Sound Solutions: North Bank Audio Solutions

As I’ve shared before, you can easily leverage testimonials as powerful positioning tools in your business by asking your highest profile associates to vouch for you as well as offering testimonials to those you know with a large amount of visibility in your target market.

Now I’m sharing the anatomy of an effective testimonial. I’ll admit that while I already knew this formula, I pretty much just lifted it from the notes I took at Adam Urbanski’s “Attract Clients Like Crazy” bootcamp this month in Newport Beach California.

Here we go:

1. First share your name and website. Your company name can be included, but keep it brief. The main thing is you want to send them to a web page that is easy to spell (since many testimonials are in audio or video formats) and is relevant to those who will be listening. Make sure it has an opt-in box with an offer for something valuable to the folks who will see the testimonial.
2. Next, share a brief sentence about what you do. Focus on the benefits of your work rather than the process.
3. Now, share where you were before you worked with the person or company you are vouching for. This is the part where you “bring the pain”. Explain the problems you were having.
4. Explain the experience you had of the service or product you are giving a testimonial for. Again, don’t focus so much on the process, but on the value of the services received.
5. This is the most important part. Tell the audience the benefits and results you got from using the service or product. Be as specific as possible. Include numbers and examples if you can. Money speaks, so if you can include financial figures, that is ideal.
6. The last step is optional, but suggested. Include the “result of the result”. So, if a new program enabled you to make an extra $30,000 this year, explain what that will mean to you in human terms. For example, you can spend more time with your family and friends and take that exotic vacation you’ve always dreamed about without having to check your email once.

Follow this basic outline and you can’t fail. Another thing - when you’re meeting people you have worked with or think you might work with, get a photo together. Then, either of you give each other testimonials, you’ll have something to post with it as a credibility factor.

The last tip is… ALWAYS tell the truth. You will do a disservice to yourself, your prospects and the person you are giving a testimonial for if you make things up or fabricate any of the above.

Did I miss anything? Do you have any big testimonial stories, examples, wins or horror stories to share? Join the conversation by posting a comment below.

I recently gave an endorsement to my good friend and client Adam Urbanski of The Marketing Mentors for his upcoming Attract Clients Like Crazy event.

Well, if you’re on any of Adam’s lists, you should have already gotten his message about my testimonial, but I wanted to share you the link with you myself so that you could see what he did.

Have a look for yourself:
http://www.northbankaudio.com/mmtestimonial

What struck me about this was, not only did this testimonial become a vehicle for a powerful promotion that Adam could send out to his list, but it also became a promotion for me as well! I’ve already seen a few new opt-ins directly from this promotion he sent out.

The real reason I’m sharing this with you is two fold:

#1) I want you to learn from what Adam did.

Make sure you’re asking your clients, associates and even contractors or employees for testimonials.

When you’re asking for testimonials, coach your clients on what you’re looking for.

I’m going to follow this up soon with the anatomy of an effective testimonial, but listen to the one I recorded for Adam at the link above for the basic format.

#2) I want you to learn from what I did.

Are you offering testimonials to your associates who are highly visible in your target market? If the answer is  ‘no’, you’re leaving money on the table.

I knew that giving a testimonial to someone with as much  visibility in my target market as Adam has would pay off  for me just as much as it would for him.

Notice that I plugged my website in the beginning and end  of the audio I recorded. Whenever introducing yourself,  don’t use your company name - use your website.

Here’s that link again:
http://www.northbankaudio.com/mmtestimonial

One more thing… whenever dealing with testimonials, whether you are giving one or asking for one, audio and video is much better than just text.

You can truly identify with your audience and authentically present a message in these forms. Plus, different people like to learn in different ways and you need to make all of your information as easy to consume as possible.

Do you have any testimonial tips to share? Any big wins or horror stories? Do you absolutely disagree with what I just said?

Join the conversation. Add a comment below.

