850 – A powerful way to gain business: Tom talks Testimonials

Episode 850 - Testimonials
[00:00:08] Welcome to Screw the Commute. The entrepreneurial podcast dedicated to getting you out of the car and into the money, with your host, lifelong entrepreneur and multimillionaire, Tom Antion.

[00:00:24] Hey everybody! It's Tom here with episode 850 of Screw the Commute podcast. Today, we're going to talk about testimonials and how powerful they can be to help you sell stuff. And of course, this is part of my copywriting901.com series on copywriting. And, you know, I took a break on episode 849 and talked to Brian Richey. I put it right in the middle of the copywriting because I was able to get a hold of the guy, and it's such an important topic for you on ergonomics. You know, my back went out crazy from sitting in this chair for 30 years helping you. I'm sacrificing my health for you. But anyway, I got my wake up call, and I got his book. It's called back Exercise, stabilize, mobilize, and Reduce Pain. And. Wow, is it great. Interviewed him to talk to you all about how you can keep from crying like a baby, like I've been doing the last couple of months. So that was episode 849. And of course, anytime you want to get to a back episode, you go to screwthecommute.com, slash, and then the episode number. Brian was 849. Today, Testimonials, is 850 and we started this series at 836 and they're only about five minutes long. So all of these little things for copywriting can really help you sell more. And of course, if you like our training episodes, go to screwthecommute.com/training where we got nearly 500 training episodes, and then we've got another 400 and so interview episodes and of course, check out my mentor program at GreatInternetMarketingTraining.com and pick up a copy of our automation e-book at screwthecommute.com/automatefree. Okay, let's talk about testimonials. Now I want to make a distinction between stories and testimonials. I covered stories in episode 843. Screwthecommute.com/843. See, in a story you are telling the prospect about the success of someone you helped. In a testimonial, which what we're talking about today, the person you helped or who is promoting you tells how great you are. Now there are two types of testimonials and three formats of testimonials. The two types are number one pat on the back and the other is results based. So here's an example of a pat on the back testimonial from a speaking engagement I did Tom did a great job speaking to our managers and they had a really good time. All right. So that was just pat on the back. Here's an example of a results based testimonial. We track the results. After implementing the internet and digital marketing ideas, Tom Antion brought to us when he spoke to our yearly sales meeting. When he spoke to at or yearly sales meeting. 30 days after putting his ideas into play, we reduced our costs by 12% and saw an immediate rise in sales of 18%. See? That's results based. Now, for most markets, results based testimonials are more powerful to help you sell stuff.

[00:03:39] So those are the two types of testimonials: Pat on the back and results based. Now let's talk about formats for testimonials. And there's three of them. Written audio and video written is the most common. And I would say kind of tied for the least powerful. The reader could think that you just made up the testimonial. And you know what? The reason they think that because many shysters and, you know, rip off people do to make a written testimonial more credible whenever possible, include the full name of the person, their website or LinkedIn profile, and their picture before and after. Pictures are extremely powerful and and they have become somewhat regulated by the government because of rip off advertisers who were faking them or reversing their order. Listen to this. I heard of one company got in trouble because they were trying to sell some supplement to make build muscle or something. So they took a bodybuilder and you would say, okay, he's a fat, dumpy guy. And then he took the supplement and got these big muscles, right. That's what you they want you to think. But what they did is they took an actual body bodybuilder who was actually muscular, and then they took his after picture after he did a big tournament or, you know, thing where he did his bodybuilding stuff and then he turned into, you know, he started eating like crazy again and got a big gut on him. So that was the after picture was where he had a big gut.

[00:05:22] They put that as the before picture. They switched him, in other words, to make you think he was dumpy and then got muscular from their supplement. So that's totally a rip off. All right. So uh, so they're kind of regulating those before and afters if you're into weight loss and things like that. They are very powerful though. And speaking about pictures to make your testimonial more credible. Yeah, I know you can't always get people to agree to have their picture and full name. I'm just telling you whenever possible, it'll make the testimonial stronger. Now, there are times when you are helping people with sensitive things like rape counseling or maybe a serious medical counseling. Or maybe it has to do with underage people and a testimonial from their parent. In these cases, you can use fake names, but you must disclose that to the reader. And in virtually all cases, the reader will understand because of the nature of the topic. And that notice could read something like. Due to the sensitive nature of the topic, we have changed the names on the testimonials to protect their privacy. And people say, oh, okay, I get it, that's fine. And then they read the testimonials. All right. Another thing on testimonials. If you feel compelled to put a long testimonial in your sales letter or somewhere in a video sales letter or something, highlight the best things that the person said. Because scammers are not going to read this long, dense text testimonial.

