Using Testimonials To Help With Conversions (Sales)

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Updated 4 years ago

As an affiliate marketer our main focus is to sell products and services provided by others. We earn a commission only when a sale is made.

As bloggers, we depend on our content working hard for us to persuade our readers to take action. Either to make a comment, join an Email list or click the affiliate link and make a purchase.

The end result we desire is the sale. When the reader is hesitant we offer them the alternatives listed above so that we can maintain a connection with them for future communications.

What is our first objective when a visitor lands on our content? It is to keep reading and not leave before taking one of the above actions. There are many ways to do that as we are taught here in Wealthy Affiliate.

I want to address the methods publishers of investment newsletters and research articles use. This is something that can be used by affiliate marketers too.

The Hook

Over the years when searching for investment advice I land on websites owned by investment publishing organizations. Some of these names may be familiar to you.

Money Map Press
The Motley Fool
Agora Financial
Manward Press
Stansbury & Associates
Oxford Club

These are just a few of the hundreds that exist. And each one of these publishers offer newsletters and research articles in a myriad of financial niches. For a complete list go to the following link: https://www.stockgumshoe.com/reviews-alphabetically/

I have subscribed to many of these investment newsletters. The typical technique most of them use is to demonstrate the value of the information they will be sharing in whatever that segment happens to be.

They state that the cost to subscribe is $199 a year. They make the point that this is a fantastic deal. However, if I signed up now, it would only cost me $49 a year. I call this technique THE HOOK! By making this cost so low, what have I got to loose by subscribing?

The Customer Pays To Be Marketed To!

That doesn't seem right. How can they afford to sell this at such a low price? The answer is really simple. They are persuading me to pay for their advertising campaign without me realizing it. Plus, they also get my Email address and my credit card information.

The customer is actually paying them to be part of their marketing campaign.

Let me tell you THIS WORKS! That is why there are so many publishers doing this. But it gets better.

Sure, they do indeed provide very useful information, However, if I was willing to spend the time researching the Internet, I could probably find this information myself. By presenting this in their newsletter, they are saving me time. And for that they have a captive reader to market to.

The Value Of Exclusive Information

Now that they have my Email address and consent to receive messages, they also send me sales copy for high ticket items.

And they all use the same process to persuade their readers to part with some serious cash to get the inside scoop of companies who are at the forefront of hot products.

Some of the recent hot products have been in the following business segments:

Cannabis
Cryptocurrencies
Energy
Technology
Bio-tech
Pharma

And to justify the high price for investment information, they trot out the past performance of similar companies using testimonials in the form of stock charts.

One thing they all have in common is the stellar gains of 1000% and more in a mere few years.

A long litany of testimonials are used to bombard the reader with proof that they should get in NOW before this latest unreleased information is available to the general public.

They write their copy to make the reader feel really special in getting this great opportunity ahead of the crowd. To sweeten the pot they offer additional related reports that will provide more advanced information that members can capitalize on.

At the very end the cost is disclosed. They range in price from $500 to $5000 and more. It doesn't take a genius to see that these companies can make a killing from only a small percentage of their readers who end up making purchases.

Testimonials Sell

How can we in Wealthy Affiliate use testimonials to our advantage?

For starters, the cost of the Weathy Affiliate Program is a bargain. Still, people want to see proof that it works.

New members cannot use their own story to show the level of success that referrals want to see. But we have so many successful members here whose stories we can use as testimonials,

When I have looked at the websites of other members who are still on the rise, I noticed that some of them use success stories of existing successful WA members. They are usually screenshots of excerpts taken from their success blog posts together with their WA picture.

After a member reaches a high income level, they make the transition from using the stories of other members to their own. Remember that all these stories have affiliate links too, that can be shared if the reader wants more details.

Proof Hits Hot Buttons

Make no mistake, proof does indeed hit the hot buttons. And the earnings does not have to be in the stratosphere.

In fact, saying that a member earns a few thousand dollars a month shows that this is attainable. Once you have demonstrated that making modest amounts is possible, it is OK to show that others make significantly more by using scaling up techniques.

Proof of earnings does indeed hit hot buttons. Let me use myself as an example.

When my sponsor found me he mentioned that he used to be a construction worker. Like me, he found Wealthy Affiliate when looking to create a home based business so that he could leave his construction job.

At the time I found him online, he told me he had succeeded in doing that. His income wasn't exorbitant. In fact, it was about $8000 a month. And he was earning that after just three years in Wealthy Affiliate. My sponsor is now earning over $10K a month about 18 months later.

I Was Sold

When I saw that a construction worker who started out with very little Internet knowledge could learn how to create an online business like that, I was sold.

Why were you sold on joining Wealthy Affiliate?

Post Script

By the way, remember all those publishing companies I told you about? The majority of them have affiliate programs. Just think about the possibilities to earn money from the other side!

Do not overlook the use of testimonials to help earn conversions!

All the best to you.

Edwin