We are living in an extremely over-advertised world. Billboards and television blares advertisements at us on a daily basis. As marketers, it’s hard to cut through all this noise to reach our prospects.
Because of this advertising burnout, prospects are becoming more and more skeptical and transparent of advertising every day. In other words, today’s prospect doesn’t want to believe you when they receive a promotion from you!
Think about it: nobody wakes up thinking to themselves: “I want to read some ads today!” Except for copywriters, of course. 🙂
Here are 5 things you can put in your promotions to boost credibility–and conversions. Some of these are external of your actual promotion so make sure you include them as well.
1) Include More Testimonials In Your Promotions.
I gave some specific guidelines for testimonials in this blog post. Proof is the #1 reason why promotions fail because prospects do not believe what you’re saying, and the best way to include this is testimonials.
2) Bolster Your Case Studies.
Case studies are basically longer testimonials. If you’ve had a lot of people get the desired benefit from your product/service, it makes sense to get their FULL story and include that in your promotion.
People love stories and reading a customer’s story of how your product solved their problem can boost readership of your promotion and boost your conversions.
3) Insert Clear Contact Information.
Don’t be like one of those businesses with no contact information! Put your address and phone number on your site.
If you’re vary of putting your home address on your site, just get a P.O. box or (better yet) find a mailing store like the UPS Store that allows you to use a real street address.
Regarding phone numbers, I have a Skype number I pay $4/month to operate and $15 every 4 months to maintain and I can make unlimited calls in the US. Very few people call me but having a phone number on your site is a huge credibility booster.
4) Put Your Face On The Promotion As Much As Possible.
If you’re the face of the company, you should put your face out there as much as possible. This is something I hesitated with for a long time, but I felt people would connect with me better if they put a face with a name.
Now you’ll see me on all my promotional materials. It simply tells people you’re a REAL person…and not a person hiding behind a computer screen with a fake name.
5) Start A Blog And Social Media Properties like Twitter and Facebook.
When people type in your name and your profession into Google, does your name show up on the first page of the search engines? It’s extremely easy to Google anyone up these days, so now is probably time to get rid of the drunk pictures you might have posted on your Facebook profile.
What you need to do is create a blog with your name in the URL. If www.name.com, try, www.therealyourname.com or register a .co domain…like I did. Then start blogging 2-3 times a week.
You should also set up a Linkedin.com, Twitter, and Facebook profile. Linkedin is huge because they get ranked high in the search engines and you could easily rank first in Google for your name.
(Unless your name is the same name as a television show that ran only 1 season…like yours truly).
I don’t know how many times I get an email promotion promoting an ebook, course, membership, etc. and Googling them up to find out who they are. It’s so easy to do…and you better believe your prospects are checking you out online before they yank out their wallet to buy from you.
I hope you go out and implement these credibility boosters in your promotions and marketing.
Until next time,
Kevin Hill
“The Professor of High Response”