One of the strongest marketing tools you have is your customers so why not use them to help get your message out and help build your business. A strong testimonial will allow you to instantaneously enhance your credibility, differentiate yourself and improve your close rate.

A testimony is a written or verbal statement about a customer experience that person has had by working with you or your product. To really be impactful they must be prepared in a way that prospective customers can relate to. Buyers make decisions based upon an emotional connection and being able to identify with someone’s situation and desire for the same result, will improve your conversion rate significantly.

A well prepared client testimonial can make the difference between a successful sale and lost opportunity. A successful testimonial should consist of the following attributes:

• Situation analysis – what were the challenges being faced and what brought them to the need to seek out a solution?
• Solution – what was the solution they decided on and why? What was different about what you were offering compared to your competitors?
• Outcome – What was the result or outcome? The more specific this statement can be, the more impactful the testimonial.

Very often you will see testimonials that consists of intangible statements “Company ABC was a pleasure to work with” or “Company ABC has great service delivery”. These types of statements may be nice to hear but are not effective in the process. The strongest testimonials include the three statements above, for example:

“I have been struggling with a way to reduce my advertising spending but once I started using ezines, I reduced my spending by 50%”

See how much more impactful example 2 is compared to the “feel good” testimonial. Testimonials can be found in a number of different forms:

• Statements on website, sales pages and landing pages. -Whitepapers -Case studies -Letters of recommendations -Verbal recommendations -Video testimonials

No matter what the form, if the structure includes the three elements above, you testimonial will be successful in enhancing your credibility, setting yourself apart from your competition and increasing your conversion rate.

Next time you are trying to launch a new product, pitch a new idea or market yourself, try including a well structured testimonial in a variety of different formats and structure your sales page, your presentation and your key messages around the situation and solution provided in your testimonial. The results will come!