Testimonials provide high-impact, no-cost marketing for your business.

Your marketing is only as strong as your business’s reputation. Why? Well, it doesn’t matter much what a company says about itself if its customers’ opinions don’t jibe. But when customers have good things to say, that alone will sell to other customers. You could argue that reputation is the main reason people buy — or don’t buy — anything.

That’s why testimonials play such an important role in marketing, and why you should be actively trying to collect them. Here are two simple ways to get more from your testimonials.

Make It Part of Your Process

Many businesses don’t generate great testimonials for one reason: they wait for the customer to come to them. But think about it – when was the last time you offered a testimonial after purchasing a great product or service? Did you email one to that restaurant after your delicious Mexican dinner? Maybe you dropped one off at the dealership to thank them for a great deal on your new car?

Probably not. Most of us never give it a thought, even when the experience was excellent. But if the business had just asked, we might have taken a minute or two to return the favor.

The follow-up is an essential part of any sale, whether in-person, by phone or via email. When that follow-up tells you a customer is satisfied, it’s the perfect opportunity to ask for a testimonial. Make asking a regular part of your sales process, and you’ll have plenty of high-impact, no-cost marketing material ready to go.

Ask for Specifics

Recently, I was looking to get some work done on my house. The contractor that caught my eye had a customer letter posted on their website with details on the day-to-day expectations, the quality of work and the timeline. As a business owner, I know if a client takes the time to write a glowing letter filled with specifics, the company has to deliver. (A bit skeptical, I asked for another testimonial and got a second detailed and appreciative review.)

From the testimonials, I learned this company over-delivered, going above and beyond what was expected. One customer wrote that they even brought their garbage cans out to the curb! It didn’t make them more money – they just thought it was important to keep their customers happy and writing rave reviews. It worked.

The competition I considered also had testimonials, but only one or two sentences with no details. For example, “they did a good job” or “very professional,” with a five-star rating attached. Ultimately, I went with the company whose testimonials didn’t look like eBay feedback.

When gathering testimonials, encourage your customers to paint a picture. Ask “could you explain the problem we solved for you?” And “what stood out about our service?”

Because that’s what potential customers are looking for: in-depth, non-canned, honest testimonials. Get that going and you’re reputation will do the rest.

Does your business have a system for collecting testimonials?

Social media is hot, but is it
really good for marketing?

Social media is just that – social. It’s great for keeping up with friends and family, like sharing photos and reviews of the latest hit movie or new restaurant. But as an effective business marketing tool that will generate sales, social media leaves a lot to be desired.

It does have a role in a company’s communications and customer service, providing a channel to distribute news, special offers, and taking the pulse of the marketplace. Still, I’ve yet to meet anyone who has generated a significant number of sales from social media.

Brad Smith makes a similar argument in a post for FixCourse, an online marketing publication. Smith gave four reasons he thinks email marketing beats social media every time:

1. Social Media platforms come and go. Sure, Facebook and Twitter are popular now, but for how long? At one time, AOL was the most visited site on the internet – now it’s ranked 73^rd. It’s hard to build a long-term marketing strategy when you don’t know if your delivery system will still be around next year.
2. They dictate the rules of the game. If you want to run a promotion, you have to follow their guidelines, or risk having your page taken down (even for an honest mistake). Smith calls it “building on their land.”
3. They own the data – from every post to your followers’ contact information. You can’t access or use that data for your marketing. So unless you capture it offsite, you’re only creating revenue for them.
4. The ROI is weak. Social media just can’t match email marketing for ROI (Return On Investment versus Return On Impression).

All in all, I think Smith is right. In fact, I can think of a few more reasons why social media isn’t really made for business.

Limited Space and Control

Most social media sites restrict posts to a certain number of characters. That leaves precious little space to create a persuasive message with any chance of converting the reader. Unless, of course, you give away something free.

And aside from uploading photos, you can’t change the layout at all, so key design decisions are out of your hands. Your posts and ads look just like everyone else’s. (Facebook does have customizable “tabs” that act like landing pages, but you still have to convince users to leave their walls and go there!)

