SNM086: 7 Ways to Use Proof to Get the Sale

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get the proof to make the sale on today's episode. Today's episode brought to you by Convert Kit To find out how Conferred Kid can help you grow your business, save money and increase your relationship with your email list. Head over to serve no master dot com Backslash Convert kit Right now, Are you tired of dealing with your boss? Do you feel underpaid and underappreciated? If you want to make it online, fire your boss and start living your retirement dreams Now then you've come to the right place. Welcome to serve no master podcast where you learn how to open new revenue streams and make money while you sleep. Presented live from a tropical island in the South Pacific by best selling author Jonathan Green. Now, here's your host. I hope you guys can forgive me if you hear a little bit of background noise. I'm actually travelling for a conference right now, so I'm in a hotel instead of sitting on my normal beach, and you might hear a little bit of road noise. If you do. I apologize for that. I will try and edit it out and way up on the third floor so There's not too much noise, but someone is working on. I think, Christmas decorations or something outside so occasion. There's a little bit of noise today we're talking about is proof, and this is so important. It's one of most critical components of your sales letters and sales messages. This is a lesson in episode that's very important for copywriters, but it's also very important for any type of online business. Anything you want to sell, whether it's service's air consulting, you need to be able to convince people to give you money. That's what cop writing in sales is. There are two big beliefs I have when it comes to copyright in the first is in beets. I believe that the order in which you have your sections is very important. I think the order is more important than the actual words. Second is proof proof should really be the highlight of your page, and having different types of proof will make the difference and be the difference between a successful and failed sales page. Now, yesterday, when we're talking about working as a copper head, one of the things we talked about I mentioned was when I started my s e o business. I had to make proof websites to show that I could rank when I was providing was what's called a case study. A case study. Some people might call it a customer success story. Is this where you show that someone bought your product or used your service and went from a to B? If your service it was SDO like mine, you would show how you prove the rankings or brought the more customers or even better, brought the more sales and help them generate more revenue. Having customer telling entire story is very valuable. And rather than just say that you delivered the service, what you want from your customer is to talk about how you delivered real results. Real benefits always saved me a bunch of time. Oh, she helped me make more money. That's really where the value is in a case study, so case that he follows the journey of a project often comes with some cool graphics or line graph, and this flows into the next one is a testimonial, So a case study is often you writing about a project you worked on and showing some proof elements showing whether it's statistics or numbers. Testimonial is where the actual client or customer right something or makes a video saying how great you were. What you really want from a testimonial is more detail more about the journey. Oh, working with Jonathan was great. At first. I wasn't sure about working with him. You know, I wasn't sure about hired someone. The Internet. It's a little outside what I normally do, but we talked on the phone two or three times, was so accessible that I cited to work with him. And then we had this amazing thing. When you have a journey in a testimony, the story of where it began, the things that had to overcome. And if you go to my page and I have a page, Oh gosh, I have this page of my website where I try to capture testimonies. I have people give me real feedback, and it's at certain restaurant. Com back such B dash on a stash with dash meat. So Esther, calm be honest with me, and what I'm really looking for is a few key questions, and the questions I ask you are to help me get the testimonials I'm looking for get great testimonies. I asked this, and it's a pretty standard questions. If you blast what was the obstacle that would have prevented you from buying this product? What did you find as a result of buying this product? What specific feature did you like the most? What are three additional benefits? Would you recommend it to other people? Why, and is there anything you'd like to add to ask these six questions? Very simple, very standard in the reason the first question for testimonials is, what would the obstacle you have overcome? I want people to talk about their journey because when a testimony, justice is the greatest thing since sliced bread is grace product I've ever seen. That's okay, but a better testimonial talks about the journey. If you look at my networking empire testimonials, there's one from calling the area one of the best coppers in the world. One of the really leaders in the cooperating industry, someone who's meant toward me a lot, Tommy. A lot about cooperating, also, someone who just has a huge tribe of copywriters. Okay, great following helps you will get jobs, knows more about copyrighting and pretty much anyone else around one of the empties from my generation. We started in business same time. If you read his testimonial about me on my networking empire Page, he talks about how the first time you saw me, he hated me. He was the first of my son, Jonathan. I knew Emilie that I would hate him, hated everything about him. That's such a powerful intro, because