Author: remap_content_admin

It turns out that learning isn’t in nearly as much demand as it could be. Our culture and our systems don’t push us to learn. They push us to conform and to consume instead.
– Seth Godin ((This observation on the nature of learning – versus getting an “education” – comes from Seth Godin https://seths.blog/2020/04/but-what-could-you-learn-instead/))

This observation seems to be about learning and education but it’s directly connected to business and marketing.

Because no matter what your ideal client looks like, and no matter how you package and deliver your solution – product, consultation, service – they need to be a learner.

And they’re only going to become a learner because they do something. Or use something. Something you made from your expertise.

Yet our “culture and systems” try to derail our ideal clients from doing and using the things we offer. They might look for so-called “done-for-you” services, even though real change in business is never done for you. Or – more likely – they might commit to doing and using – but not to following through, at least not over a sufficient period of time.

Your marketing challenge as a business owner is identifying who wants to learn by doing – who wants to learn what you or your system or your product will teach them. Finding your best students.

For owners of complex B2B solutions businesses, this starts with “prospecting”.

Take action on this. Your best students don’t live in your head and you don’t what they’re thinking. So we can fire up LinkedIn Sales Navigator or Apollo.io – or some other prospecting tool – and start to find out. 

It’s overwhelming to figure out what to prioritize when it comes to marketing and business development.  How do you follow all the bad marketing advice that slams you like a sledgehammer every time you log on to LinkedIn?

But you don’t have to.

What you do have to do, however, is your own prospecting work.

This is why every one of you should use some sort of prospecting database like LinkedIn Sales Navigator. Not have it, use it. 

You have to look at your prospective ideal clients one at a time, person by person, and figure out a way to listen to what they are saying and where they are saying it. 

To deepen your prospecting, you might also try BuzzSumo or SparkToro ((SparkToro hasn’t been released yet but I know it and can recommend it – for some uses cases – because I was a beta tester. I love that you can use it both for advertising and other forms of cold marketing, as well as for content marketing)), which help you quickly figure out what people, media, and publications influence your prospects the most.

You can delegate and even automate prospecting once you have learned it yourself – and learned from it. And yes, you can hire a minimum wage worker to do it for you. But not until you master it yourself.

And even if you delegate it, eventually you’ll want to go back to doing your own prospecting. That’s partly because it’s such a wonderful form of ideation.

• Content marketing – it will feed your content marketing with ideas.
• Messaging – it’ll help you figure out how to describe what you do.
• Solution design – it’ll help you fine-tune your products and services themselves.

Try it – make a list of 20 strangers – and let me know what you learn!

My best,
Rowan

 

Today someone looking for marketing and branding help made the following observations about their business:

1. “need a branding/marketing expert to help me clarify some things first“
2. “Don’t have the time or interest to do all the work myself”
3. “many moving parts – all different dimensions of creating a business”
4. “I am running out of time trying to figure it all out“

I’ve seen this before; digital marketing seems so confusing. The more you learn, the more confusing it gets. You think you need to do A before B. Or wait, C before A. Or you’re SOL.

But if you let it seem confusing to you, the result is being confusing to your audience.

It’s not that digital marketing or business itself isn’t complex as hell. It is. That’s partly because it changes so rapidly. It’s not possible to study digital marketing in college for this reason. It takes hundreds of forms and bleeds over into related disciplines – branding, design, tech, sales, advertising – in dozens of ways.

So, yes, there’s a lot to learn.

Yet at the same time, it’s very simple, in that your marketing is all based on one story which can be compressed into one message.

By making every part of your marketing fit that message, you get clear.

In fact, if you had to pick one word to describe the philosophy of marketing maven Donald Miller, author of Storybrand, it might be clarity. 

Over and over, clarity is his message. That means consistency, both verbally and visually. That doesn’t mean reduce it all to just a tagline though. Or just a positioning statement. That’s the lazy way to do positioning. 

A positioning formula (such, “we do x for y, using z approach/skill”) only gets you so far and only achieves so much clarity.

To clarify the value of what you’re selling, expand on your message by unfolding it into a story.

How?

