Imagine you're trying to open a tomato can.
And you use a hammer.
Excessive, right?
Well, the same concept plays out with testimonials. Just because you have the grrrrrreatest testimonials in the world, doesn't mean you hammer away at your audience. Knowing when to use the right testimonial not only creates greater impact when selling a product or service, but also respects the intelligence of the audience.
But hey, for us to know where to put each type of testimonial, we have to know what those specific testimonial are in the first place.
So what is the difference between an “experience-based testimonial” and an “objection-based testimonial”?
The “experience-based testimonial” is a testimonial that is rich in detail. When you ask not one, but 10, 12, maybe even 17 questions to your clients. And what you end up is a massive testimonial that spans 800-1200 words.
It's no longer just a line or a paragraph testimonial. Instead this testimonial reads like a chapter in a book. It's detailed and yes, just what prospects want to read to get a feeling for the experience. It's long, detailed and diverse because it covers the entire experience of a product or service.
The “objection-based testimonial” on the other hand isn't terribly long or diverse.
When buying a product or service, a prospect (and even an existing client) will have objections. There will be more important objections (the ones that show up consistently) and less important objections (the ones that show up less frequently, but still show up). And your job is to get the testimonial so that it defuses the objection.
So for instance, if the biggest objection is the price of the product or service, you'll need to have at least 3-4 testimonials talking specifically about the price of your product or service, and how it seems high, but in reality how it's amazing value for money.
So the “objection-based testimonial” really takes on a single objection, while the “experience-based testimonial” takes on the entire experience. Once we've got these sets of testimonials, however, we have to find the right place to put them, don't we?
And the “objection-based testimonial” will mostly show up on your sales page
It shows up at the precise spot where you suspect the prospect or customer may object. For example, let's say you're treating someone with acupuncture. And on your sales page you're recommending an eight week consultation instead of just a week's worth of treatment. At that point you have a precise problem or objection to defuse.
So it's at this point you use the “objection-based testimonial”, because you're defusing that specific objection.
And so, you find areas around the sales page where your customer is likely to object and go about defusing those objections with “objection-based testimonials”. Kinda like finding a mine, and defusing it one at a time.
The “experience-based testimonial” is like blowing up the whole mine field together
Your customer's objections will have been defused, but they're still unsure. They wonder about this and wonder about that. And that's when you have to bring the entire “experience-based testimonial” onto the page.
This can be done with text, audio or even video. And in that “experience-based testimonial” the client covers a ton of things that make the testimonial rich, just like an experience would be.
This “experience-based testimonial” can be placed anywhere on the sales page, because really, there's no rule. On some pages you want to wait until after you've defused at least a couple of the biggest objections with the “objection-based testimonial”. On some pages you may go right in with the “experience-based testimonial” from the very start.
And the “experience-based testimonial” doesn't have to stop on the sales page
An even better place to drive home the impact of the “experience-based testimonial” is to format the testimonials in a PDF and let your client download the PDF.
If formatted even marginally well, your client will read, skim, read, skim, but get the idea of how impactful your product or service really is—and then be far more persuaded to buy from you and no one else.
But is it critical to have both types of testimonials on a page?
It is indeed critical to have the “objection-based testimonial” on a sales page. The “experience-based testimonial” on the other hand is very important, but if you had just a choice of one, I'd go for the “objection-based testimonial” because it's specific and in most cases, will do the job extremely effectively.
Ok ready to go? Let's summarise…
1) The “objection-based testimonial” is specific. It tackles the main objections of the prospect and is critical on a sales page.
2) The “experience-based testimonial” is more far-reaching and very powerful. However, if you don't have an “experience-based testimonial” don't go crazy yet. In time you can get these detailed testimonials and they will make a better case for your product or service.
So make sure you get your testimonials in the right place
And keep that hammer for hitting nails.
No use trying to open a tomato can with it, is it?
Resources
This is a “objection-based testimonial” example
The big objection here was that people felt they were already speaking and may not need this book. This objection needed to be tackled as not many people tend to speak often. Well, not many small business owners, anyway. The ones that do would have read many presentation books before. To distinguish our method from the rest, we needed to do a spot-objection.
See the objections on these pages
1) Sales page for presentations
2) On video for the Cartooning Course
3) In PDF for the Article Writing Course.
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1) Testimonial Secrets: Powerful Techniques to Get Better Clients-And Sales
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