I'm talking about the ability to network what's more powerful than turning someone hates you into a testimonial. Most people their first thought is I should cut out all the bad parts. But no, you want to show the real parts. And these six questions I think they're taught by a lot of other people have been around for a while. The six questions I use for testimonials I didn't invent those. And what's great about having those is when you say to someone who write me a testimonial, it's almost always worthless. It's much very hard for people to write one that's useful because they feel like you said, Hey, you're about to be on TV. Think of a speech. They create all this pressure. You want to get something much more natural, and the more you get testimonies in the form of feedback in the way I do with the software I use, you write a testimony that it comes to me. The six questions and I kind of formatted paragraphs and send it back and say, Hey, is it okay like this? It's a two step process. So even if you go to that page and submit a testimonial, I won't use it until I have your permission to use the final version of it. Another valuable way to provide proof. And this is something that you may not have even noticed. But it's all over my website. It's things like, as seen on, there's a whole company called as seen on TV, and it's so fascinating because it works when people see that little red logo that says, Oh, this was seen on TV. It makes them want to buy. And all it means is, Hey, someone bought an ad on TV and Brandon Commercial, as seen on TV, doesn't prove anything, but it still works. So when people see that Oh, I've been in these radio shows and I've been seen on this website. All of those things the more places you've been seen, the more you can use them. So generating press coverage is very, very valuable. The important thing is to use, uh, press logos and press coverage that people will recognize and respond to and see is positive. You know, if you have, for example, if you, you know I want to use as a credential like a local newspaper that no one's ever heard of, it's gonna Onley work in that area. But if you try to use it nationally, won't be very valuable. And the same thing if you appear in like a magazine that most people wouldn't want to be associated with, that doesn't make any sense to you. If I was on the cover of Heavy Metal Quarterly, would that make you want to hire me? Thio do S e. O for your business, so you want to make sure that it fits that it's respectable and you just can use it very subtly. You don't have to provide a link to the original appearance. Most of my appearances I did a bunch of radio appearances for a while to promote a product so most of my appearance is kind of what that way so people can't go back and listen to it. Enlist some tape that show three or four years ago, but you just say I was on this radio shows on that radio show. Those things add a lot of value I've been on. The best selling author is a similar thing. As press coverage. It's adding an accolade and award. Another place is social shares. When I'm looking for topics to share on these episodes, when I'm always looking for ideas, one of the places I look and there's a couple other ones, but I use this source called Epic Beat depictions. I don't know, they have a weird link name, and so I'm not sure what the real name of the website is, but a post a link below and I've shared in the past, and it's similar to Buzz Sumo, and it lets me search. I type in a keyword and that I searched by the number of social shares. Sometimes I see a page where someone shows a Lincoln, it says, Oh, this page has been shared 17 times, and the numbers so low it actually detracts home. I got so every must hate it. So you do want to be careful with your social sharing to make sure you have those big numbers. And what social showing does is it provides an element of social proof sets. Oh, other people like it, and especially if you do those social shares where it shows the friends of theirs who liked your page or the friends of theirs who shared it and they could see that stuff. And this is why Facebook comments can be a double edged sword, sometimes in the bottom of a sales page. In a lot of the sales page templates I use, they always offer to let you have these Facebook comments at the bottom. The problem with those is if someone leaves a bad comment, you can't delete, and you can end with a bad comment on your page. The other problem with Facebook comments. Sometimes I'm looking at a product in the last comment is from like nine years ago or 18 months ago. It's old. You have to constantly get fresh comments so they can be more valuable, and they could be really great when you're doing a launch for your product. But if you're not generating perpetual buzz. They can start to go from a positive to a negative as they go stale social shares and just showing, Oh, this was shared on Facebook 1.7000 times. This was shared on Twitter 916 times. Those could become an element of social proof, and there are a lot of ways that you can show off these numbers. You can have a total shares number if you're someone who's doing copyrighted products for other people. Or if you're riding blawg posts, for example, and you want to get more clients what you can show instead of having to a social share your sales page, you can show that the article you wrote last month got so many social shares, so you can show that your work itself is popular. Sometimes that's the better way to demonstrate your expertise. I watch. I think I watched every single money TV show about investing or buying or rich people helping entrepreneurs. I try to watch all of them. I don't know what happened, but at a certain age, CNBC became the channel that I watched the most shows from, and one of the things that they always ask people, especially on the Canadian shows, that I