It's been said before that one unsatisfied customer will go out and tell 10-20 of their friends and family about their unsatisfactory experience, but the opposite doesn't seem to occur. Your customers, vendors, suppliers and associates might think you walk on water, but they won't seem to tell everyone else how great you are unless you show them how and give them an actual reason to do it.

There are many ways to get testimonials from your customers. You can actually hold contests for best testimonials. Request letters of endorsements from your customers, vendors, suppliers, and any associates you have. Use those to promote your products and services. When you use testimonials to add credibility to what you do, you're letting your customers do the marketing for your business.

Testimonials from your customers are one of the strongest marketing tools available.

What is a testimonial? It's a statement, usually written by your customer, saying nice things about some aspect of your business, you, your employees or your products and services. If you want to use the testimonials in marketing efforts, you need to get a written release from your customers who wrote the testimonials giving your business the right to use the testimonial in marketing.

The best time to obtain the release is at the time the customer delivers the testimonial to you.. You might tell them you want to share their insights with your other customers or some other complimentary statement.

When you use these testimonials, you want to weave them into your marketing story. Use them to embellish and support your claims and promises. For every benefit or objective you need to overcome in your products or services, it is the best scenario to have testimonials establishing or referencing each of those benefits or objections.

You can take the next logical step and establish that your business delivers what it promises. This becomes a very powerful statement.

You don't need to use all of what it says in each testimonial letter. Here are some choices or ways you can use testimonials.

You can print the entire letter.

You can print one sentence.

You can print one word.

Print with a picture of the person whose testimonial it is.

Print the person's initials only.

Print the entire name of the person providing the testimonial.

You can actually do video or audio recordings of a person's testimonial.

Ideally, you want to use all of these techniques. The benefit of using testimonials on your web site can help link popularity in search engine results as well. Whether you use this marketing tool for both inbound or outbound reasons, you will have an advantage over your competition. Check them out next time you visit their office or web site and see for what people are saying about their business practices. You'll be amazed!

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Copyright 2005