Donald breaks it down into 7 pieces:

1. A character
2. Has a problem
3. And meets a guide
4. Who gives them a plan
5. And calls them to action
6. That helps them avoid failure
7. And ends in success

And then there’s a bonus benefit – the transformation that happens when you make it through these steps. Think of Luke Skywalker in Return of the Jedi. He’d been through this story and came out a different person. Yes, Mark Hamill achieved gravitas.

Joseph Campbell, who advised George Lucas on the Star Wars concept, demonstrated that pattern Donald Miller identifies in Storybrand existed in prehistoric mythology all over the world. Same exact pattern.

Side question for you – who is the character? When our stone-age ancestors sat around the fire telling stories, who was the character?

The character is your client. The story you tell is about your client, not about you. You are the guide. And your product is the “special weapon”. We call ourselves Homo Sapiens but we’re really version 2 of Homo habilis – makers and users of tools.

Some of the most successful books and films let you identify with the main character(s) – even if they come from a different world, different gender, different period of time. I’m not speaking of art films which break convention to entertain the jaded or just the curious, but of the most popular mass-market dramas: Thelma & Louise, The Matrix, Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, The Princess Bride, and yes, Star Wars. 

I’m not promising to make digital marketing simple. Nor do I advise “figuring out” your story before doing anything else. Your brand’s story is ever-evolving. Because problems change, what you do as a guide changes, etc. Pandemics come – and go.

But if you haven’t even started to figure it out, it’s really confusing to try to do anything else in marketing. One of the reasons case studies are the consensus go-to when it comes to prioritizing marketing decisions is that when they are done well, they tell your whole story – about your ideal client.

Take action. Tell your brand’s story in 10 sentences or less. Bonus if you can compress it to one sentence (this is the art of writing a tagline).

Let me know how it goes!

My best,
Rowan

 

 

My clients are falling into one of two camps.

1. Fetal position
2. Opportunity position

The fetal position just means you are laying low. No new hires, no new overhead, save, scrimp, wait it out. This approach comes with comforting maxims such as, “take this time to catch up on your process” or “fix up your marketing assets”. Fix up for whom and for what problem? You might call it a fatalist position. For some, it will work.

But the latter group, the Opportunity position, is business pronoia – the tendency to believe that the world is benevolently conspiring to provide your business with new opportunities.

Pronoia during a pandemic? How does that happen and where do you notice it happening?

For once, start with the news.

The news is uncovering unprecedented problem types, as opposed to the same old issues that usually comprise its fodder. 9-11 was bitter, horrifying tragedy on repeat, for longer than I care to remember. But the COVID pandemic is no less tragic and will churn many more waters – and business models. That’s how creative destruction works ((Creative destruction basically recognizes that business model churn happens kinda fast in “capitalist societies”, a quaint vestige of a concept referencing a time when the vast majority of the world’s economy wasn’t some form of industrial-technological capitalism)).

How does that affect your customers, as B2B solutions providers? 

One of the two eternal truths of B2B marketing is: “Improve demand from end customers of your clients”. You can listen to more about that in chapter 19 of a radio program called This is Marketing, which was also released as a “book”. As a B2B marketing problem, the rise of the LEEDS certification should be studied by anyone who runs a certification nonprofit… why do your customer’s customers read the label?

So let’s just assume this much is true: there are invisible lines between the problems of the general public and those of your customers.

What’s happening to the general public? Let’s glance the New York Times:

• Alcoholism hasn’t disappeared but group meetings have. 
• So much for the New World Order conspiracies: the UN Security Council is almost as AWOL from public view as Joe Biden in a presidential race.
• 99% of American don’t have a mudroom, so people are changing in hallways
• The government has decided to leave behind special education children
• 10 million Americans filed for unemployment insurance in the last two weeks
• We still need to eat but when we enter the store, we’re faced with a scandalous absurdity: not just fellow customers but store workers not wearing masks

Not sure if these stories affect your customers, but somewhere there’s a news story that does.

No? I doubt that but I’ll make it a little easier – look at what’s happening in digital business world since the WHO declared a global pandemic:

• Amazon will challenge Google, Facebook for digital advertising supremacy
• An online retailer shakeout
• Facebook ad revenues down much more than competing platforms, as I wrote about last week
• Google is giving away 340 million to SMBs (and probably faster than the “stimulus plan” ::cough:: corporate welfare giveaway “”cough:: will do so)
• YouTube  ad revenue is up

Pretty sure these stories – and there are more like them – affect you and your customers’ businesses.

