The Function of a Testimonial

A good testimonial attracts attention, conveys a benefit, and achieves credibility. If a testimonial sounds so good that you couldn’t have said it better yourself, then it probably won’t sound credible to the reader.

A Different "Voice"

The reason that testimonials work is that they tell about your product in a different "voice" than yours. The more colloquially it is said, the more credible it will feel to the reader. The more specific the quote, the better. If someone says, "Yours is the best product of its kind in the whole world," it doesn’t get much traction. Much better would be: "I used to be upset about the scar just below my left eye. But since I’ve started using Coveralls Skin Mask, nobody notices. In fact, no one has asked me about that scar for the past 14 months. What a relief!" Placement of testimonials is important, too. A testimonial belongs at the point in the sales process where you’re dealing with a particular objection. So don’t cram all your testimonials together. Space them out with other parts of your sales copy where they belong in the natural flow of your presentation.

Securing Good Testimonials

How do you get good testimonials? I use two approaches:

1. Unsolicited e-mails. When someone writes a kind note praising my work, I write back requesting to use an excerpt in my marketing. Every time I have asked, I’ve received an enthusiastic positive response.

2. Evaluations. When we’ve completed a client’s successful project, I ask him or her to evaluate the job. In one part of the evaluation I ask respondents to write a two or three sentence recommendation from which they give me permission to use an excerpt in my marketing. Most of these comments aren’t helpful, but 5% are just what I’m looking for. It pays to ask. It’s important to note that I ask specifically to use an "excerpt" of their words.

I cut out all the extraneous verbiage and keep just the phrase or sentence that contains the juicy words I want for the testimonial. It’s important that I don’t misrepresent what they intended to say.

But shorter is better. Ask to use an excerpt. Should you try to get a recommendation from someone well-known in your industry? Of course. But carefully selected testimonials from "normal people" can have a powerful positive effect. Don’t neglect them.

Need to find out more about using testimonials better to improve your bottom line? Contact John here or call/sms 0414 955 743

In our business we solve this marketing problem for our clients by introducing them to use low cost "Guerrilla Marketing" strategies to grow their business.

Our Top 5 most effective low cost marketing strategies are:

1. Create a revenue sharing partnership with a business that sells a non-competing product to your target market.
   The way to structure this partnership is that your partner includes information about your product or service in their marketing materials and in exchange you give them a commission on each sale.
2. Join a local and/or national barter exchange network and trade your products or services for advertising services such as radio or print advertising.
3. Write and distribute a news release telling the media about your business news.
   You can announce a new product or service, a unique way of doing business, a company anniversary, new employees you have hired, a new office location, etc.
4. If you have a website, you can inexpensively drive very targeted customers to your website using the Google Adwords pay per click search engine marketing service.Depending on the keywords you choose, this service can cost as little as ten cents to send a prospective buyer to your website. This marketing tool works wonders when you have a well written sales message on your website.
5. Create step-by-step sales scripts to help you and your sales force make powerful presentations and close more sales.
   Create several responses to each objection you routinely hear from prospective customers and memorise those responses.The more confident you sound when talking to prospective customers, the more those customers will trust you and have faith in your ability to help them. You must also create and memorise several closes so when you are talking to a client, you know how to confidently ask for the sale.

Need to find out more about low cost marketing strategies that really work? Contact John here or call/sms 0414 955 743

So what is Myspace.com? Myspace is a website where anybody in the world can create a free “personal” web page (i.e., my space). Once you have created your personal web page on Myspace, then you can connect your page to other people’s Myspace pages by clicking on a link to request to be a person’s friend.

Once that person agrees to be your friend, then you and that person can email each other, chat with each other, leave comments on each other’s Myspace pages, and read each other’s blogs.

There is no limit to the number of friends you can have and some of the more popular people on Myspace have millions of Myspace friends and have actually become Internet celebrities and have been featured on talk shows.

Over the past year I have been conducting test marketing on Myspace for a couple of my clients and I have discovered that Myspace can be a very good free marketing tool for businesses.

However, Myspace is not for all businesses. The types of business that will do well having a myspace page are the “cool” types of businesses that want to market to people in their 20s and 30s.

