Setting up a message board on your site is an excellent way to build a community of loyal customers. Your community members can help each other use your product effectively and provide you with fresh ideas. The message board itself gives your customers reason to return to your site often, sometimes even daily. So, the next time they need your product -- guess who they think of first...you! And even better, customers will tell their friends about your products and your community, resulting in viral growth that will keep the incoming pouring in.
Or so it would seem.
Let's take a look at the reality of setting up a message board.
Jenny, a cloth diaper seller, decides to setup a forum so her customers can share diaper care tips, parenting advice and ideas for new product designs. She chooses the message board software recommended by her hosting company and hires a web designer for installation and customization of the forum. Then she emails all her customers about the new site.
A few months later, her forum is booming! New members are signing up daily. Search engines eat up the content on the message board, boosting her page rank and helping her site appear high in the rankings for many related keyword phrases. The problem? She's using up too much bandwidth for her existing hosting account. She purchases a larger account and the community continues to grow.
But then her hosting company contacts her and tells her that the forum is using up too many server resources. She needs to move to a dedicated server. She looks at several $99 per month server options -- but they don't include the technical support she will need. The hosting companies that do include the support she needs cost several hundred dollars per month -- more than she can support on her own.
Jenny is faced with a choice that many small business have had to make: Close the message board to the public or shut it down completely.
Both options will hurt her business.
But wait.
Those aren't the only choices that Jenny has. She can also monetize the site. Her community is the best asset off her website. She should be taking advantage of the traffic to it and monetize the site.
Monetizing a site means leveraging the traffic and resources it provides to earn money -- at least enough to pay server costs. Jenny has many option available to her to create streams of income from her message board. Below of seven of them:
1. One of the most common methods for generating income from a community is to place banner and text ads in the header, footer and sidebar sections. If these banners appeal to your community (work at home moms advertising to each other, for example), this could be a lucrative endeavor. However, there is a downside. Ad blockers may prevent your community members from seeing the advertisements. Your members may ignore the ads. And if you place too many ads on the site, it becomes cluttered and may drive potential members away.
2. You could charge a membership fee for the community. Overall, I wouldn't recommend this for a product support community. However, you may setup special forums within the message board, that are for paid members. Perhaps these paid members would have first access to new products. Be creative, talk to your members and find out what they would find valuable.
3. Join affiliate programs of complimentary businesses and promote them on your website through advertisements, articles and community messages. For example, Jenny is sells cloth diapers that she makes. She could join an affiliate program that sells diaper covers, liners, wool soakers, baby wipes, etc. Join venture partnerships with these businesses would also be an excellent way to earn additional revenue through community promotion.
4. Jenny already sells a physical product to her community members. She can add to her arsenal by creating a digital product. Perhaps an ebook on the benefits of attachment parenting, or how to convince dad that cloth is best. Talk to your community members, and consider what you know about your target market.
5. You can accept donations from your community members. The downside of this is that oftentimes people attach strings to gives (such as donations) which can cause problems later on, if you make a decision regarding your forum that said donator does not agree with. In my opinion, you'd be better off offering an upgraded membership, in which your community members purchase specific upgrades and agree to follow your rules, in exchange for a set amount of money.
6. Selling targeted sponsorships is an option that I haven't seen around much. However, you can charge more for them than for regular advertising. In a targeted sponsorship, a company pays for advertising space in a specific section of your website. For example, if Jenny has a forum on her community dedicated to breastfeeding babies (who are cloth diapers, naturally), a company selling cloth breast pads may sponsor the just that forum. Jenny would place a banner or text ads in just that forum. Perhaps she could promote the company in articles or her posts in that forum as well, depending on her agreement with the company.
7. You may use a combination of all of these things to diversify your income so if one source of revenue dries up, you're not left holding a hefty server fee with no money.
While online communities can be a great asset to a community, they can also be a huge liability in terms of server fees and time spent moderating the community itself. Planned wisely and carefully monetized, a community can pay for itself.
Michelle Waters is the work at home mom behind Shop Kit Plus, an complete website and shopping cart solution for home business moms who want to sell their products on the internet. Find out how Shop Kit Plus can help you create a more successful online business at http://www.shopkitplus.com.
Sunday, December 9, 2007
Audio Testimonials
Use Customer Audio Testimonials To Beat Out the Competition
Getting prospects is only one piece of the sales puzzle. Once you’ve got interest, whether it comes from word of
mouth, traditional advertising, or the Internet, time is not your friend and you must convince that prospect as
quickly as possible that you are the best candidate for the job. If you are not expeditious in conveying your
credibility and ability to measure up, then you could lose that prospect to your ever-awaiting
competition.
