1: excellent Q2: comments A2: This is the absolute best ebook I have ever purchased. Iam very impressed with all the additional information in thisebook. A must own for anyone serious about an online business! Regards,Joe W, Cofounder - JJmerchandise Q3: other products A3: better Q4: sections rating A4: dropshipping business plan and e-product guide Q5: GUI A5: excellent Q6: SE A6: I found lessworkmoremoney.com thru a newsletter. Q7: recommendations A7: none----------------------------------------------------------- If you are not comfortable with setting up a web form, then useemail. Setup an autoresponder which will kick off an automaticemail with a link to the download when people submit. Here is asample form: To complete the survey, follow these instructions:1) Click the "REPLY" button in your email program.2) Type your responses between the brackets.3) When finished, click the "SEND" button. Once we receive your comments, the free gift will be onit's way! To answer, type an X between the two brackets like this [X] 1.What is your overall rating of this product on a scalefrom 1 to 5 ( 5 being the best)? [ ]1 - poor[ ]2[ ]3[ ]4[ ]5 - excellent and so on... Whether via email or webform, make sure you automate theprocess so that it all happens without human intervention. Youdon't have time to be manually emailing people & withautoresponder software, you don't need to. You may be asking yourself how to sell any products in the 1stplace if you need testimonials to sell your product & you needto sell your product to get testimonials (makes me dizzy justthinking about it)? You make 'em up of course ==> NOT!!! You setup your website to sell, but you test market yourproduct initially. Offer it at a reduced price or even for free.Offer powerful incentives to get people to try the product. Ifyou have an opt-in email list ( YOU HAVE TO HAVE ONE)& it is pulling in some subscribers, offer them (via email) anincentive for participating in a product survey. If your surveyfeedback tells you that your product stinks, then improve it &re-start the cycle. This should happen throughout the life of the product. Once youhave a few testimonials under your belt, pop them onto yourwebsite & set your price to what you really want. But keepprompting for testimonials as long as you sell the product. ==>MARKETING TIP<==DON'T BURY THE TESTIMONIALS ON A LINKED PAGE!!! Make sure you embed short excerpts from your testimonials inthe main page. Use them to add credibility & punch to youroverall marketing copy. You should also have a link to the fulltext of testimonials if they are not displayed in full on themain page. Ken Evoy has a great method for displayingtestimonials using a drop down form. Check it out athttp://myss.sitesell.com/nomore_9to5.html ----------------------------------------------------ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Armand Melanson is an emarketing consultant & author. For free marketing tips & articles youcan re-use, visit him at http://lessworkmoremoney.com ----------------------------------------------------