Our websites and social media presence will help promote our services to those who might be looking for them.
One critical aspect of promoting and marketing ourselves is that of credibility, and along with that trust. People who might want to use us to help them, a family member, or a client want to believe that we are the best at what we do so they will be confident in engaging us. With such an important task of helping people in their homes, often at very sensitive times for them, people want to know and feel comfortable that we are up to the task of serving them and that we have the experience to do the job right. Neither the client nor we have the luxury of learning by doing.
So, it comes down to selling ourselves and telling our story – in whatever format we decide works. It can be a flyer, a print add, direct mail, and of course, online. Depending on whom we are serving, an online message may not connect with our audience (but it likely will with their children or grandchildren who can then advise them of our ability).
Nevertheless, we must first sell ourselves before anything else we are attempting to convey about our company, product, services, or solutions will be believable to our clients and customers.
After all, people buy us first before our company and what we provide It’s a relationship sell. They will need to like our product and the solutions we are offering, but they start with liking and buying us.
While we might have an initial tendency to tell people how great we are and how they would be making a mistake to work with anyone else, it comes across as self-serving and conceited. We do this to an extent in our printed messages and online. However, a more successful and strategic approach is to get someone else to play our song and sing our praises – our satisfied clients.
This is what Ken Blanchard was describing in his landmark best-selling book “Raving Fans” (highly recommended reading)! He talks about a clientele that is thrilled to have worked with us that they take any opportunity to tell our story for us – without even being asked or requested to do so by us.
Testimonials are great. They are comments and experiences shared with the public by former or present clients and customers that tell the world how they feel that we did a good job for them – and anecdotally how we might do a good job for the person hearing or reading the testimonial from them. It’s their stamp of approval, their recommendation to future customers.
In most cases, clients and customers will tell the world more about us than we would think to say – and in a way that directly relates to others who might be thinking what they were before engaging us or having certain concerns which we easily addressed for them.
Testimonials don’t need to be formal or even typed. They can be sent in an email or text message, left on a social media site like Houzz or Linked In. Their message can even be recorded (just audio or video and audio) while we are in front of them by using our smartphone.
We need to be believable to continue getting business, and the easiest and best way to have this happen is for people who actually know us – because they have hired us to help them – to voluntarily tell the world about our strengths for us.