watched because I definitely watch the Canadian shows an Australian ones, too. In the English ones, they always say, How many Instagram followers do you have? How many Twitter followers to have your following and your social presence is often how people measure your worth? I was reading a book last week about someone bragging about having 100,000 Twitter followers, and when you check, most of the followers are bots or not real people. But people still respond to that. It's a measurement of your success, and it's a way of demonstrating social proof. One of the other elements that I have on Guy only do this on my networking page. Almost never do. This is pictures from a party I threw where a bunch of really Cecil marketers and me We're networking together because it's a demonstration, and it's a way of showing a social connection, showing that people like your work that the rest of the world approves of your work is very valuable. Social proof is one of those elements. We often struggle to get our hands on. If you're selling ah, physical product. If you're doing something in the health space, especially. What you may need is research studies, which is where you do a full medical test to see if people got better results. This is very, very important. If you're doing a physical product, you're an inventor. I find it interesting when people screw around with research studies because smart people can tell right away when something's up and I watch on these shows. A lot of times, people sometimes come in with recherche studies that don't say that don't match their claims or they have a research study that is about something else. They go, Oh, here's a research study that shows this type of thing works and they didn't actually do a study for their own product. Now, running a study in your own product can be expensive. I know that this is why I don't do physical products. You know, it's Ah, very expensive up front area. But let's say you wanted to. For example, I saw an invention where someone invented a new hard hat, had a built in solar powered fan I thought was actually pretty good. Invention makes sense. Working as a construction work in the hot sun and they went to get an investment in. The guy says, Well, have you done a study to confirm that you can use the C in America, you have to pass a safety rating test. You can't just say this is a hard hat. It has to pass the test to show that it does the job. A hard hat is meant to protect someone from something falling off a roof, like someone dropping hammer on the head. So it's a very specific thing. That's not about looks, it's about safety. And so you have to pass their safety inspections and these people hadn't done it. And I found that very interesting, and I think it massively affected the valuation of the company. You have a great product, but until it passes safety inspection, that's just on idea. Understanding how studies work is critical. If you have a generic health study, I have watched people go. Here's a study that eating so see, you know, the eating seaweed is good. Here's a study showing that working out with extra weights on your clothes is good and goes, Yeah, that's a generic study that applies to any product in your market, right? If you're trying to be a product different traitor, you have something unique. You have to do a study about your specific product. Now. It depends on the market. You're in the way you have to. You'll use these in which different proof element you'll use. I'm always trying to have us many varied and valuable proof elements. And the more visual your proof elements are, the better having a list. For example, if I had a list of people that went to my high networking party, that'll be okay because at all, here's a bunch of that I've networked with her work with in the past. I just had a list of names That's okay, that's better than nothing. But pictures of me with them is even better than that. So the better your visual is, the more you can visually represent things saying I help someone go up in rankings. If you go to any SEC website, they always have that up bar graph showing more and more traffic and flying up the rankings. That's valuable. People want to see that. That's what they respond to. Lots of visuals and captions and another way of showing proof is, of course, showing the money or showing the final results of the products. So sometimes it's a graph. If you look at any fitness park, there's always the before and after pictures. If it's a financial course, there's pictures of paychecks, and I have pictures of paychecks on some of my offers, kind of showing the revenue they've generated for me. So you will go, Oh, this this really works for Here's what it is. You wanna know what your result is? You know, sometimes you see courses that don't make a financial promise or they make a crazy financial promise. And those are the two ends of the spectrum. If you promise people make a $1,000,000 in four days, don't do that like I don't go that far in that direction. It will increase your sales. The more wild your promises are, And if you could get away with them, then the more money you make. It's unfortunate, but people really respond to those. Hey, make $38,000 in the next 45 minutes, people click and buy that stuff all the time. I don't sell that way anymore. I I mean, I've never really sold that way. I'm never gone that far down the spectrum, but I'm really not interested in over promising. Even if it bumps my sales numbers. There's a point beyond which I don't like to go in my marketing, but understanding where that point is very important. Understand, people will respond to that. You know most of those fitness pictures you see before and after pictures. They're not always the same person. They're always Photoshopped like crazy, and oftentimes what they'll do is they'll take an Olympic athlete. Most people who are in