Testimonials – SCCMH Podcast 12 [podcast + transcript]

“Testimonials: What to do when you have no testimonials – Why You Need Them”

 

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The Transcript

Jim Edwards: Hey guys! It’s Jim Edwards here and welcome back to another exciting episode of our Sales Copywriting and Content Marketing Hacks podcast with, yeah…no.. hacks!

What did I do?… I screwed it up…

Stew Smith: Should we start over?

Jim Edwards: Nope. Nope. Nope. You just have to do this!

Welcome to another episode of the Sales Copywriting and Content Marketing Hacks podcast with Jim Edwards and…

Stew Smith: Stew Smith!

Jim Edwards: And today, we’re going to talk about what do you do if you don’t have any testimonials yet and…

Why you need them…

Now, this came about as a result…

Stew had the idea for this podcast up because he’s like, “Hey dude, didn’t you do something?… Didn’t you say something about testimonials?”

I said, “Yeah, I was letting the chickens out with Jim. And we talked about testimonials”… And Stew started talking about something he was doing…

And so… Tell everybody what you’re doing with testimonials and what happened to you last night.

And then, we’ll talk about testimonials!

Stew Smith: Well I’ve always noticed, if I , on Instagram specifically and… Facebook to a degree… if I throw in sales or pictures of books and things like that… I get a so, so response. But…

But if I put a testimonial… NO picture of a book… just a testimonial up there of what someone did and…

How they crushed some special forces training program and then…

Tag the book in the post, so they can swipe and see other pictures of the books and other things.

And I’ll tell you what… I tagged the book… took pictures of the book… so they could swipe and see what they’re getting or… what I was talking about.

And I also threw in tee shirts in there and… I thank them for their service.

“Thank you for putting in the extra effort of becoming well prepared and serving your country.”

Right….

And it’s something like that. And then it just blew up!!!

And it was… just be honest with you… it was, I hadn’t posted anything all day and it was eight o’clock last night.

And I was like, man, I need to figure out something to post… What can I post?…

And I just happened to go through some, some texts and… some kid texted me and says…

“Hey, I just finished selection. I got selected and I crushed it! Thank you so much.”

Right? And I was like, “okay, I’m going to post this.”

And then I just decided to tag a lot of stuff and post stuff.

So, I sold books… I sold tee shirts and… I’m still processing orders right now! You know? And it’s been 15 hours later…

Jim Edwards: Wow!

Stew Smith: Yeah.

Jim Edwards: And so that’s… and that’s pretty cool because like… So, this dude basically green beret selection…

The class that everybody talks about – Q School… that is just like a GORUCK event that lasts for three weeks!

Stew Smith: Yeah. Yeah.

The selection program is…

Jim Edwards: Just to be able to then then go into training to be a green beret…

The guy basically said he crushed it because of you helping him or…

The book helping them to get into really great shape…

And anybody who knows anything about that process, to hear somebody say that they’re like… damn! That’s the stuff!

Stew Smith: Yeah! Exactly! So, that is why you need testimonials…

Jim Edwards: But testimonials that are relevant to your ideal customers…

Stew Smith: Absolutely!

Jim Edwards: Because… if it was somebody who was saying, “Hey, you know, I really increased my flexibility and I crushed it… in the 5k I ran for big brothers and big sisters of Greater Dubuque”

That’s NOT a testimonial that’s going to motivate your core audience!

Stew Smith: That’s a very good point!

So, I think those are great and you should have them…on some testimonial page. But…

For you to use a testimonial as a piece of your daily content or say weekly content… it needs to be something specific to your audience!

Jim Edwards: And a SPECFIC result! That’s the other thing…. there’s several different types of testimonials you can get…

You can get a results oriented testimonial, which is basically, “Hey, I got this… this happened… I did this… this happened.”

And it’s typically something that people want!

You know, “I bought Stew’s book and I used it for six months while… I was a senior in high school. I graduated… I crushed basic. I went through on an x ray contract and… I crushed, I’m Q school and… now I’ve got orders to begin training as a green beret.”

Stew Smith: Yeah.

Jim Edwards: That is a great testimonial!

A testimonial that says, “Hey, I bought Stew’s book and I really liked it.”

Stew Smith: Yeah.

Jim Edwards: Now that’s not as a filler. That ain’t a bad testimonial.

When you’ve got a big ass long list… every testimonial is great.

When you’re listing them all off… If you were going to make that a feature of an advertising or marketing campaign.