Businesses that will have luck marketing on Myspace include bars, clubs, “hip” clothing stores, and cool Internet websites. Here is how to market your business for FREE on Myspace.com:

1. Go to Myspace.com and create a free profile. Make sure to talk first about yourself and then about your business.However, you must consider your Myspace page a personal page where you talk mostly about you and a little about your business. Do not just talk about your business because if you do, people will not want to be your friend.
   You need to focus on the personal aspect such as, “hey this is me and my life. And by the way I run this Internet website that sells cool t-shirts.” If you think of Myspace as a place to network and meet friends FIRST and market your business SECOND, then you will do well on Myspace.
2. Once you have created your Myspace page, click the browse link to find the type of people you want to market to. You can search by gender, age, location, ethnicity, etc.
3. Go to each person’s page and click their “Add to friends” link. The person will either approve you or deny you. If they approve you, your Myspace page and their Myspace page will be connected as being friends.
4. To market your business, post friendly personalised bulletins. When you post a bulletin, a link to your bulletin will be posted on each of your friend’s Myspace pages.If you have 5,000 Myspace friends, than you can literally have a message sent to all 5,000 of these people for free. However, remember that you must be personal with your messages. Talk like you are talking to your best friend. Do NOT talk to people like customers. Myspace is a place for friends and you must respect that.
5. Post friendly comments on your Myspace friends’ pages and include a link to your website.Then, everybody who goes to your friend’s Myspace page will see your comment and your link. Some will click on your picture to become your friend and some will click on the link to go to your website.

Need to find out more about promoting your business on social network sites like MySpace or FaceBook? Contact John here or call/sms 0414 955 743

Your Internet Marketing Plan will define all of the components of your marketing strategy. You will address the details of your market analysis, sales, advertising, and public relations campaigns. The most successful Internet marketing plans integrate both Internet marketing strategies as well as traditional (offline) marketing strategies.

The Topics You Need to Discuss in Your Internet Marketing Plan include:

1. Market Research

Collect, organise, and write down data about the market that is currently buying the product(s) or service(s) you will sell. (From now on we’ll refer to your products or services as "product".) Some areas to consider could include:

• Market dynamics, patterns including seasonality
• Customers-demographics, market segment, target markets, needs, buying decisions
• Product—what’s out there now and what’s the competition offering? Conduct market research by going to google.com and conduct searches on the types of products or services you want to sell
• Current sales in the industry
• Suppliers-vendors that you will need to rely on
• Target Market(s)—To be successful, focus on one or two small niche markets instead of a large general market. Niche markets have far less competition and they tend to be more profitable. If there is one thing you can do to help your odds of being successful in business it is to focus on one or two small niche markets

2. Product

Describe your product (or service). How does your product relate to the market? What does your market need, what do they currently use, what do they need above and beyond current use? 3. Competition Describe your competition. Develop your "unique selling proposition." What makes you stand apart from your competition? Why are you special? Why should a customer choose to do business with you instead of one of your competitors? The better job you can do to differentiate yourself from your competitors, the more success you will have. 4. Mission Statement Write a few sentences that state:

1. "Key market" – who you’re selling to – be very specific!
2. "Contribution" – what you’re selling
3. "Distinction" – your unique selling proposition – why are you different from your competition?

5. Internet Marketing Strategies

Write down the Internet marketing and promotion strategies that you want to use or at least consider using. Strategies to consider include:

• Search Engine Optimisation (SEO). What this means is using optimisation techniques so search engines (Google, Yahoo, MSN) will rank your website within the top 10 search results. By doing this you can get literally thousands of people to your website every day for free.
• Pay Per Click Search Engine Marketing. When you use this service you are bidding on keywords so that your website text ad is displayed when a person conducts a search on a particular keyword or key phrase. Google, Yahoo and MSN all have pay per click internet marketing services.
• Affiliate Marketing. This is where other websites market your products for you and you pay them a commission on each sale. This is an outstanding way to create a successful Internet business.
• Link Exchanges. This is where you and other websites exchanges links to drive traffic to each other’s website. Exchanging links with other websites is also a great way to get better rankings in the search engines. The reason for this is that search engines want to give top rankings to the the websites that are most popular in their category/industry. The best way for the search engines to determine which websites are the most popular is to see who has the most links pointing at their website. That is why getting a lot of links pointing at your website is so important. Two great services for helping you find link exchange partners are LinkMetro and LinkMarket. CAVEAT: Check with a qualified SEO specialist before your embark on any link exchange program. The Search Engine industry changes rapidly and I’ve been getting info that this may soon no longer be a valid strategy. In fact, you could be penalised if you do it the wrong way.
• Write Articles and distribute them online. This is a great way to get tons of one-way links pointed at your website (which search engines love!). I try to write one new article each week and it has gotten me thousands of links pointed at my websites. And remember, the more links that point at your website, the higher search engines will rank your website. And, if getting tons of links pointing at your website wasn’t enough, writing articles will also send targeted traffic to your website and it will make you an expert in your field. The way it works is very simple. You write a 1-page article and use online article distribution services to distribute your article to hundreds other websites, blogs, and ezines (electronic magazines). People them read your articles to learn about your products or services. To find out more contact me direct.
• Write press releases and distribute them online. Just like writing and submitting articles, this is a very simple and extremely effective way to get tons of links pointed at your website. It is also a great way drive targeted traffic to your website.
• Advertise in ezines (also know as an internet newsletter or an internet magazine). This is another simple yet highly effective way to market your products or services online.

