Why aren’t you using testimonials in your online business?  You need to get customer pictures, videos, and comments from your customers to place on your website or landing page.  Not having testimonials is costing you thousands of dollars and loads of potential customers.  Many businesses just advertise testimonials - and they have found that to be the best way to market their product or service.  Below is a photo of Angie’s List and how they use testimonials to increase their subscriber base:

When using testimonials:

• Don’t be afraid to use them.  Make the pictures or videos of your clients large and enthusiastic for your website.
• You should have at least 5 testimonials, and more depending on what it is you are selling.
• Photos of people giving testimonials should be taken by yourself using an 8 MP digital camera.
• Watermark your testimonials videos before uploading to Youtube.  You can use Windows Movie magic to do this - just choose “subtitle” when playing with the text options.
• You can use testimonials to your advantage.  Guide your clients answers by asking leading questions.  In the example below they show a client empowering themselves and it describes why Angie’s List is good.
• Testimonials will increase your sales - if you don’t already use them you are losing out on a lot of additional revenue.
• On your website you can solicit clients to submit testimonials to you, you don’t even have to gather them.

If you need testimonials developed for your online website we can help.  We work with over 30 various actors and models in the Chicagoland area.  Please call 843-425-3566 or email Support@BannerBlindness.com and we will discuss video and photo testimonial content development.

The home page of any major website (AOL, Yahoo, eBay, MySpace, etc…) is a great place to do advertising and marketing research - as these are companies spending small fortunes trying to market their products or services. I recently came across Rozerem on the front page of Yahoo! Screen shots of the banners are below:

When displaying banner ads you only have a fraction of an actual second to attract a viewers eyes - otherwise Banner Blindness occurs and your banner is never seen. The above banners are very attractive, creative, but fail to get people to click. I don’t have the CTR numbers or the number of impressions Rozerem purchased on Yahoo (as this company is not a client of ours) - but I can determine from experience that the CTR is probably very very low, and Rozerem is not happy with the performance of their campaign. The very first image in a gif or flash banner should immediately get the users attention. In the example above you have to watch the banner ad for 6 seconds to find out what is being advertised. They did do a good job of including a call to action and that probably helps CTR - but it should be displayed in the beginning, not the end. If I were to have created the banners and the website for Rozerem we would have done the following:

• The banner would have included the words FREE, Sleeping Pills, Get a good nights sleep!, etc…
• The landing page would immediately gather visitor data by sending users to a lead gen form to receive free pills
• Instead of using boring images from old tv shows, we would have used images of attractive females in sexy silk lingerie sleeping peacefully and dreaming of a hunky boy toy

The current Rozerem website makes it too difficult for users to request a free trial of the sleeping pills. And once again, the banners are probably performing terribly and costing this pharmaceutical company an arm and a leg.