It’s for Conversations, Not Conversions

Every social media post has an extremely short shelf life – minutes usually, hours at best. That’s great for a quick chat, but not so great for marketing. With every new post, yours gets pushed farther down the queue, and it competes with every other post that pops up on the page.

Compare this to when you send an email. Your message still competes with other subject lines, but it’s static and demands attention. It stays in the recipient’s inbox until they choose to open it or delete it. And once your message is opened, there’s no other message to distract them.

You Can’t Segment Your Followers

Want to send different messages to followers with different needs? Or maybe A/B test an offer? Too bad. Google Plus does let you segment posts by social circles – family, friends, colleagues – but that won’t help your business.

So targeted marketing becomes impossible, like performing brain surgery with a butter knife. The more irrelevant posts a user sees, the more likely they are to “opt-out” and stop following you.

Users Don’t Want Marketing, Anyway

It’s true: social media users love discounts and freebies. Unfortunately, that’s as far as it goes. They don’t want to be marketed to when they came to laugh at photos of a friend’s cat. Or, in the case of LinkedIn, make business connections. Wrong time, wrong place.

Again, I’m not saying businesses shouldn’t use social media. It should support your other marketing efforts as part of an integrated marketing plan.

But if you have limited resources and serious marketing goals to meet, I’d concentrate on building a database for targeted email marketing – and leave social media for those quick conversations it does best.

Which does your program focus on more, email or social media? Why?

Image courtesy of FreeDigitalPhotos.net

Integrated marketing is a more effective and efficient way to get your message out.

You’re already up against countless competitors in the marketplace. But is your marketing also competing against itself? Let me explain …

Consumers have a tough job choosing between all of the options available to them. Every day, thousands of marketing messages vie for their attention through an ever-growing variety of media. The businesses that communicate a cohesive and consistent message across these channels have a better chance of breaking through the noise.

Yet businesses may have different departments or marketing campaigns – all with separate goals – working against each other. Fragmented messages simply won’t stick with customers and prospects who are already confronted with too many choices. This lessens the impact of your individual marketing efforts, which in turn increases their respective costs.

The trick is to connect those dots, giving your customers a clearer picture of the value your business offers.

The Benefits of Integrated Marketing

Integrated marketing ties them all together under a single unified strategy. Your marketing efforts will naturally have different objectives, but a unified strategy coordinates them so they work together to support larger goals.

Just as important, it creates a cohesive identity for your business (your brand image) and a positioning that customers will recognize and relate to in any context. Actually, this should extend beyond traditional marketing to everything you do: your sales, customer service and customer retention, for example.

Let’s not forget the value integrated marketing has in developing trust in your product or service. Consumers are generally skeptical of advertising claims. The more often they encounter a consistent message, the better they feel they know your business – and the more apt they are to give you the benefit of the doubt.

For example, if you’re marketing consists of a single ad on cable TV, always running during the same program on the same channel, you won’t have the opportunity to build much trust. Now imagine consumers also read about your company in their local paper (because of your press release) and get a direct mail package with a special offer. Both awareness and trust in your company increases, and there’s a much greater likelihood they’ll consider doing business with you.

Integrated marketing is more effective. Your marketing is more powerful when every advertisement, every email and every marketing piece communicates consistently. Each time a customer or prospect sees your message, it’s reinforced in their minds, building greater awareness and trust over time. So when they’re ready to buy, your message is fully “top-of-mind.”

Integrated marketing is more efficient. An integrated plan also results in more efficient use of your marketing resources. Integrating different channels lets you exploit their individual strengths, maximizing their impact and the return on your marketing dollars. And because they’re working from the same strategy, they’ll share internal assets and resources, too.

Is Your Marketing Integrated?

Take a look at your current marketing efforts, and use the following criteria to evaluate them in a fresh light:

• Are they instantly recognizable as coming from the same business?
• Do they communicate your value, your positioning and your brand image consistently across different media?
• Are they focused on achieving the same goals, and working together like a well-oiled machine?

If the answer to any of these is no, you’re probably dealing with a fragmented strategy or execution. It may be time to get integrated.