I think you might be a little disappointed with the results that you got.

If you did the, “Hey, I like… Stew’s book was really good, you know, and… I used it to win and… you know, I used it in my mind to get in shape to win a call of duty or Xbox tournament.”

I mean, that probably isn’t it…

So, those are the Holy Grail!

Now, what are some other types of testimonials that you… Let’s talk as we talk about each type…

Why do we want those?

We want those results oriented testimonials because…

Those are the ones that everybody wants to see when they’re evaluating your service or… solution or… they pay!

Stew Smith: They want to make sure that they are joining a club, so to speak… of people that saw good results in what they’re about to buy!

Jim Edwards: Right! Because nobody wants to be the first!

In the end though, what people are trying to do and… what you’re trying to do with testimonials is…

To offer proof that what you say is TRUE and what you offer will work!

So, as far as… we’ll talk at the end about how you get testimonials.

But let’s talk about the types of testimonials. Okay.

So, the first is results oriented testimonial.

The second is an endorsement of you and your company where people would say… you know what, I’ve been, so in the case of Stew… it would be something like

“I’ve been working out for years. I’ve always gotten great results with Stew Smith and I trust him. I’ve been his PT Club for five years and I’m really happy with everything I’ve ever bought from Stew” or…

“Stew’s a great guy. I went to college with him at the Naval Academy and I’ve known him for 30 years and he’s a great guy.”

Something where they’re not specifically saying that they got specific results.

You know, like I could say…

“Before I started working out with Stew, I could only do about 42 pushups. The last PT test I took with Stu, I did a hundred pushups, 98 setups, 27 pull ups and ran a mile and a half, 11 minutes and 26 seconds. Oh, and by the way, I’m a 51 year old guy…”

That is a hell of a results oriented testimonial and that one… and that’s true.

So, but the point is the second… if you can’t get a result or in the testimonial, then get somebody to say…

“You know, I’ve used Stew’s other products and gotten great results.”

So, like say you write a new book and nobody’s had a chance to use it yet, or you come out with something that…

You can get people who bought your other books to give you testimonials.

You can also use results… You can use results oriented testimonials from other products as long as you make sure that people understand that… they’re for another product.

You know, here’s what others are saying about stew Smith and his other books.

So, when you first come out with one, you may not have any for that specific book or… that specific product, but…

You can use testimonials for something else as long as… people understand it was for something else.

Then the third type of thing, that testimonials that you can use… is a celebrity or expert endorsement.

And that would be somebody… when I was first getting started, I was fortunate enough just by luck…

Jay Conrad Levinson, the Guy who wrote all the original guerilla marketing books… You remember him, right?

Stew Smith: Yep, sure.

Jim Edwards: Well, I wrote my book and I loved his books and… I had just sent him emails over the years are saying, “Hey, love your books” and all that.

And he was kind enough to respond.

And so when I finished my How to Write and Publish Your Own Ebook in as little as Seven Days book with Joe Vitale…

I sent Jay a copy and I was just like…

“Hey man, I’m just taking a stab in the dark… If you could give me a testimonial or an endorsement or… just say a couple words about this book, I would be forever in your debt.”

Within seven hours, I got a response back from him and… here’s what he gave me the display quote to put on my website…

And actually, I don’t have it on there anymore because I filled it up all with testimonials and stuff, but…

He basically said “If William Shakespeare wanted to write an ebook on the Internet… he would spend a lot of times studying Jim and Joe’s book.”

Now, again, it doesn’t mean anything as far as what was actually said, but…

What it meant was the world to me as far as to have an expert like that to say just something cool about me!

And that really helped me a lot!

And so, sometimes just having that celebrity endorsement, that expert endorsement, you know…

If Admiral so-and-so gave you an endorsement or… you know, the ex-commander of the Naval Special Warfare Training Department gave you an endorsement…

That would mean big stuff with your audience.

They wouldn’t necessarily have to endorse a specific thing, but just endorse you as a person.

Stew Smith: Right.

Jim Edwards: So, really what you’re after… Well, any comments on what I’ve said so far?…

Stew Smith: No. No. That’s, that’s a lot more than I would have, uh, taken it.

I haven’t even thought about a celebrity expert endorsement, but… that’s a cool way to do it!

Jim Edwards: You can get so many people to endorse you!

Stew Smith: I know! I just never even thought about it, but… that’s a great way to do it.