So, you probably know by now that you should be submitting articles to article directories by now, so I won’t bore with you why. I’ll just let you check out Article Marketer to find out more on that topic - they’re the experts. What a lot of people aren’t doing though is effectively linking their work together. What do I mean by this? You should have your body of work (your blog, podcast, articles, videos, and social media etc.) all refer to eachother. Here are a few examples:

1. When you create a blog post, include a link to a relevent vidoe that you posted on YouTube.
2. When you post something to Twitter, link to a related podcast, blog post or article you submitted to ezinearticles.com.
3. Post the videos you put on YouTube to your Facebook account.
4. When you upload videos to YouTube, include a link to your free report or teleseminar recording opt-in page for lead generation.
5. Link your blog to your social networking sites. Like Twitter, MySpace, Linkedin and Facebook.

The reasons for doing these things are two fold:

1. You want human beings to click on these links. This is pretty obvious, but remember, the more ways you can display your information, the better. Some of your prospects and clients might love to read blogs, but others might do better with video or audio.
2. You want search engines to know where your stuff is online. The logic goes like this - if you link to your YouTube video on your blog, then you are letting Google and Yahoo know that the video exists, thus pushing that video up in order of importance. The same goes with your articles, blog posts, social media, podcasts, etc.

One more tip - for those of you who are blogging (and I hope that’s all of you) may I make the suggestion, that you go a step further with these suggestions? If you take a look at my blog, you’ll notice that my Twitter updates are syndicated on the lower right hand side. This is done for a similar reason as I explained above. People might click on my updates and go to my Twitter profile and because search engines like fresh, new content, my blog site is constantly changing each time I post to twitter. You’ll also notice that I’ve integrated my podcast in a similar way. This is a slightly more advanced way of linking your blogs and social media, but all the more effective. You can actually do this on your static websites as well with a tool called Feedburner. If you’re not using Feedburner, shame on you. No, but seriously, check it out. It’s free. I’ll probably include some video tutorial of how to do these things in the near future, so make sure to subscribe to my feed so you get them as soon as I post them.

So, I wouldn’t consider myself to be an expert on the topic of SEO, but I’m learning. I’ve stumbled upon a great tool that you should definitely take advantage of.

It’s HubSpot’s Website Grader. You simply input your website and it tells you what’s good and bad about your site, with suggestions on how to fix it.

I don’t buy into the idea that SEO is everything when it comes to online marketing, but it is a piece of the puzzle that should not be overlooked.

Once you have made some adjustments to your site based on the feedback from this tool, I suggest using Google’s very own solution: Google Webmaster Tools. It will tell you what’s wrong with your site, help you gleam important info about your site directly from Google’s database and share info about your site with Google.

I’m not asking this question from a political perspective in any sense. I am a Barack Obama supporter, but by no means do I assume that all or even most of the readers of my blog, listeners of my podcast, my clients and colleagues are.

What I do expect from you, regardless of your political sensibilities, is to learn from the success of his political campaign from a marketing perspective.

Here is a few of things I noticed and admired about his campaign from a marketing perspective. If you have anything to add to the list, please add a comment with your thoughts. I may come back and add more as I think of them.

1. The consistency of the message and the brand.
   Everything from catch phrases to the typeface he used to the color schemes and imagery. Take a look at any of his YouTube videos of campaign events. They all start off with the same, simple black background and white text.
2. Everything funneled back to Obama.
   Even though he had a team of people working for him, everything the campaign did came back to him. His campaign was uniquely unified.
3. He used many forms of media - both traditional and new:
   This is the first major political campaign to really focus on online marketing. Their new media tactics included email marketing, online video, social networking, blogging and podcasting. Their campaign efforts became viral and many of these new forms of media are quite inexpensive. Of course, they also employed traditional tactics of canvassing, TV, radio and print ads and phone banking.
4. He got his supporters involved:
   The Obama campaign’s biggest strength was in their humongous list of donors and volunteers. This can be partially attributed to his understanding of his target markets and how well his message resonated with them.

I’m sure I’ll think of dozens of things to add to this list, but feel free to help me out by posting comments on this post. You can also include what you learned from a marketing perspective from other political campaigns as well. Feel free to include things you learn to do as well as things you learned not to do.