[00:06:55] So bold or color or something. Something really nice that they said about you so the scammer can grab that with their eyes as they skim through, because they are never going to read the whole thing. All right, the next format is audio and you just don't see many of those nowadays. I had a whole page of them somewhere on my site. I never use it much anymore, but there is some extra power in hearing someone in their own voice to sing your praises. And one easy way to get these is to get that widget I've talked about in other episodes called Speakpipe. It's a cheap widget you can put on your website where people can actually leave you a voicemail, and it comes to your email and tells you, hey, you got to Speakpipe voicemail and you can actually listen to it in your email and then respond right back to the person. All right. But those can be used for testimonials, too. I think you can go up to three minutes or I don't know. If you pay you can go longer, but you know, really want it more than three minutes anyway. So that's speakpipe.com. Now the most powerful testimonial is video because they can see and hear the person saying great things about you in their own words. And here's one on video that I got to tell you about. And I don't think I definitely did not invent this, but I've used it to to great advantage called a.

[00:08:17] 45 degree video testimonial. Now see, what happens is if you take a person that you've helped that's not media savvy and they're not used to being on video. They turn deer in the headlights and you got to do 50 takes to get a good testimonial out of them. So we do what we call 45 degree testimonials, where we have somebody off camera ask the person a question, and we tell the person to repeat the question and give the answer. And we've done this a lot in our in our $50,000 video. We, we did about this retreat center and it didn't cost 50,000, but it's worth 50,000 and it made millions of dollars. But anyway, well, I'll just tell you where you can see that. So you can see these in action. If you go to greatinternetmarketingtraining.com and scroll down you'll see a little monitor says watch the video. You'll see almost all the testimonials are 45 degrees. So what we had is we had our assistants sitting on the couch out of the camera range, looking at the person giving the testimonial, and that person is not looking at the camera. They're looking about 45 degrees off the camera, so they don't turn deer in the headlights. And then the assistant would say, hey, what's the best thing you liked about coming to the retreat center? And then we'd cut that part out, and then you would just leave the part from the testimonial giver that says, well, the best thing I liked about the retreat center was blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

[00:09:50] And so in 1 or 2 takes, we got beautiful testimonials out of people. So that's a 45 degree testimonial. It looks fine on video, but you just cut out the person asking the question, and that's how you get the nice testimonial. So these are powerful, powerful things that you need. If you don't have a lot of testimonials now you need to pay attention and start grabbing them from people that you have helped, especially right after you've helped them when they're most excited about the things you've done for them and have. Have your cell phone ready and you know, people like your speakers out there. People come up and say nice things to you after the event, hey, say, would you mind if I videoed that? And most of them are so excited and they're publicity hounds themselves. They love to do it. So you grab it right there. I know I got one from Mark Victor Hansen, the chicken soup guy, and he really loved me because I made him a fortune in his mega seminars. But anyway, I needed a testimonial from him, and we're setting up before a big event one time, and I know the minute he's done speaking, he's flying off to Russia or something. So I said, hey, Mark, I need this testimonial for so and so. Okay? I grabbed my cell phone, boom, took the video, and now I have this testimonial and it would have taken me months and months and months to get it from him as he took off and the next time I saw him or something.

[00:11:12] So yeah, you got to pay attention to these, grab them and use them because they will help you sell a lot more. And if you want the in depth part of all of these things, this is just a primer on testimonials. And there's 31 elements I've uncovered in in copywriting. And I put them all in a copywriting 901 course, the Fast Track writing Words that sell, and it's only 297 bucks compared to I spent 4500 bucks one for just a headline writing course one time. See? So it's the most comprehensive best you'll ever have in this. And then also, don't get sucked into the AI copywriting, the artificial intelligence. It's it might be good for a start to get you going, but if you don't understand these concepts that work for your audience, with your product and service and know how to test them, you know you're going to. Yeah, it's easy to hit a button and get a sales letter from artificial intelligence, but when it doesn't work, you won't know why and you'll waste a lot of time. So anyway, copywriting901.com if you want to whole schmeer, get into my mentor program at GreatInternetMarketingtraining.com where all this stuff is included as part of your deal. All right, that's my story and we'll stick it to it and we'll catch you on the next episode. See you later.