6. Offline/Traditional Advertising Strategies

• Networking-Go where your market is, Chamber of Commerce, BNI, etc
• Direct marketing using sales letters, brochures, postcards, flyers, etc.
• Advertising-Print media, directories, billboards, yellow pages, radio, TV
• Training programs-Seminars that you give to increase awareness
• Write articles for magazines, your local newspaper, and other publications read by your industry. Doing this will help you to become known as an expert
• Direct/personal selling
• Publicity/press releases
• Trade shows
• Referral programs
• Co-marketing with businesses that share your target market
• Barter

7. Pricing, Positioning and Branding From the information collected, establish strategies for determining the price of your product, where your product will be positioned in the market and how you will achieve brand awareness. 8. Budget Budget your dollars. What strategies can you afford? How much can you afford to spend per month? 9. Marketing Goals Establish quantifiable marketing goals. This means goals that you can turn into numbers. For instance, your goal might be to gain at least 10 new clients each month or to generate 100 leads per month. 10. Monitor Your Results

• Test and analyze. Identify the strategies that are working.
• Survey customers
• Track sales, leads, visitors to your web site, percent of sales to impressions
• Determine which marketing strategies are producing the most customers and which are producing the least customers
• Measure Return on Investment per each marketing activity

Need to find out more about building your own internet marketing plan? Contact John here or call/sms 0414 955 743

A business card is an integral part of any good marketing plan. For its size and cost, it’s probably the most powerful part. Of course, you can’t expect your business card to tell the whole story about your company. What you should expect it to do is present a professional image people will remember.

A business card can make or break a client’s first impression of your company. In fact, this little card makes as much of an impression as your personal appearance-the suit you wear or the briefcase you carry.

Choose a card style that’s appropriate for your business, industry and personal style. If you’re a funeral director, for example, you don’t want to be caught handing out day-glow cards with cartoon figures on them.

If you’re a mechanic whose specialty is converting old Beetles into dune buggies, a formal, black-on-white engraved card will probably be dropped into the nearest circular file. When crafting a design, start with the style that best supports the business image you wish to project.

To help you get started, here are five different card styles for you to consider:

Basic cards. A basic card is usually printed in black ink on plain white or cream stock. This is a good style to choose when utility is all you need. It’s a no-nonsense approach that can appeal to clients and prospects who would not be impressed by fancy design features-the people who want “just the facts, ma’am.” The design is simple, and the information is clear and concise.

Picture cards. Having your face on your card-whether it’s a photograph, a drawing or a caricature-helps a contact remember you the next time he or she sees you. Images representing a product or service, or a benefit your business provides, can help you communicate your business better than dozens of words. A splash of colour (rather than just black and white) is often helpful on a picture card, too.

Tactile cards. Some cards are distinguished not so much by how they look as by how they feel. They may use non-standard materials, such as metal or wood, or have unusual shapes, edges, folds or embossing. Tactile cards tend to be considerably more expensive than regular cards because they use non-standard production processes such as die cuts. But for some businesses, this more unusual card may be worth the price.

Multi-purpose cards. A card can do more than promote your name and business-it can also serve as a discount coupon, an appointment reminder or some other function. It may also provide valuable information that the average person may need. For example, a hotel may include a map on the back of its card for any guests who are walking around the local area. A card of any type can be made multi-purpose by adding any of these types of features.

Outside-the-box cards. A wildly original, fanciful or extravagant presentation can draw extra attention. Creativity knows no bounds-except the amount of money you wish to spend. Some examples are cards made of chocolate or that folded out into a miniature box to keep small items in.

And here’s a tip: One of the best business card designers around South-East Queensland is Jason Cane, from Scream Advertising. Give Jason a call 07 3324 1805 and you’ll see what I mean. To save even more money, get Jason to give you a print price as well . . . you’ll get a nice surprise.

Once you’ve settled on a basic idea for your business card, it’s time to head to the printer. There are four primary considerations when ordering business cards:

Weight. Most business cards are printed on 80-pound cover stock.

Finish. Of the three available-smooth, linen and laid-the smooth finish is the most popular.

Color. Right now, two-colour cards predominate. If you’re selecting from a catalogue, there are between five and 15 standard colours to choose from. If you have another ink colour in mind, your printer can show you a Pantone Matching System book, which includes every shade under the sun.

Quantity. It generally pays to print more cards rather than fewer, because the printer’s cost is primarily in the set-up.

One Final Tip

Though this may sound like obvious advice, it might cost you another trip to the printer if you don’t heed it: Include the essentials. This means your name, title, company name, address, phone number (or numbers, if you want to include your cell), e-mail and Web site. If someone wants to contact you after receiving your card, you sure as heck want them to be able to.