Episode 508 Copywriting With Todd Jones – Creadibility Enhancers

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Show Summary

This podcast episode discusses credibility enhancers for businesses, focusing on building trust with potential customers. **Social proof**, including **testimonials**, **case studies**, and **media appearances**, are highlighted as key strategies. The speakers also explore the importance of **word-of-mouth marketing**, **logos of well-known brands**, **awards and certifications**, and **data-driven results**. The discussion emphasizes the need for genuine and verifiable information to establish credibility, advising against fabricated data or exaggerated claims. Finally, the importance of responding to both positive and negative customer feedback is stressed.

Show Transcript

Hey everybody, Rob Cairns here and in today’s show I have my good friend and co-host with his segment copywriting with Todd Jones. How are you Todd?

I’m cold.

Yeah,

it’s cold here. It’s too we have your weather is lost in Arkansas and you need to take it back.

Yeah. Well, Mr. Water told me to take it back to the other case though, you know, it’s like I don’t want it. I just come from the warms. Forget

we sent it to the Dakotas or something. It’s just cold and you know, so it’s going we’re going to have um snow this week. So, we’ll see. I may be stuck at home for a couple days.

It won’t stay long, I’m sure. So, today we wanted to talk about credibility enhancers and think

everything is about who you trust and one of the things that builds trust is credibility. So let’s start right there.

Yeah. So well I call it I I call it credibility answers sometimes and and a lot of people especially in the digital marketing industry will call it social proof. Uh so that’s what it is. Um and yeah um I think even more so now uh the the need to to lean on no like and trust is even than than maybe has in the last 15 years. And um social proof or credibility enhancers as I will call it sometimes is a is a way to build that trust to build those trust points with people. Um I need to do like some research, but you know they used to say it takes about 10 to 12 10 touch points for somebody to make a purchase. So I think it’s way longer than that now. I think it’s closer to 50.

And um

so can I stop you there? What I would argue and that’s for a low volume product or a lowcost product. I would say for a high cost product like a house I take somebody like my mom who’s been in the real estate business for 40 years, a car, um a high-end renovation project, I would bet you those touch points are even higher to be fair. So the more expensive the product

it’s going to it’s going to depend on a lot of variations including the need. Um for instance, and we’re getting away from uh the topic a little bit, but I have a friend here in town who has started a business a little over a year ago. And this is so I live in Conway, Arkansas, which is just west of Little Rock about 30 miles. Um and people from the West Coast, California, Oregon, Washington, they are moving here in droves. Um they’re selling their homes for a good price and and buying a home of equal size or even bigger for less money. So they have money left over and what they want to do is take that home home and turn it into their dream space. So, there’s renovation involved. And what he has done and he and his partner, business partner, has done is zeroed in on that and they’re getting these people and and right now it’s just word of mouth and they do the job, they do it well, they do it, they do a really good job, they do quality work and then it’s become word of mouth. But that word of mouth is a huge trust point, right? Uh but I I I doubt he’s getting 50 touch points, but He is getting strong touch points, I guess you might say, whenever somebody they know, hey, you know, go see Danny and his team and they’ll take care of you. So, but I do think there’s a lot of context to it. But that’s why we have a range when we do this. I would imagine something like a home 10 to 50 touch points depending like, you know, what you’re looking for, what the what the market is, what your ability to pay is. But, but a big portion of that is going to be who they trust. Right.

100 100%.

So, uh, that’s that’s really I don’t even think that’s a point I put in there. Word of mouth, but the word of mouth is a huge trust point.

Um, a huge a huge social proof. Um, and it’s not really something I actually had in my list. So, uh, I should I should be adding that. But anyway,

tell you where word of mouth comes in. I’m gonna give a shout out to my good friends Phil and Robin who run ringleer fine jewelers in in Pickering, Ontario. And you and I have talked about the jewelry store. and they have a group, Facebook group called the West Ruth Community Group. So that’s an area just east of where the store is. And you know in that group the only jewelry store they rave about is Phil and Robin store. Word of mouth and all people that come in

and they and they have developed two of the points on my list which we’ll get to in a little bit. Reputation.

Yep.