With that said, competition isn’t always a bad thing. Especially if you can prove that you are
better than they are.
But how do you prove that you are as good as you say you are? By using authentic
customer audio testimonials to say it for you. Your best customers have a compelling story to tell others about
their experience with you and their positive word of mouth can convince your prospects to do business with
you.
With so much deceit and hype these days in advertising, an actual heartfelt testimonial heard in an
actual voice from an actual happy satisfied customer, can be the tie-breaker that makes your prospect choose your
business over your competition.
We’ve all been there. Desperate for help with a particular need, perhaps our
roof is leaking or we need a new doctor, whatever the product or service, a referral is comforting when we are in
critical need of a good service provider.
But what if we don’t have a first hand referral from a friend or
colleague, would we settle for a second or even third hand referral? Sure we would.
The human psyche likes to
be reassured when it comes to having to dishing out hard earned cash for a product or service, and almost any
referral is better than no referral, when it comes to entrusting our homes and lives to someone.
Haven’t you
noticed that you are more inclined to go to a movie or a restaurant when someone else said how good it was? It
really didn’t matter whether you even knew the person giving the referral or not. Their first hand experience
transferred to you, giving you a comfort level that propelled you to go see that movie or eat at that restaurant the
next time you were in the neighborhood.
I have a friend who every time he orders from a menu at a restaurant
he asks the server for their opinion about what is good on the menu. He likes the reassurance he gets from their
recommendation and it affects his decision on what menu item he tries.
While it’s true that most businesses
have written client testimonials that they showcase on their web sites and office coffee tables, unless those
testimonials are from well known businesses, written testimonials are sometimes and often-times glossed
over.
But there’s an amazing thing that happens when a real customer speaks from the heart and the listener
senses the honesty in the person’s voice.
If it’s put on, most people can tell the difference, but when it’s
heartfelt, the listener is moved by what he or she hears.
Just think about radio and how many products have
been sold by a voice coming through a speaker.
With audio testimonials, your business can compete with the
big boys. Recently Mercury car insurance used testimonials to sell their services on television. It must have worked
because they featured them in many commercials for months. Just listen to the radio or watch television anytime to
see how many successful companies still use testimonials to support their claims.
There are two ways to
capture a live audio testimonial from a satisfied customer and there are several places to showcase them once you
have them.
With the increase in broadband capabilities on the Internet these past few years, the Web is one
place that audio and/or video testimonials can be effective.
If your customer is a truly satisfied one, then
he or she is always happy to oblige by recording a positive testimonial about their experience with your business.
But remember, because they are important to you, be extra kind to them by making the experience as painless as
possible. Sticking a camera in front of their face and asking them to answer questions will be challenging for you
and them, and does not always result in the best testimonial (unless your clients are actors or used to being in
front of a camera). Most likely, your customer participant will feel more comfortable giving his or her testimonial
over the telephone which will create a more authentic and compelling end result.
There a two ways in which
your business can capture audio testimonials from your satisfied customers:
1. Hire a professional review
company to help facilitate and record your
href="http://specialtywebservice.com/testimonials.php">testimonials.
a. An interviewer will record your
customers for you. This method authenticates your testimonials and saves you the awkwardness of doing it
yourself.
2. Set up a dedicated telephone line that will record and prompt your customers to leave a
testimonial.
a. There are audio companies that offer this service for a monthly subscription and you ask
your customers to call an 800 number where they can leave the testimonial.
Once you’ve captured a few or more
audio testimonials, it makes sense to showcase them everywhere and anywhere you typically advertise.
· Web
site pages
o Place your customer reviews on your testimonials page, front page or next to areas on your site
that can be corroborated by a testimonial.
· Email
o Talk to your web master about Imbedding a
customer testimonial link on the top, bottom or side of your email page.
· On Hold
o Incorporate your
audio testimonials into your on hold message so callers
can hear them while they are waiting.
· Radio
Ads
o Write a radio ad that features your customer’s testimonials (If it’s good enough for Mercury Insurance,
why not you?)
Seeing is believing, but seeing and hearing motivates people to act. You’ve worked hard to grow
your business and audio testimonials are a priceless reward for a job well done.
Your prospects will be more
motivated to do business with you when they hear the voice of your satisfied customer singing your
praises.
Diana D’Itri is Co-Owner of RaveBiz, a testimonial-broadcasting agency. Diana has spent the past
four years educating small and medium sized business on how word of mouth & referral strategies can grow business
and reduce ad spend.
