What I mean is, say No to having customers write their own testimonials.

Merely collecting testimonials is lazy and only mildly effective.

Here’s why I say so…

Customers who offer testimonials do so with good intention. Very often, however, they get too busy. They are “stuck” about what to say. They don’t know “how to start.” As a result, it gets put on the back burner.

This happens way too often and represents tremendous loss of opportunity.

You should ask for the testimonial after a brief conversation or, better yet, after a short interview.

The Power of Three refers to three words, three phrases or three sentences in a row.

Sounds simple, right?

I’m not so sure.

Knowing how, where and why to use a Power of Three is critical.

Even after good instruction, I’ve seen it used very ineffectively. It can actually reduce the power of your copy rather than powerfully enhance it.

Here’s what I mean…

If it looks too creative, if it appears too “on purpose,” if it becomes overused, then it’s detrimental.

I believe that there is a great deal of power in using Resonance in our copy. I go into a lot of detail on this topic in my coaching program. One of the “generic elements of resonance” that I talk about is water.

As human beings most of us have an affinity for water. We can associate some positive feelings with water, especially the Ocean.

Why?

Of course there are the images of beaches and vacations that we can associate with. This is what I call direct influence but there’s more.

Finally, I get to make a post. I’ve been very busy, and haven’t had time to. Shaune suggested that I do one about some of the techniques we use on our websites…

I don’t think so.

We’ve spent too much time on them to just give them away. I can’t even count how many times arguments erupted about how to do a certain element in a direct response fashion, while keeping it decent looking. I still don’t really like direct response design - but I’ve grown accustomed to it, and see it’s potential.

I’ve just taken on a new client. Interesting, unique, and valuable product but I wasn’t sure why people would really want to buy it.

I wanted to see what some real people would say about it, see how they would respond, what their hot buttons might be.

Here’s the point…

When you are testing the market with real-life, potential prospects you don’t want to say, here’s the product, here’s what it does… would that interest you?

It’s to easy for them to say yes. This does not really tell you if they’d buy it. Many product developers make this mistake. We want to see if there is an authentic and natural interest.