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By Rick Petry | Creative Writer, LLC | rickpetry.com | 503-740-9065

Testimonials, a staple of direct response advertising, may be a tried-and-true tactic for arresting consumer attention and eliciting response, but they must be handled deftly to avoid cliché and audience cynicism. So how does a marketer ensure they get it right? The following tips are designed to help assist you in avoiding the pitfalls and getting the testimonial mix right:

Look for Quality, Not Quantity: While many infomercials will feature quick sound bites of various consumers singing their product’s praise along the lines of, “It’s great!” “I love it!” “It changed my life!”, 20 years of focus group experience suggests that nothing tanks interest nor invites skepticism more than this tactic. One reason may be that the approach has been so overused that audiences simply consider these sequences one big unbelievable yawn. There’s a real distinction between someone who is an evangelist for a brand and someone who is merely satisfied. The best kind of brand evangelist is also a natural born influencer – it’s that ebullient force of nature we all know who freely extols the virtues of a product to all of their friends and inspires them to follow suit. This is the sort of testimonial you’ll ideally have in your marketing arsenal, but you must allow them time to breath and tell their story.
At the Same Time, You May Need Quantity: It’s easy to say, “Hey, go round up some brand evangelists,” but while you can try and screen for them, until you turn on that camera, you won’t know exactly what you’ve got. One very successful direct marketer suggested that a 10 to 1 ratio was required to cull out a broadcast-worthy testimonial! Those are pretty daunting numbers, but then when you consider the failure rate of DRTV programs, you have to ask yourself, “Do you want to solve this problem in pre-production or deal with it once the camera is rolling?” That brings us to…
Don’t Rush the Process: One of the biggest mistakes we’ve observed is this: the marketer says, “Testimonials? No problem! We get letters…” then proceeds to truncate the amount of time required to identify and line up great testimonials. Concurrently, the production train gets rolling until it runs head on into what one head of production wryly observed are the three most expensive words in commercial production – “Client will provide.” The entire process turns into a compromised, muddled mess with not only less than ideal testimonials, but fewer of them to choose from in the edit suite. Which is one reason you might want to consider this:
Engage a Professional Testimonial Management Group: These folks are experts at screening and aligning testimonials. Their charge is not to go out and hire non-union actors to get giddy about your product. Rather, they should have the experience to recognize a compelling story and whether the person is able to communicate without appearing to be the proverbial deer in the headlights. While agencies will frequently claim that they will manage this process as part of their services, we’ve seen the responsibility for testimonials get passed back and forth from agency to client like a hot potato too many times – so if you’re going to do it yourself or outsource this important variable, make sure you are quite clear about who is doing what.
Take Time to Tell the “Story”: The popularity of reality television is fueled by dramatic transformations – whether it’s someone’s obesity, wardrobe or humble shack. All of these programs take time to create a compelling dramatic arc, in DRTV terms what we simply refer to as the “Before and After.” Yet telling such stories takes time – it is ground that cannot be covered in six-second sound bites and that difference makes all the difference, because when you turn a sound bite into a three-dimensional human being that the audience can relate to, they will be invested, engaged and much more open to your message.
Do Your Homework: So deep, personal stories sounds great, but how do you identify them so the process is affordable? This is another key reason why the preparation and screening is so important. To understand what your best testimonials are really about, you to need visit them on their turf, not be meeting them for the first time on a set. Rounding out the story with lifestyle footage versus having everyone testifying in front of a painted backdrop will give your testimonials an authenticity that is invaluable. But in order to figure out who and where to film, you have to, literally, do your homework.
Let Your Testimonials Do the Talking: One incredibly successful fitness company has an infomercial that consists almost solely of evangelists documenting their own stories with camcorders. The footage has a genuine documentary-like feel. Combine this with the positive word-of-mouth and social networking aspects of the company’s fitness community, and you have the marketing equivalent of a homerun. Given the advent of user-generated content that appears on YouTube, which, by, the way, includes average Joes weighing in on products by posting time lapse of their own body transformations, and you have an era ripe for such organic approaches.
Celebrities Can Be A Slippery Slope: While celebrities populate and give testament in many DRTV programs, an authentic connection between the personality and the problem the product solves has to be portrayed in a credible way. If a product is truly revolutionary, it may not need a celebrity to be a channel stopper. Having a famous face just because, say, you’re two degrees separated from them, can be expensive and may even undermine your credibility.

What’s the bottom line? Keep it real. But realize that the path to get there will take considerable time and effort. After all, you don’t want to short-change the testimonial process any more than you would your direct sales bottom-line. Results may vary, but with a sound approach, you can help yourself reduce the testimonial x factor.

Rick Petry is a freelance writer who specializes in direct marketing and is a past chairman of the Electronic Retailing Association. He can be reached at (503) 740-9065 or online at rickpetry.com.

THIS ISSUE'S ARTICLES

Tips for Getting Great Testimonials

So what about RADIO ?…

Marketing to Hispanics in a Down Economy

Expanding further into the Market with the opening of a New York Sales Office

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