Explore all roads to greater visibility of your best work.
Getting others to talk about your work and business requires making it feel safe for them to do so. Testimonials do help you establish professional credibility and build a reputation for the quality of work you do.
But what if you don’t have any as yet?
Fortunately, there are many other roads you can explore to help you bridge the gap until you’ve earned client testimonials you can share.
For example, you can establish authority indirectly by publicizing:
- the industries and types of clients you serve,
- where (geographically) you’ve done business,
- the corporate logos of companies that purchased your products and services,
- audit-able sales statistics, and
- media coverage of your work.
And you can leverage visual credibility by posting the photos and selfies taken by people using your products and services. For example, many authors post photos showing their customers reading and raving about their latest book.
Are you offering mini-makeovers to potential clients as a lead generating tactic? Make sure you have a prior agreement in place giving you permission to feature this work as a before/after case study before sharing it publicly in your marketing.
You can also direct people to your recommendations and referrals published on LinkedIn. These can also be jumping off points for you when you are in start-up mode.
Two more methods you can consider include:
- distributing free review copies of your books and programs and
- offering lower-priced purchase options to those who help you by beta-testing new products and services.
These can work well for obtaining feedback and user testimonials in the early stages. (But you must be prepared for both positive and negative assessments and comments.)
While doing this have a plan and a permissions-based process in place for building your collection of testimonials. And, it goes without saying you’ll be doing great work worthy of praising in print. Am I right?
The best and fastest way to earn valuable, trustworthy testimonials is simply to do great work and take excellent care of your clients! People like sharing their good decisions with others. But you need to ask for their help and make it as easy as possible for them to do so.
More next time. Until then, remember to LOVE YOUR WORK, whatever it may be.
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