Getting prospects is only one piece of the sales puzzle. Once you’ve got interest, whether it comes from word of
mouth, traditional advertising, or the Internet, time is not your friend and you must convince that prospect as
quickly as possible that you are the best candidate for the job. If you are not expeditious in conveying your
credibility and ability to measure up, then you could lose that prospect to your ever-awaiting
competition.
With that said, competition isn’t always a bad thing. Especially if you can prove that you are
better than they are.
But how do you prove that you are as good as you say you are? By using authentic
customer audio testimonials to say it for you. Your best customers have a compelling story to tell others about
their experience with you and their positive word of mouth can convince your prospects to do business with
you.
With so much deceit and hype these days in advertising, an actual heartfelt testimonial heard in an
actual voice from an actual happy satisfied customer, can be the tie-breaker that makes your prospect choose your
business over your competition.
We’ve all been there. Desperate for help with a particular need, perhaps our
roof is leaking or we need a new doctor, whatever the product or service, a referral is comforting when we are in
critical need of a good service provider.
But what if we don’t have a first hand referral from a friend or
colleague, would we settle for a second or even third hand referral? Sure we would.
The human psyche likes to
be reassured when it comes to having to dishing out hard earned cash for a product or service, and almost any
referral is better than no referral, when it comes to entrusting our homes and lives to someone.
Haven’t you
noticed that you are more inclined to go to a movie or a restaurant when someone else said how good it was? It
really didn’t matter whether you even knew the person giving the referral or not. Their first hand experience
transferred to you, giving you a comfort level that propelled you to go see that movie or eat at that restaurant the
next time you were in the neighborhood.
I have a friend who every time he orders from a menu at a restaurant
he asks the server for their opinion about what is good on the menu. He likes the reassurance he gets from their
recommendation and it affects his decision on what menu item he tries.
While it’s true that most businesses
have written client testimonials that they showcase on their web sites and office coffee tables, unless those
testimonials are from well known businesses, written testimonials are sometimes and often-times glossed
over.
But there’s an amazing thing that happens when a real customer speaks from the heart and the listener
senses the honesty in the person’s voice.
If it’s put on, most people can tell the difference, but when it’s
heartfelt, the listener is moved by what he or she hears.
Just think about radio and how many products have
been sold by a voice coming through a speaker.
With audio testimonials, your business can compete with the
big boys. Recently Mercury car insurance used testimonials to sell their services on television. It must have worked
because they featured them in many commercials for months. Just listen to the radio or watch television anytime to
see how many successful companies still use testimonials to support their claims.
There are two ways to
capture a live audio testimonial from a satisfied customer and there are several places to showcase them once you
have them.
With the increase in broadband capabilities on the Internet these past few years, the Web is one
place that audio and/or video testimonials can be effective.
If your customer is a truly satisfied one, then
he or she is always happy to oblige by recording a positive testimonial about their experience with your business.
But remember, because they are important to you, be extra kind to them by making the experience as painless as
possible. Sticking a camera in front of their face and asking them to answer questions will be challenging for you
and them, and does not always result in the best testimonial (unless your clients are actors or used to being in
front of a camera). Most likely, your customer participant will feel more comfortable giving his or her testimonial
over the telephone which will create a more authentic and compelling end result.
There a two ways in which
your business can capture audio testimonials from your satisfied customers:
1. Hire a professional review
company to help facilitate and record your
href="http://specialtywebservice.com/testimonials.php">testimonials.
a. An interviewer will record your
customers for you. This method authenticates your testimonials and saves you the awkwardness of doing it
yourself.
2. Set up a dedicated telephone line that will record and prompt your customers to leave a
testimonial.
a. There are audio companies that offer this service for a monthly subscription and you ask
your customers to call an 800 number where they can leave the testimonial.
Once you’ve captured a few or more
audio testimonials, it makes sense to showcase them everywhere and anywhere you typically advertise.
· Web
site pages
o Place your customer reviews on your testimonials page, front page or next to areas on your site
that can be corroborated by a testimonial.
o Talk to your web master about Imbedding a
customer testimonial link on the top, bottom or side of your email page.
· On Hold
o Incorporate your
audio testimonials into your on hold message so callers
can hear them while they are waiting.
· Radio
Ads
o Write a radio ad that features your customer’s testimonials (If it’s good enough for Mercury Insurance,
why not you?)
Seeing is believing, but seeing and hearing motivates people to act. You’ve worked hard to grow
your business and audio testimonials are a priceless reward for a job well done.
Your prospects will be more
motivated to do business with you when they hear the voice of your satisfied customer singing your
praises.
Diana D’Itri is Co-Owner of RaveBiz, a testimonial-broadcasting agency. Diana has spent the past
four years educating small and medium sized business on how word of mouth & referral strategies can grow business
and reduce ad spend.
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