Jim Edwards: And all you would need to do is just ask them… you know, you could go to naval special warfare and ask them…

Stew Smith: They can’t endorse products and stuff like that

Jim Edwards: They might be able to endorse you.

Stew Smith: I’m not sure.

Jim Edwards: Someone who’s not there anymore. Someone who is retired can

Stew Smith: Yeah. Like some of these famous navy seals… special forces… spec ops guys… now on the Internet that you can find.

Jim Edwards: Yeah

Stew Smith: That’s a great idea.

Jim Edwards: You’ve got that MMA dude… You’ve got Jeff… Yeah, you got all them.

I mean, you got a whole bunch of guys that could give you endorsements.

Stew Smith: Yeah… Actually I’ve actually done that…. You know, it’s funny because my To Through and After podcast series…

I do with these guys, they all say, “I started my journey with your books.”

You know… Now it’s 20 years later. Yeah! I’ve been doing this for a while.

So, it’s a great little… I need to print that out or pull that video!

Great idea! Great idea!

Jim Edwards:  Yeah! Yeah!

Stew Smith: Great idea! Love it! Love it!

Jim Edwards:  You’re Welcome… I’ll take my usual percentage, which is nothing but… pain and suffering in a harder workout next week.

So, here’s the thing though… Why? Why do we want these testimonials?

Intrinsically? Why? Why do we want them and why do people want to see him?

And it comes down to a single word. What’s that word Stew?

It starts with a P…

Stew Smith: Hmm.

I don’t know.

Jim Edwards:  R… It’s like we’re playing hangman…

O… O…

Stew Smith: Proof. Proof. Proof took me too long.

Jim Edwards:  Yes! Proof! That’s really what we’re after… We’re after proof…

Stew Smith: That our stuff works to the world…

Jim Edwards:  That our stuff works and that we’re telling the truth!

That it actually works… It’s one thing for me to tell you…

It’s another thing for other people to tell you… And as a consumer, we are hungry for proof as well!

And I mean if you, if you need proof of this… look no further than Amazon.

What is an integral part of Amazon’s marketing and whole buying process?…

It’s a five star rating…

Stew Smith: Yup

Jim Edwards: ….which is based on how many people have given a review.

And when you look at when they list something for sale… when you do a search – they show you three things.

Well four things: picture of the product, title of the product or book, the who it’s by and… the five star rating that it DOES or… doesn’t have.

You think about it.

And when you look on Amazon and you’re looking at search results… those are the four things that they show you.

And then, when you click through onto a page, what do you see?…

The picture, the price, the stars, the ratings and then… basically four bullets.

And then, if you want to know more… than you have to scroll down and find the other stuff.

They know that those four or five things are what you use.

And one of those things is proof that it either works or proof that it doesn’t work.

And how many times have you ever gone on Amazon, looked at something and totally ignored a product because…

It either didn’t have any proof that it worked in the form of five star reviews or…

It had like two stars. And you’re like, screw that!

I’m not even gonna look at it… I’m not even going to look at it because it’s only two stars.

So, that’s really what we’re after is proof.

Now there are other things…

So, if you understand that… then we’ll talk another day about other things you can use as proof.

But, what do you do if you don’t have any testimonials? Okay.

What do you do?

Well, the number one thing is you need to go find some…

And that means you need to go ask some people!

And that means you need to give your product away to some people and ask them, you know…

“Hey, I need some testimonials!”

“Can I give you this? Will you do a review of it? Will you read it? Will you try it? Will you use it?”

“Can I do anything to help you to get results so, that you would be able to give me a good results oriented testimonial?”

That means you’re going to have to do some work. All right?

Stew Smith: Yeah.

Jim Edwards: You can’t just hand it to someone and expect them to use it and then to give you a testimonial… It’s not going to happen. But…

On the flip side, once you’ve got a handful of really good results oriented testimonials…

You can ride that shit for years!

It’s not, I mean… the results you get… the payoff will far outstrip the short term pain of…

Having to shepherd these people through the process of helping them to use your product and get results.

Okay? But you just gonna have to bite the bullet and get it done!

This is one of those things where the rubber has to meet the road.

You can have an amazing physique…

You can have an amazing level of fitness and about an hour to an hour and a half a day, six days a week… which is a percentage wise is nothing!

I mean, what’s nine divided by… how many hours are there in a week, 24 times seven equals 168… nine divided by a 168 so four, 5% of your time… you can be in amazing shape!