Today I spoke with a high concept B2B merchandising firm. They used to make conference schwag so good you wouldn’t toss on your way back to the hotel room. 

That was two weeks ago.

Next week they want to make masks for grocery store workers. And offer businesses the opportunity to join them in the new economy.

So how are we going to join the new economy – and how do we use marketing((Definition of marketing: building trust and creating clarity by listening, teaching, and guiding over a long period of time)) to facilitate that process?

Reply and let me know,
Rowan

Tomorrow evening I have made plans to have a beer with a friend I have known for nearly 30 years. Over Internet video. Now my friend and I have shared many a drink over the decades but never over video. In fact, I don’t think we have ever chatted on video. It’s going to be great.

I can’t be the only one of us to make such plans?

My brother is doing live music jams over live Internet video with his down-the-block neighbor in Seattle who he’s played with for 15 years – also over video.

Meanwhile, my mom hosts letter-writing parties aimed to get out the vote. It’s a paradigm shift in the usage of video chat. They used to come over for cofee and snack and write letters shoulder to shoulder; now my mom hosts them on a Zoom conference call. And by all accounts, attendees love it. Why wouldn’t any of us – we’re all stuck inside now, right?

I asked my 79-year old mom how she found herself partially “changing her little piece of the culture”, as Seth Godin would put it. Her answer:

“Being willing to look silly”.

As she explained it, to go first you have to look silly. Her first ever attempt at a  Zoom letter writing party was two weeks ago; she says it was was a comedy of errors starring her. But 14 people attended – and many letters were written. Fun was had. Community. And she noticed that Seth’s advice to “mute when not talking” doesn’t apply to simultaneous letter-writing events. The ambient noise sets the stage. Just let the dogs bark in the background, is her advice.

Fast forward two weeks and the letter-writing parties are getting bigger. Not only that, but they’re also now turning into training events – what you and I would all webinars. She’s suddenly training Swing Left groups from Colorado and Ohio how to hold their own Zoom-based letter-writing parties.

Or maybe figure out some other way that, “the digital world enables a new kind of conversation”, as Seth Godin writes in his new mini-manifesto, The Conversation. 

In that article, he talks about scaling conversations using the breakout feature on Zoom, where large groups can be quickly broken apart into breakout groups, then put back together again. This brings back school memories for most of us.. “guys, let’s break into groups of four”. Remember?

But it’s different now. Now the price of oil is 6 times higher than when Cheney was VP. And we’re unmuting ambient noise and dog barks into our conference calls. On purpose.

So I wouldn’t wait until things get back to normal.

Or try to go backward in time. I’d find a new way to conduct your business that leverages the rapid, deep adoption of Internet technology that is happening right now (20 years after the futurati hailed it during the dotcom boom). Even if it makes you look silly.

Have a great and safe week ahead,
Rowan

Do you have to like your marketing and branding materials? Yes. All of them. Your pride in them should be infectious. Because they are useful, entertaining, galvanizing, and yes, nice to look at.

Too bad you just hate your own brand sometimes, because whether you like it or not, you have one 😊.

Case in point – let’s say you’ve written LinkedIn bios for yourself and your company. And you don’t like them. So you rewrite. And you like it less. Rewrite. Repeat. Now how do you feel? Annoyed, frustrated, bitter. Derailed.

This is the self-perpetuating cycle in which happiness is linked to creativity.

So do you throw it away and start from scratch? Maybe. But do you really start from scratch? Because now the thing that made you cringe is stuck in your mind, even if your slate is clean and your edit window is blank.

It’s stuck in your mind and has demoralized your creativity. This isn’t uncommon in creative work and paralyzes marketing efforts among entire teams.

Here’s the problem: ideas stop flowing.  

Manufacture enthusiasm

The quality of a marketing campaign, or a product design, or a consultation – the quality of each is roughly equivalent to the amount of good ideas that go into it.