And expertise. Uh so we’ll get to that. But uh yeah that’s so I guess that word of mouth kind of falls among actually all this word of mouth is the backdrop for each of these points in these credibility enhancers that I

I agree with.

So let’s jump into them. Uh let’s go into testimonials. I think

there’s a multiple of the ways of doing it. It depends on what your industry is. So I think at the least bit you should be doing them on Google. I don’t know if on a Facebook page if they have any bearing anymore. They look nice. Um but But depending on the company, I would say if you’re in the restaurant business, you probably want to get them on Yelp. If you’re in the home renovation business, you probably want to get them on Homestars, right? There’s a couple other niche thing, but

is that a Canadian one?

Yeah, it is.

Okay. Not familiar with it.

And then,

yeah, I just I just set up I’m in the process of launching a website for a new client, um, a cleaning customer, and she had three review testimonies. I have no idea where they came from, but her Facebook page has four.

Yep.

And I I I leaned on that to put testimonials on her website because

it was it was easy to find and we’ll eventually get her on, you know, Google Maps and she’ll be uh going away pretty good on that. But um yeah, I I don’t think Facebook route. Now, when we talk about testimonials, there’s a I’m I’m I’m I’m splitting hairs a little bit between testimonials and reviews, right? Review is, you know, you typically review like the product or the service like, you know, uh the like STM shows, one of the best businessminded podcasts, you know, blah blah blah. A testimonial is Rob is a great podcast host. He carries on a great conversation. U so there’s a little bit of um splitting hairs there, but the average person may not. But I will say a review, a testimonial, what you want is people ble to give um characteristic or adjectives about you or your service. And what I put in the my little notes, show notes that I passed along to you is not to use superlatives or hyperbole. And people tend to do that, especially in these Facebook groups like uh I would imagine your jewelry store gets some of these. Oh, they’re awesome. They’re great. They’re the best store in town. Those are all there’s no quant there’s no quantif ing.

There’s no substance to that.

Yeah, there’s but there’s nothing wrong with that. Um either. So that that goes as a testimonial of love. Um whatever. And that’s fine. A great testimonial is, hey, I had a piece of jewelry. It needed to be clean and had some cracks and I went in and uh Robin took it and for a couple days they worked on it and it came back and it looked just like it did when we bought it 30 years ago. It was my wife’s uh wedding ring. engagement ring and now it looks just like it did 30 years ago when I bought it for. That is a example of a good quality testimonial.

And then let’s go on to that too. As a business owner, if somebody posts a review or a testimonial, you should answer it actually and you should and you should thank them. If it’s negative, you should reach out and say, “How can I help show I mean because the problem the problem with reviews is and this is how I see it as a business. business owner and I’ve been through the negativity as you know is if you did what the contract said or what you agreed to and they didn’t like something else because you wouldn’t do it that in my opinion that doesn’t deserve a negative review.

It means you you’re going down a whole new whole episode which you need to discuss with somebody like your friend at the the major business guy up there. But I would say um Yeah, you’re right. I mean, you can get into some muddy waters with people being, but you know, I’ve seen people uh still continue to be negative after the owner has reached out and tried to fix the problem. I tried to explain to some of my customers that, you know, oh well, I only got a four-star review on this or I got a bad review or whatever. I’m like, hey, take a look at your reviews and and like you’ve got 30 reviews and 28 of them are positive, two people are negative. Most people will look at that and go, “Yeah, those those people are just, you know, complainers.” So, you got to take you got to take that as a business owner. You can get down you can really get down about one or two reviews, but when you look at the entire summation and see that 98% of it is positive, you’re you’re doing fine.

You’re doing fine.