That’s really a great return on investment if you look at it that way!

Stew Smith: Yeah

Jim Edwards: It’s the same thing for, you know… say 20 hours of work on your part of getting it out there into people’s hands…

Following up, answering questions, which in turn will…

Help make your product even better and helping people get results in return for that result oriented testimonial…

You can ride that puppy for years!

Why wouldn’t you do it yet?

People just want to say…

“Here’s my book will you read it and give me a review please, and I need you to, you know…” It ain’t happening.

Stew Smith: Hey, you know what I did a long time ago?

Jim Edwards: What did you do a long time ago Stew?

Stew Smith: I started habit and… it requires a habit.

Just maybe 20 minutes… 30 minutes a week even, right?

That’s all you need to do…. Go back four to five weeks from, you know… it can be shorter depending on what you’re selling.

Four to five weeks from what you’re, you know… people purchase that that week, right? Five weeks ago…

Send them a little follow-up email saying…

“Hey, Stew Smith here, just checking in on you. How’s it workouts going? You got any feedback for me?

If you’ve fallen off the wagon, need to get started again…here read this!” Right”

“Or if you’ve got some good news with some good, you know… personal records, let me know.” Right?

“I’d love to share them.” Right?

And then, I had a ton of incoming testimonials, you know… every day now!

And then I created a whole page of testimonials…

I over hundreds of testimonials on this one page and yeah… it did.

I try to feature that as many times as I can.

Jim Edwards: Wow! That’s brilliant!

I’ve never done that.

Stew Smith: Yeah. And I only did it for 20 minutes.

I took 20 minutes on my Monday morning and said, “What did I sell five weeks ago?”

And I sent emails out, probably sent, I mean… I didn’t send it to everybody.

I just sent emails from me… However many people I could fit into a 20 minute signature.

Jim Edwards: Right.

Stew Smith: How many times I can pop that into an email, you know, and boom!

Jim Edwards: Smart. I like that. I like that a lot actually.

Now that actually makes a crap ton of sense and I’ve never done that before!

Stew Smith: That’d be a cool little software program to make… that would be a really neat little wizard.

Jim Edwards: A follow up, a follow up script or something. Oh Man, I like that test.

Testimonial follow up script for recent purchases.

Stew Smith: Yeah. It just keeps in contact, you know… people haven’t forgotten about you… and you know what I mean…

Jim Edwards: Can you send that email template so I can model it?

Stew Smith: Oh, absolutely.

Jim Edwards: That’d be great. Damn!

This is where my mind starts geeking out on stuff and then… all the things I was going to talk about I forgot about.

But, yeah, that’s, that’s, that’s a great idea. That’s really good! I need to do that. Damn it!

I was thinking more along the lines of… for people who were just getting started and had no… like zero testimonials, so you have zero… you have zero.

So, really Stew is on one end where you are already making sales and… you want to get more testimonials.

I was thinking along the lines of “I’m just launching a product. I have no testimonials and no sales and no sales”…I would go to my sphere of influence.

And you know, one of the cool things… unlike when Stew and I were getting started back in… you know… 97 before the turn of the century.

There was no social media… there was, you know… and all the groups, all the forums and stuff online… were nothing but porn.

I mean there was nothing in 97 where… you could go and find a group of people

Stew Smith: And trolls.

Jim Edwards: Yeah, there were trolls. Yeah, the anonymity of the Internet was really anonymous. But now…

I mean, literally you can… if you can go find tons of groups on Facebook and other groups on social media that you can go in and…

Offer to help people… offer review copies of your stuff.

And if you… and here’s a clue… if you can’t find a group of people on social media, that would be the ideal customers for your book…

Where you, you would want, you would even just try to give away your book.

That is your clue that you are wrong and that you need to reevaluate your niche and your book or… your product.

Cause if you can’t find a group on Facebook to give it away… you ain’t going to find people to sell it to!

Stew Smith: That’s fair enough.

Jim Edwards: So, that’s really something to think about.

But, you can go and find groups on social media where you can… I see people doing this all the time, especially for services.

Hey, you know, I’ve seen people doing it… Recently saw a guy was trying to really get his Facebook ad agency off the ground.

So, he went into a group and said, “Hey, you know what? I’m willing to run your ads for you….

If you’re a real estate agent, I’ll be running, willing to run, test and develop your entire ad campaign… You just have to pay for the ads.

I’m doing it to build up my portfolio and build up my, um, buildup my testimonials.”