We make a big deal out of expertise, but an expert’s mind can fall flat sometimes too. Anyone’s mind can. Expertise doesn’t do much if it’s not yielding good ideas.

Let’s review some of the primary idea-stifling culprits:

• Lack of sleep
• Lack of context
• Lack of deep research
• Mental busyness
• Lack of live conversation, especially in-person
• Negative feelings

I have it on good anecdotal authority that all of the above proliferate during global pandemics.

Fortunately, art critic Peter Schjeldahl has a trick for us that addresses, if nothing else, at least the last item on the list.

When he comes across something in his work he can’t figure out how to like, or how to appreciate, or even understand, he asks himself:

“What would I like about this if I liked it?”

So those new LinkedIn bios that make you cringe – what you would like about them if you liked them? 

My best,
Rowan

… the Trump administration is making contingency plans for a pandemic that could stretch up to “18 months or longer” …
Lauren Fox, CNN

To penetrate the buyer’s consciousness and make significant penetration in a given market, you have to contact the prospect a minimum of seven times within an 18-month period
– Dr. Jeffrey Lant, author, historian, and marketing theorist

Dr. Jeffrey Lant is an unusual marketing theorist, holding a Ph.D. in history and having published 67 books on quite a few topics beyond business and marketing.

But the quote above comes from his book, “No More Cold Calling”, another gem of a marketing book that is buried on Amazon – it ranks #1596 under “Advertising”. The reason it ranks so low is that Lant may not understand Amazon book marketing ((FYI, no one knows more about book Amazon book marketing than Mark Dawson https://selfpublishingformula.com/)). No More Cold Calls jumps around a lot and can hard to follow but it’s worth reading. I still recommend it to you if you want interesting marketing ideas from a book that relatively few others have read((In Norwegian Wood (The Murakami book, not the song), Nagasawa says, “If you only read the books that everyone else is reading, you can only think what everyone else is thinking” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Norwegian_Wood_(novel) )) over the next, say, 18 months.

To be clear, I have no idea how long the present conditions will last. And I don’t even think 18 months is a significant time period, necessarily. I’m more of a 5 to 10 years guy.

But even if the pandemic isn’t an issue in 18 months, we and our customers will still be here.

That’s why I wrote yesterday about a type of long-term medium-term marketing that is under-utilized by independent tech firms: retargeting. (Also, I wrote about this because ads are cheap right now).

Why is retargeting, aka remarketing, under-utilized? Firstly, It’s hard to learn it for yourself. Yet it’s also hard to find the right person to do it for you. There’s friction here that is only overcome with chutzpah or big budgets.

Secondly, it’s more of a helper-tactic than a standalone marketing tactic. By definition, it doesn’t work by itself.

How it works If you visit the products and services page of my website, and you fit the right demographic and psychographic profile, you may at some point be reminded of those products and services as you are surfing the web, thanks to a “pixel”, a tracking cookie.

But without visiting my site? You see nothing. That’s pretty much the idea. 

Now think about the ways someone get to my site. You might click on a link that’s buried into my content marketing (eg. this newsletter), or an outreach email, a message on LinkedIn or Upwork, or you might just do a web search for something like, “complex services firm”, in which case you are also likely to end up on my site about that subject – SEO is a form of content marketing that works with retargeting too.

That’s the logistics of how it works, at least.

The psychology of how it works is better explained by Dr. Lant. Or you can just take his word for it and try to get your brand into the mind of your ideal customers 7 times over the next 18 months.

Be well,
Rowan

 

Coronavirus is affecting the global ad industry, including digital. Analysts are forecasting significant revenue decreases for the two most profitable advertising platforms, Facebook and Google.

Not so much they’ll need a bailout, though,((Don’t worry, the US is saving its bailout money for the cruise ship industry, so it can get back to destroying the planet in the tackiest way possible.)) because both companies will continue to be profitable. 

Meanwhile, what I am seeing anecdotally is a 5% to 15% discount in ad buy costs today vs two weeks ago.

Yet while ad costs are down – lead-generation conversions are not, at least not for my current clients running FB remarketing ads. Mostly SaaS firms.

