Mining Testimonials for Fun and Profit

We’re all familiar with how important testimonials can be to the sales process, but have you ever considered that they’re also a goldmine of information you can use in your own marketing?

The next time you’re perusing another product creator’s testimonials, take a closer look and see what information you can mine for your own business, such as…

1: Discovering What’s Important to Customers – You might be surprised by what customers say is important to them. For example, in the sales letter for a weight loss product you might find a testimonial that talks about getting the romance back into a relationship because the satisfied customer feels sexy again.

Discovering what truly motivates customers is information you can use in your own marketing, sales letters and even when creating your own products.

2: Getting Your Own Testimonials – When you find a glowing testimonial for a product in your niche, notice if there is a website or contact information you can use to contact that person.

If so, offer to send them your product in exchange for their review. If someone gives a testimonial once, you know they’re far more likely to do it again for another product they love.

3: Getting New Product and Service Ideas – Maybe you see a testimonial that likes the results but laments the work involved – this could be a service or software idea.

Reviewers might state that something is good but could be even better if only a small change were made. This is especially common on sites like Amazon where product creators do not get to edit reviews.

4: Finding Marketing Tips – Even if you’re an affiliate and not a product creator, you can still get ideas on how to market a product by looking at testimonials. You can sometimes pull-out thoughts and sentences that help you make the sale – things you never would have thought of yourself.

It’s even possible to write an entire sales campaign based solely on testimonials.

Let’s close with an example of doing three of the above:

You want to write a book, so you go to Amazon and start doing some research. You find a hot topic, locate all the recent books on that topic, and take notes on all the testimonials. Now you have a ton of information on exactly what buyers like and don’t like about these books.

You compile a table of contents using this information, write the book, and use the information in your description and your marketing.

Of course, you’re going to use other sources as well, but mining testimonials for information will give you ideas and insights you may find nowhere else.