5 More Easy Credibility Ideas If You're Asking for Testimonials

If you’re asking for testimonials, you have to start building credibility first. Here are five more ideas to help you:

Soar with Eagles

Reputation is everything in business. When you’re just starting online, there is sometimes a tendency to joint venture with anyone who is “already doing it”, throw yourself into marketing in any old product or say “yes” to business or niche peers you don’t know well.

Be careful not to include or promote irrelevant or less-than-top-quality bonuses or products.

It only takes one less-than-honest associate to drag your name down into the mire. So be choosy – for the sake of your customers and clients.

Answer Your Customers and Clients

If they have questions and you answer them, you can start asking for testimonials. Even though that might seem basic, nothing kills a budding relationship faster than silence. Josephine Schmoe buys your eBook and likes it. You have convinced her you’re the top-of-the-trees expert on paper quilling, her obsessive hobby (and yours). She’s enjoying the posts on your Facebook Page, and impulsively she asks you a question.

It’s a serious question: Perhaps she wants to know how to find out more about your next workshop, or she wants to know which type of paper is best for quilling flowers.

If you’re not there daily on your Facebook Page, you won’t see that question, and as a result, you won’t answer it.

Or maybe you’re worried that if you answer one question for her, she’ll ask more (and so will everyone else).

That’s skating perilously close to thinking you’re too good, too busy, or too important to answer questions, by the way. When you consider that answering questions authoritatively and helpfully before asking for testimonials is the best and most straightforward way to demonstrate that you’re the real deal, it becomes inexplicable why any business owner would ignore the questions. Yet that’s what about ninety percent of all businesses with a Facebook page do.

Use Targeted Press Releases

Sending press releases out to all and sundry is what amateurs do. Paying to position your press releases in major news services is how to build authority while still spreading the news instantly.

Gather Recommendations from Industry Peers and Fellow Experts

Offering a joint venture project that will directly benefit and thrill their audience is a great way to quickly get to know an industry expert.

Just make sure when you start asking for testimonials, their endorsement is relevant to your audience. It will detract if no one knows your celebrity because she operates in a field your demographics don’t bother with.

Give Samples

It doesn’t matter whether these are free samples or “lite” versions of your product. Samples are a great way to whet your ideal customer’s appetite – and make her want more.

Just make sure any sample you provide is stand-alone complete. It should perform one task or function to show people how it can help them on many tasks or functions. (In other words, it should be a microcosm of your “world” – not just an incomplete piece.)

Your sample should leave your customer saying: “Oh my goodness! If that bacon-wrapped water chestnut was that good, I’d love to try her entrées!” Likewise, your simple free template should leave potential clients saying: “Wow, what a great template! I’m going to buy her twenty-pack deal.”

Social media has made it very easy to connect with your ideal audience if you’re asking for testimonials. Take advantage of it wisely. While these ideas will undoubtedly help you grow your reach, there are other ways we haven’t shared in this blog post due to time and space.