Word of mouth is THE most powerful form of marketing.
Testimonials are about building word of mouth directly into your sales process.
There is one marketer who claims from extensive testing that testimonials are THE most crucial part of an online sales letter (apart from the order link.)
I’ve even seen a successful sales page which was simply testimonial after testimonial down the page. What others say about you can be more persuasive than anything you ever say.
But…
That doesn’t mean that every testimonial helps sell your product, and how do you know which ones sell your product and which don’t.
Here are 3 testimonials that have been tested on “Word of Mouth Magic”.
Can you pick which created sales and which lost them?
“Over a 2 year period your course created a $300,000 a year income. My sales doubled in 3 months from the time I set up a disciplined referral program. This is true and I can document it.”
- Brian McDonald,
Austin, Texas“Ever since I was lucky enough to discover Martin Russell’s Word of Mouth method, I have included his URL and philosophy as part of my teachings. Before Word of Mouth Magic, it traditionally took a North American 3 years to build an entrepreneurial business which would entirely support oneself, and an additional 5 years of advertising before one could totally depend on a word of mouth reputation. Martin Russell has indeed taught the hungry entrepreneurs “how to fish”… instantly!”
Diana B Cherry,
Canada“Word of Mouth Magic” has armed me so that sales situations are a more relaxed and predictable. Being able to ‘mute’ the negative challenges and continue the flow is magical. Thanks”
- Dave Deeley.
Dental Salesperson, Ontario, Canada
All 3 of these have had statistical testing to the 99% significance level.
Here are the answers.
Only the middle one actually helped me get more sales. The other two caused people not to buy!
Why?
I don’t know.
I could guess the losing testimonials don’t connect as well with my ideal prospects, but the bottomline is that rather than guess I prefer to add it into the test and let my customers decide.
In fact if you had checked out the “Word of Mouth Magic” sales page you would probably been shown the winner while the others were left off, and you would have had your answer that way.
But I don’t need to calculate all this unless I am pulling it apart to show you.
All I do is simply click a button and the MuVar testing software adjusts the page to maximize sales.
Nice huh. Yet another way to make your word of mouth systematic.
-Martin Russell
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4 Comments
I’m going to guess that the middle one increased sales because it is the one that doesn’t look like any of the 4 million spam emails we all get every day.
Diana makes statements that sound genuine, and as you well know. Word of Mouth marketing itself is effective because it is genuine.
The other two sound more like With this rubber band around your toe, You will make 8 million dollars and lose 300 pounds in 14 minutes”
We’re overflowing with lofty promises, and most people look at them and assume that they are fake. It doesn’t matter if they are 100% true. The customers assume that big statements come with fake products.
Yes Erik. It’s interesting how many people believe “hype” is a sales technique, when it actually UNsells people.
Thank goodness for testing
Martin, as a matter of fact, I was guessing myself the testimonial in the middle was the winner before reading any further (like Erik, as I read now.)
My thought was the capitalized letters may be considered SHOUTING and perhaps even SELLING. I personally would test them again, this time though without the ALL CAPS and without any emphasize like bold tags, underlining, or things like that, just in plain simple format like the one in the middle.
Why I think it would be good to test again is because the second testimonial may be a bit too long?
But I think you already tested that as well…
~Marcus
The all-caps is actually an artifact of my blog theme. On the sales page it is bold, but not caps.
Even so, the extra emphasis inside testimonials is common, and people may be surprised that it is worth testing a plain version just like you mention.
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