SaaS and tech entrepreneurs – and especially tech consultancies – are usually reluctant to buy ads((With the exception of Series A/B/C+ funded startups; for them, the growth phase reluctance to invest in advertising gives way to basically throwing enormous amounts of cash at Google and Facebook and seeing what sticks.)). One list reader published a research study in which he found that an unusually low number of consulting firms pursue digital advertising as a lead generation strategy. The number was something like 1 in 63 at the time that I got a glimpse of the research. If 45 of 65 consultancies had the gumption to pursue it, it would, of course, be less attractive.

So even before coronavirus, digital advertising has been an opportunity for niche firms selling complex products and services in a B2B context. Not a strike it rich opportunity, nor a low-hanging fruit one. But something that, properly implemented, can improve the effectiveness and reach of inbound and outbound marketing funnels. 

Add in lower costs and you probably see where I’m going with this – there’s an opportunity now for lean, scrappy digital advertising. Lean and scrappy as in $500/month.

Should you experiment? You should if you have any kind of productized service, or if you have free content products (webinars, studies, ebooks) to get in front of people. Depending on about 20 other factors. But that’s consideration factor #1.

But is there demand? Earlier I said conversions were up, but are people buying? Yes. Does that make right now a perfect opportunity to invest in digital advertising? Not necessarily.

What makes it a perfect opportunity is that it’s still overlooked by firms like yours, it’s cheap right now, and people will be buying 6 to 12 months from now (or so it seems).

And what type of advertising does that timeframe lend itself to? A long-term brand building remarketing campaign that hinges of content marketing products for top of funnel movement. Show your interesting opinions to people who already know about you, maybe start conversations; it not, at least stay top of mind.

Sorry, I jargonize when I talk advertising 🙂

Take action. I would recommend starting your experimentation with AdRoll because it’s low-risk learning that won’t end you up in a pushy product demo or email drip sequence from a BDR. Upload a list of warm leads to FB as a Custom Audience. Use Adroll managed display ads to let those people know about your webinar or guide. And build the funnel that gets leads from point A, the add, to point B, the booked meeting. 

What you’re doing is building and warming up a lead pool which may be ready to buy next year.

Simple, right? No, not at all – which is precisely why it’s an opportunity. 

Here’s to a productive, healthy week ahead,
Rowan

It looks like we’re about to experience some major shifts in our economy and that has me a little scared. But not too scared, because I’ve seen this happen before.

In the early 2000s, Thailand concocted Global Thai, a culinary diplomacy initiative. Ever wonder why the menus at Thai restaurants around the country world are almost identical? Now you know. 

Today though, thousands of those restaurants are closed. Will they re-open? 

Maybe not – a lot of local hardware stores never reopened after the dot-com recession. Instead, Home Depots and Lowe’s flourished in their place. They’ve got 4,200 US locations between the two of them.

If the coronavirus recession lasts a year or two, 100’s of thousands of restaurants could go under and if they re-open, it’s going to be different.

They’ll re-open as food trucks, which may no longer exist in trucks.

Or as catering and deliver-only restaurants, housed in low-rent warehouses on the edge of town, with no waitstaff, printed menus, hosts, or “front of the house managers”. 

Or housed in “co-kitchens” ((I just made this word up; if anyone knows a better word please let me know!)) – coworking style shared kitchens producing who knows how many distinct restaurant menus and cuisines. Maybe chefs will instruct sous-chefs remotely.

Digitally, the new incarnations of Thai restaurants may look as delicious as they ever have, when viewed on Ubereats, GrubHub ((Grubhub is betting on exclusivity deals, which it’s offering to COVID-slapped restaurants today. But that may or may not be to the advantage of many individual restaurants https://www.businessinsider.com/grubhubs-100-million-lifeline-to-restaurants-has-strings-attached-2020-3)), and Kitchen Table (if they survive too). Or when viewed on the restaurants’ own websites.

But they way tech companies market to restaurants will change. And so will the way restaurants market to the customers. They won’t get review-bombed for bad service. Maybe they’ll be able to hire better cooks. Maybe one kitchen will support a Thai restaurant, an Indian restaurant, a Nepali restaurant, and an Italian restaurant – all at the same time. 

If you’re the restaurant owner how do you sell that? Do you hide it or embrace it?

