Establish Credibility with Testimonials

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By Shawn McGee

Marketing Consultant and Author

There is an inherent problem with selling a product or service. Potential customers need to come to the conclusion that your offering has better qualities than the alternatives. But the typical consumer knows that you are obviously going to say your product or service is great. Therefore, consumers can be skeptical of your claims. Even worse your claims can be seen as bragging.

So any boasting you do about yourself will tend not to achieve the desired results. In fact, you may manage to turn prospects off from your company completely. But there is a solution. Your prospective customers are much more likely to believe what someone else says about your product or service than what you say. It’s just a fact of human nature.

Whenever you are selling anything, the first thing you have to do is get people to believe you. The next hurdle is to get them to believe that your product or service can actually work for them.

The best way to overcome either of these hurdles is to get outside reviewers to review your product. These reviewers can be regular people who have purchased from you and have gotten great results. These reviews are commonly called testimonials.

The beauty of using testimonials is that they can allow you to imply superiority without just coming out and stating it.

Testimonials are a very effective way to build credibility with your potential customers. People won’t buy from you if they aren’t confident about the product or service they will receive. Testimonials help put people at ease and in a state of mind to make a purchase.

Look at it this way. Most of the time people do not like to go out on a limb and do something that is not widely accepted. Taking risks can really cause problems: embarrassment, extra costs, lost time, unsafe conditions, and many more. So people want to know that the product they are considering is proven and embraced by their peers.

Our peer groups influence us all. Your potential customers will respond better if they see that someone like them was able to achieve results with your offering. They want to see themselves in the people who had success with your product.

Testimonials will help you establish credibility. And they help prove to potential customers that your product or service works for people who are like them. Your job with marketing is to create an environment where people see the proof.

You can do this by adding relevant information into your testimonials. For example, age may be a crucial piece of information. Geographic information and occupation may also be useful pieces of information.

Specific information like this will help your potential customers identify with the people giving the testimonials. It will also help make the testimonials more believable. In addition, photographs and a full name can also help in establishing credibility. You can even go so far as to record an audio or video clip of the person giving the testimonial and put it into your marketing material. All of these will help add credibility.

Just remember, you want whoever reads your marketing material to be able to relate to the people providing the testimonials. When prospects see a little of themselves in the people who have gotten results from your product or service, their comfort level with your business increases dramatically.

To learn more about acquiring testimonials join the Leverage Marketing Tips newsletter.

Shawn McGee is a marketing consultant and author of the Leverage Marketing Tools.

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Establish Credibility with Testimonials