Promote Your Own Products by Promoting Other People’s Success with It

It's one thing to say your product or website is great, but your credibility reaches a whole new level when someone else says the same thing.

Promoting testimonials and proof that your material is worthwhile and definitely something you should showcase whenever possible. If there's a customer who may be right on the edge of buying your product or a reader who may be thinking about subscribing to your email list, proof of other people's satisfaction and success could be that little nudge for them to click “add to cart” or enter their email address.

Here are some ways you can think about promoting your own website or products that truly work.

Written Testimonials

The most common form of promoting other people's success is through written testimonials. I have an entire page dedicated to customer testimonials on intheleed.com, and in my recent redesign of the website, the developers added a dynamic testimonial on the right sidebar, which actually shows a different testimonial on every pageload.

I know it can be tempting to write your own fake testimonials and make them sound juicy, but I do believe in “web marketing karma”, and a lot of times people can tell which ones are made-up. Stick with real testimonials. If your product is good, you should be getting them anyways.

A few tips for you regarding testimonials:

• If you ever get nice emails from customers or readers, always respond with a thank you and ask permission to use their testimonial. You can create a generic email template that responds to these testimonials and asks for permission so you can save time. Also, create a word document where you can store all of your testimonials so you can easily find them later.
• Always include the person's first name with the testimonial. You can include the last name too, but many people aren't as comfortable having their full name published on the web for whatever reason.
• Add a location if you want. It adds that much more credibility to the statements. You'll have to ask the customer or reader for one, obviously.
• Use the testimonials strategically and as garnish to your well-written ad copies. Don't rely just on the testimonials to help you generate sales.

I personally Photoshop my testimonials on my sales pages because it's a lot easier and faster for me, but I realize many of you probably don't have that experience or have the desire to learn Photoshop. If that's the case CopyDoodles is a pretty cool website I just found where you can input written testimonials and it generates a nice looking graphic for you. Here's an example:

Video Testimonials

Videos testimonials are becoming one of the top promotion mediums on the Internet today. When compared to written testimonials, they are more personal and much more believable.

I was fortunate enough to be asked to do a video interview/testimonial for Sterling and Jay from the Internet Business Mastery Podcast and Academy, describing my online adventures and how the Internet Business Mastery Academy helped me get to where I'm at today. They own the #1 ranked Internet marketing podcast on iTunes, and are also #2 in the entrepreneurial category, 2nd only behind Rich Dad, Poor Dad, so I was quite honored to be asked to record this video.

Feel free to watch my testiomnial at the beach and really pay attention to how Jay and Sterling have edited the video and utilized my answers to their questions. Also, dropping in some statistics really grabs people's attention too, which you'll see right away. I hope you enjoy!

Blog Testimonials

If you have a blog, promotion is already being done for you via the comments left on your post. Your job, however, is to create excellent articles that generate comments so that new readers will want to join in on the discussion and hopefully subscribe too.

Happy Friday to you all, have a wonderful weekend!