This is the point: how are your ideal clients going to be changed in two years and how will your marketing strategy adjust accordingly?

My best,
Rowan

Today I saw my favorite silver lining so far from the coronavirus: dolphins returning to the Trieste, Italy waterfront after an apparently 40 year absence.

Dolphins over cruise ships.

There are more silver linings too – working from home is going mainstream and that’s going to change how we all do business in a way that’s to my liking. It will reward ingenuity and initiative for my people: tech entrepreuneurs who have created ways for people to benefit from their products and services using the Internet are going to win. I love this.

And that effect will be true even if many people return to their offices post-pandemic.

I’ve worked remotely since about 2002 ((apart from a stint at Blackbaud and its subsidiaries, where I was in an old-fashioned office for 3 and half years, I’ve worked from home, from my own private office, or from one of about 15 coworks for the last 18 years)), so I open-arm-welcome the chorus of “how to work from home” advice flooding the media – it’s wonderful to see this go from weird to nearly mainstream. 

It’ll make many people happier, especially in human ecosystems which require painful car commuting or public transport. If you need further details, just go on LinkedIn or Facebook – you’ll be inundated.

Is that why I’m cringing? Meh, not really. People are excited about something new, god bless them. That brings a smile.

But I am also cringing. And that’s because of the way that some companies are marketing during this epidemic. 

Some companies are cloaking their marketing as public health concern around COVID-19.

To add insult to injury, they’re doing so by cloaking marketing emails (which require permission) as critical transactional emails (which do not).

That’s not even marketing at all, according to the definition of marketing I adhere to.

It’s advertising.

And advertising itself is not necessarily wrong. Not at all. 

But this kind of advertising, also known as Spam, is not just wrong, it’s cringeworthy. 

Who’s the culprit? There are actually several in my inbox, but I am going to single out a massive brand name that will hopefully not send me a cease and desist letter: Moneygram.

Moneygram saw fit to interrupt my inbox today with a spam marketing email entitled, “Supporting You During the COVID-19 Pandemic”.

How did they support me?

In the email, Moneygram purported concern about the pandemic and noted that “walk-in locations may be unavailable in certain areas”.

Now, did they shut down walk-in locations worldwide, perchance? Because they are so concerned about public health over revenue? No – just in areas “where governments have imposed mandatory closures”. Thanks for telling us you’re not breaking the law Moneygram.

Wherever governments have imposed mandatory closures, did Moneygram announce a program whereby people who rely on walk-in locations are still able to use their service? No.

No, because the point of the email was to say, “instead of using the other 200 money transfer service in the world, go to our website or app and use ours.

Yes, they have – shocker – an app for sending money. Or you can use their website.

Right, just like every single other money transfer service in the world.

But PayPal didn’t spam me. Neither did the other 7 money transfer and payment services I’m signed up for.

It makes me reflect on us – I hope none of us will be tempted to use this global tragedy to gain a “marketing advantage” (ie create tasteless advertisements).

Now back to the quarantine life.

And if you’re also working from home, enjoy 🙂
Rowan

 

 

 

Continuing on the theme of creating web equity by incorporating authenticity and spontaneity, let me ask you – how do you “create” testimonials?

Listening to one of my favorite podcasts last night, I had to grit my teeth on hearing the co-hosts cite the importance of testimonials but then gloss over how to create them. Let alone what it is specifically that makes a testimonial work.

Of course, the most important part of acquiring good testimonial is to have and deliver a great product and service. All that follows makes that assumption.

For me personally, testimonials are starting to lose impact – glowing testimonials are now so ubiquitous. So can they even be trusted? Is every product and service now spectacular all of a sudden? Let’s be honest, most testimonials are starting to feel like marketing bullsh*it.

That’s the first problem. The other problem testimonials have is failing to hook. Most testimonials make your eyes glaze over.

But they don’t have to – not if you’re willing to put in much more effort than before.

A Theory of Testimonials: Reverse Testimonials

I’ve talked before about master copywriter (at least in a direct marketing context) Sean D’Souza’s early ought’s classic, The Brain Audit, where he describes his “trigger” theory of conversion-optimized messaging.

But another interesting set of opinions of D’Souza’s are around testimonials.