the Olympics don't make a lot of money. Olympics. You know you can't get paid you an amateur athlete or whenever they take these amazing athletes and they say, Hey, why don't you get a mature wait, let me take some photos and then use my tool and lose a bunch of weight again and they and they do that a lot. And that's how they get a lot of those before and after pictures or from someone who was really ripped, put on some weight for a photo and they got ripped again. And it's all about showing before and after pictures that technically well Technically it is before and after picture. But it's also about massaging the truth and you as sons. Who said All warfare's built on deception and my modifications that all warfare is built on perception so you can create and actively seek out testimonials, actively seek out proof you don't need. Thio. Massage the results as much as you know, creating those before after pictures and using twins or whatever. But the more you can show the proof, the more your sales will happen. So if you have a good structure, the good order falling the correct beats of your sales letter and have really good proof elements, the rest of it almost becomes irrelevant. The rest of it having an engaging story, having the magical words that ends up only being 20% of it. You're 80% of the way there with the correct order and really great proof elements, so that's what you should work on. More than anything else, I often find that people struggle with proof elements early on. They create a product and then releases fast as possible so they don't have any reviews. They don't have any proof. It works, You know, there are many testimonies. They kind of get stuck in that phase. How do I find people to do testimonials. So if you're taking work as a copywriter, you'll have clients were like, Oh, no one's ever seen ever used it. I'm still testing a product right now that I want to do a big testimonial for cause it's someone who'd be a good contact for me and someone that I've known for a few years. But unfortunately, last night, the software glitch and I wasn't able to make one of the key components work. And even though I could recommend, I can tell you right now if I recommended this product, it's $1000 product and make a couple of sales this week. I can't do it in time show works. And so one of the problems, I think, with the sales messaging for this product is that the proof elements not all the way there yet because I don't think the product's ready for prime time. To be honest with you, I'm running into multiple problems with it that you really shouldn't, and I was hesitant about it. Even had someone asked me about it. I said, I can't tell you. I think it's good yet A big part of your proof is integrity, so make sure that you don't push too far. But when you're creating your sales messages, whatever you're trying to sell, where they want, someone hires a consultant. Whether you want someone to do by one your products, the ability to provide proof and testimonials is very critical. Sometimes when someone approached me about a coaching project, they want to talk to one of the other coaches clients. Even when someone's not a referral, they end up wanting to speak to someone else. I want to speak to someone else to get the real deal, and I don't always let people do that. You know, I certainly there's Sometimes people are just tire kickers, and you don't want to let a bunch of tire kickers hassle your real clients. But every once in a while, if something like, if you're really serious and does the last scene, you do finally talk something. I don't often let people do that because it could become a whole thing. But sometimes that's what people meet. People want to see. Okay, I've seen the proof. I've seen nothing But let me hear what the person has to say. So the more you invest time in that and if you work with someone is a copper and say, Hey, why don't you give me 10 copies of the product and let me go out and get testimonials for you? Let me get some reviews. Let me get some proof stuff. That's a way you can increase your value as a copywriter. Say, Hey, I also provide the testimonials and you could have a group of people that are just your beta tester friends. And that's very, very valuable thinking outside the box and thinking of ways to overcome any project. Any problem in a project is really gonna help you separate yourself from the competition. Most people, when they see a problem like they get approached, it was this have got this great project, no testimony as they go. Well, then I can only write you a crappy sales letter. But if you're the person goes hey, I don't see an obstacle. I see an opportunity. Let me get you those testimonies. Let me test your product. Let me get it out there while I'm working on the copy I can provide you with something that no one else does, and that's where you become excellent. And as part of the service Master Tribe, I know you strive for excellence, so these airways, you can provide amazing proof. There's ways you could become a better copywriter, sell better products, raise your rates and become much more financially successful. All because you now understand the power and the way to deliver proof. Seven. Different, powerful ways to deliver massive proof and increase your sales. Thank you for listening to this week's episode of Serve No Master. Make sure you subscribe, so you never miss another episode. We'll be back tomorrow with more tips and tactics on how to escape that rat race. Head over to serve no master dot com forward slash podcasts Now for your chance to win a free coffee of Jonathan's bestseller Serve No master. All you have to do is leave a five star review of this podcast. See you tomorrow. You just listened to another amazing episode of the serve. No master podcast. Make sure to subscribe, and we're back tomorrow with another amazing episode.