Don’t waste your time focused on the wrong marketing assets…
Logo, web design, social media posts, stationery, swag, I can keep going. There are so many things you can produce with the purpose of “marketing your business.” However, not all these marketing materials have the same ROI. You don’t need to spend time and money investing in every form of marketing materials, rather you need to focus on the right materials.
What Are Marketing Materials/Assets?
Let’s start with what we’re talking about in the first place. Let’s refer to marketing materials as any thing that you spend time and/or money on creating or getting with the purpose of acquiring new customers.
The Key to Success
Now that we have a definition, let’s discuss what the most important asset you can have is: testimonials.
You may be thinking, but that’s not something you create.
And you’d be right, yes its not something you create. However, it is something you have to work to get. The vast majority of people only leave reviews when they have a terrible experience. So all the people that are interacting with your brand and using your products to their satisfaction don’t get the same visibility as a few angry customers who are loud.
Testimonials are important because they provide potential customers with social proof. If your product/service worked for someone else, they’ll feel more comfortable trusting you to deliver for them. Bonus points for having multiple different avatars in your testimonials so you reach a wide range of people.
How to Get Testimonials
So how do you actually get testimonials. Its a simple two step process:
- Over Deliver on your promise
- Ask for a testimonial
You have to actually deliver something worthy of a testimonial in the first place. Most people can get this level if they actually listen to their customers and solve their problems. Where they drop the ball is part 2. They’re afraid to ask people for testimonials.
You can’t be shy when it comes to asking for testimonials, some customers may leave positive reviews unprompted, but the vast majority of people will not. You have to ask them to leave a review. Some people like to give incentives for reviews, you have to be careful with this because it can get into some gray territory in terms of ethics. You don’t actually need to give the reviewer anything in return for the review, you already provided them with a product or service. Just ask and the worse they can say is no.
Leaving a sign up with a QR code to leave a review is a good reminder, but nothing works like asking people to leave a review individually. Mass communication is often ignored by people. For the branding deep dive podcast, I would ask each of my guests to leave a review after i released their episode and it helped give the podcast better visibility because we had more reviews than a lot of other people in the space.