He argues that testimonials should have three characteristics:

• Authentic – This means not ghostwritten, let alone ghostwritten by a marketing or communications person, which is the common practice. Instead, the testimonial consists of the actual words people use, off the cuff, to describe your solution.  In fact, he recommends asking probing questions live, recording the conversation, and transcribing the audio word for word. I’ve done this for clients. It’s not easy and it doesn’t always work((evoking authenticity is harder with larger clients, especially if you must procure your testimonial from in-house communications or marketing director – they tend to talk in marketing-copy style, at least in a business context. If you think in cliches, you speak in them and vice versa)) but it’s a great approach.
• Reversed – Starts off by containing doubts and objections, then concludes in praise. You ask questions that elicit comments about doubts. The problem is, most people are too polite to express doubts, so it takes some skill to uncover them.
• Detailed – The praise should, of course, be backed up by details. This is much less hard to uncover than doubts or preliminary objections. But details also hard to get at through text communications; by following up on praise by pressing for details.

D’Souza calls testimonials that have these characteristics, “reverse testimonials” because they end with praise but don’t start with them. And are in other ways counterintuitive.

Examples

Exhibit A: The Typical Testimonial

“Cedar Creek Coworking is amazing! The people are really friendly and the space is very nice. I love it and it’s been an awesome investment!!”

Notice:

• Includes no doubts or objections the rest of us can relate to
• Starts out positive; ends positively
• No details

Now contrast that with Exhibit B: The Reverse Testimonial

“I wasn’t really sure whether the Cedar Creek Coworking would work for me because it seemed too crowded and honestly a little intense, I mean just the general vibe of it. Also, just from looking at Google Maps, it seemed a little far away. But then it turned out to feel very spacious and relaxed. And quiet. I mean, I think that’s because of the way the desks and walls are laid out – and the flooring is super quiet; it’s like oh yeah, there’s a reason professional offices have carpeted floors. I also found myself working longer hours because it was really pleasant to be there, so I started to commute back home later after rush hour. The two years I’ve been here have actually been the most productive period for my business. I also realized how friendly the people are once I got to know them. This is by far the best coworking ever! Just an awesome thing for me overall!!”

This doesn’t even entirely resolve all of the customer’s objections – working longer hours isn’t a solution to a long commute. But other objections (too crowded, too serious/unfriendly of a vibe) were resolved. Taken together we have in this example:

• Authentic language (“it turned out to feel very spacious and relaxed. And quiet.”), including negative and positive assertions.
• The reverse pattern, starting with doubts (“wasn’t really sure”) but closing strong (“an awesome thing for me overall!!!”).
• Details (“carpeted floors”)

Why does the reverse pattern work? Because gives you a hook. Thus, people actually read reverse testimonials all the way through, especially if there’s a relatable doubt expressed. That perks our attention, the same way negative consumer product reviews have to be balanced against positive ones.

The Work

Another important point here: what’s implied is the need for a testimonial interview – and for developing the skill and practice of efficiently conducting these interviews. You have to set up the interview, you have to customize your script for the interview, you have to make sure the recording works (ideally video), and you have to followup, with thank you’s and confirmations. And then you have to transcribe.

I will confess that this is time-consuming and seems to be a drain on both parties. It seems counterintuitively laborious.

There’s also a certain awkwardness that comes with asking something to do something a different way. 

All of this is good news for you; it means this approach is unlikely to become widespread, no matter how much quarantine time we have on our hands. 

Another piece of bad advice I hear on marketing and consulting podcasts is, “get lots of testimonials”.

I think that used to work when fewer of us had testimonials at all, especially. I remember being so impressed when a guy I worked with had 137 LinkedIn recommendations – in 2008. And I definitely don’t think having lots of testimonials or reviews is a bad thing, especially if taken as a whole they are authentic, genuinely praiseful, and detailed.

On a related note, you also have to know how to use testimonials. For example, where exactly to place them on your website or presentation deck. Too often, they are quarantined to their own section or page or slide, and thereby deprived of their power.

But properly created and properly presented, less is more – no matter how big or small, most brands only need a handful of true testimonials.

I hope you and yours are OK,
Rowan