Stew Smith: Nice.

Jim Edwards: It was straight up and people were like, “Sure, I’ll do it. I’ll spend 500 bucks on ads and we’ll see what happens.”

So, you can do that with virtually anything… I mean, I did it… I did it today.

I came out with a new piece of software that I’m going, it’s going to be part of another offer…

And I released it into a group, that’s got about a thousand people in it that, you know… I have permission to do this.

And I asked permission of the group owner.

Every time I do this, I asked permission to the group owner, even though he’s always told me, just do whatever you want.

I ask every time anyway… I already, I mean this is literally within the last two hours… I have seven people who’ve agreed to look at it and give me a testimonial.

Stew Smith: Nice.

Jim Edwards: You know, so, it’s not like this is just the trick of the super rich and famous. Anybody can do this!

So, that to me… if I was starting over today from scratch, I needed to get some testimonials….

I would go on social media… I would find groups that contain my ideal customers and… I would literally offer to either do it for people for free…

Let people look at it for free… try it for free… in exchange for, “Hey guys, I need some testimonials”

“I need some feedback… I need testimonials.”

Stew Smith: No, that’s a great way to do it.

Yeah! That’s a great way to, to launch… as well is a great way to pre-launch your stuff.

Jim Edwards: Exactly. Exactly.

So, anyway, that’s pretty much all I had to say about testimonials at this point.

There’s really… no, if you have an excuse, we you don’t have any testimonials… you don’t really have an excuse.

You’re just being a whiny little turd… So stop it! Stop it!

Stew Smith: Well that’s all Jim has to say about that…

Jim Edwards: Easy Forest…

So, what was your big takeaway from this? Did you have any big takeaways?

Mine was the testimonial request follow up script to request, but…

Stew Smith: mine was to do more like celebrity expert endorsements.

Jim Edwards: Right.

Stew Smith: I have friends of mine that they’ve already said things like this that… I’m just going to pull off some of the videos and some of their text and… share that with the world.

Jim Edwards: Just double check with them that you’re cool. They’re cool.

Stew Smith: Oh yeah, of course.

Jim Edwards: Because they may end up doing something even better.

May say, “Hey, you know what? I’d rather say this”… But yeah, you’ve got all these dudes…

I mean, did you train like Marcus Luttrell Retina? He used some other dude in Texas and he had some Texas guy, but…

He said he used my book, I heard it on his podcast, and they have a big podcast that… never quit podcast.

Jim Edwards: Oh Dude. Yeah.

Stew Smith: Rutherford end up the trail. Did that.

Jim Edwards: So, have you been on their podcasts? I have not. Why not? What?

Stew Smith: We’re working on it, working on it.

Actually, I’ve already talked to him about it as we’re just trying to figure it out.

Jim Edwards: That’s cool. Yeah! That’s, I mean, that’s awesome dude.

Yeah, that’s right. I wish, I wish, wish people love me as much as they love you.

Stew Smith: Well that was good! That was a great topic!

And by the way, if you guys have any other requests for topics and things you’d like us to talk about… there are a couple ways you can let us know.

Number one is you need to subscribe to the podcast over on YouTube because…

We need you guys to do that so that we can up our YouTube numbers so…

That we can find more crazy people like you who will listen to us.

So, make sure you subscribe to us on Youtube and you can also ask questions inside the comments for each podcast episode.

And we love to take suggestions for podcast episodes.

We’d love to answer people’s questions as podcast episodes, either in full or in part.

You can also join the Facebook group over on Facebook, which is the jimedwardsmethod.com/group

You can subscribe to our Facebook group. It’s free! It’s amazing!

And we actually, we actually do some cool stuff in that group as opposed to most people’s groups… which suck and become ghost towns…

And, you can get more information about the podcast at jimedwardsmethod.com/podcast that’ll take you over to where you can get the link over to YouTube and whatnot and… get you squared away.

Stew Smith: That’s great. If you sign up for those and start asking questions or comments, we get notified of questions and comments immediately.

Yeah, that’s a great thing about this and that they’ll come to our attention and we’ll get to them.

Jim Edwards: Yeah, that’s right. That’s right. Cool.

So great job, Stew! and great job on the idea for the topic.

Stew Smith: You’re welcome, sir!

Jim Edwards: Great job on using them to actually make sales and make money. Heck yeah!

Stew Smith: Thank you! All right, so we’ll talk to you guys soon and have a great day.