If you think people are too jaded to pay much attention to customer testimonials, PlanetHospital’s success might make you change your mind. According to Rudy Rupak, founder of the Calabasas, Calif.–based company, which helps travelers arrange for medical care outside the United States, using endorsements from satisfied customers increased follow-up inquiries by 22 percent.

Here’s how Rupak measured the effectiveness of testimonials: He divided the prospects who had requested information on PlanetHospital into two groups. One group received an email containing testimonials from people who were happy with his company’s customer service; the other group was simply forwarded additional information. “Using testimonials sent our credibility skyrocketing,” Rupak says.

Secrets to Success
Testimonials not only help create believability and security for a first-time buyer, experts say, they also increase brand loyalty in the customers who provide them. To boost your credibility and get people to take action, a testimonial should:

• Be specific. “We love your system” is not as strong as “We have installed your new Chemicoat system in each of our bottling lines and have already experienced a 25 percent cost savings in energy and material costs,” says Bob Bly, a Dumont, N.J.–based marketing guru.
• Identify the contributor by name and location. Bly explains that “J.B. in Georgia” or “Mary S., self-made millionaire” is not as effective as “Jim Smith, vice president of manufacturing, Reade Corporation, Dover, Delaware.” Shel Horowitz, a Hadley, Mass.–based marketing consultant, recommends using contributions from people with strong credentials or high name recognition.
• Be real. Some customers would rather sign a testimonial written by the company, but Bly recommends that you get it in the customer’s own words. A copywriter, no matter how skilled, can’t match the sincerity and credibility of genuine words of praise from a real customer, he maintains.
• Appear where it has the most reach. Whether they’re grouped on one page of a brochure, scattered throughout a Web site or printed on a point of sale display, testimonials should be placed where a company’s prospects are most likely to view or hear them, says Kathy Gulrich, author of Build Your Business with Testimonials. “Remember, you’re targeting prospects, not customers. You don’t want to preach to the choir,” she adds.

Overwhelm the Buyer
Other experts suggest including a photo of the customer along with the text, or even better, a photo of the customer using the product. The goal is to create an overwhelming impression in the buyer’s mind that he or she cannot go wrong buying the product or using the service, says David Newman, author of Sales Science.

Crocodile Café and Catering in Wayne, Pa., posts testimonials on the home page of its Web site, but for maximum impact, it also prints them on invoices, says owner Kurt Linneman. “People tell us they love reading what our customers say,” he notes. “They read the testimonials more than our menu.”

Hunter Douglas, a window treatment manufacturer in Upper Saddle River, N.J., has taken testimonials a step further by featuring retailers on teleconferences to tout the customer-drawing power of the company’s displays. “When one of our dealers says they’ve doubled their sales because of our partner program, that adds a level of credibility to what we say,” notes Jeff Janke, vice president of retail alliance programs.

And if a customer endorsement turns out to be a left-handed compliment? Even that can be worthwhile, experts say, because it can provide valuable information about how a product or service might be improved.

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