So, let’s move on to case studies. Really important. And they This is one on this list that probably takes a lot do, right? Case studies take

Yeah. I mean, it’s not a it’s not a um it’s not as easy as like gathering. I mean, not to say getting a testimonial is easy. It’s not. But a case study, you probably are going to have a writer to write it for you, that kind of thing. Um I see, especially in the web design space, somebody will call this case study and it’s a they throw a few da d d d d d d d d d d d d d d d d d d d d d d d d d d d d d d d d d d d d d d d data points on there and we use this tech stack and and that’s not a case study. That’s an overview of the project. Okay, that’s fine. A case study that there’s a couple ways you can do them. And I am more of the line of the I want to see a narrative driven one. I want to see uh before, during, and after. I want, you know, it’s fine to put the data in there. We we increased conversions by 6% or whatever, but tell me how you did it. Tell me what the results were for the customer. Uh and that takes having a little weaving a narrative in with those data. points, but case studies are typically really dry, especially in the B2B space. Um, but if you’re a service business and you’re listening, um, don’t make a dry case study. In my opinion, Rob, and I’m a writer saying this, but my opinion is far better to get a customer on video telling the story than writing a dry, boring case study that you call a case study, which is dry and boring. You are much better off because case studies aren’t always just written. You can do a case study in the ter, you know, in a video format. Uh you can do it on a podcast episode. Uh you can do, you know, but the format is just as important as as the actual case study. But by by you know, don’t don’t go with a dry boring. That’s my opinion. I mean, uh white papers, you know, that kind of stuff is very

boring. They’re dry.

Yeah. It makes my eyes glow glaze over. Uh write it like you’re writing a a a short minibook, you know, with really really spacious room and really big pretty pictures and kind of tell a little story. Uh if you don’t if you fail to tell the story that they’re people aren’t going to remember the the numbers,

you know, unless you got one number in there or something like that, like, oh, 6% conversion, you know, but if you throw a bunch of numbers at them, they won’t remember it. But if you tell a story, they will remember that. So my my I don’t even like to call it case study. I call it a case study here. But it should be customer story. Um, customer success story is what I think.

Agree. Agree.

Media appearances. This is a big one for me actually because as you know I have this monstrous media page.

That’s huge.

So from the show notes I gave you to after that I updated just a little bit and kind of broke them into two uh bullet points but one of them is media appearances and I call that traditional PR and the other one is podcast appearances and featured articles but they’re all under the same umbrella, okay? Especially in the age of digital. So, getting on a podcast, um being featured in an article in a magazine on a high traffic blog, and then you’re then you got your traditional PR, right? Um where you you’re interviewed by somebody in the media, whether it’s TV or news source or whatever, those types of media. That’s traditional PR. It still works. It’s still necessary. Um, and that’s why I tell people to have your story together because guess what? When that when that person from the media comes to your site, they’re looking for those things. Uh, for whatever reason, why did they land on your site? Well, that’s another we we could discuss that at another time. But if they land on your site, they’re going to be one of the first things they’re going to go to is look for an about section. Oh, do they have a an approved picture I can use? Yes. Okay, here it is. Uh, is there a logo that I can use? Yes. And then is there a bio? Yes. And okay, what is the story? Um, and then sometimes that’ll be the difference in them actually reaching out and contacting you versus them not contacting you. But there’s still room for traditional media appearances, especially if you’re in an area with the the metropolitan area like where you live in Toronto, uh, or one of the bigger cities in the States. Um, you know, that’s that can be very or you know business journals and business u magazines, newspapers. We have a couple in the area. Uh I actually wrote for one for a long time but they never we had a printed magazine they did every other month but the website was the big deal. Um and and sometimes my articles would be put in the magazine. So like I did one a Q&A with Britney Hodak from used to be Zimpac. Um she runs super fans thing now. And I did a Q&A with her. It was all done by email and got a a picture and we put it on the website. It was really cool. And then the guy who did the magazine for Talk Business, he messaged me. He said, “Can we get a higher resolution picture of uh Britney for this?” I said, “Sure.” When the article when the magazine came out, Rob, one side was the actual article. The other side was this huge picture of Britany her and And um so you know uh we have a Arkansas business journal. Every every metropolitan area has a business journal type publication that’s all under traditional media. Radio radio spots people still get on the radio. They host Yeah. I mean radios are starting to do

um podcasts basically. They they basically host a podcast nowadays. So you got lots lots options for tra traditional media.

The other thing I would suggest is for media appearances if you have the time and this is something I’ve done. I’ve gone and created a media hit website.

So what it what’s on that website is basically a profile founder story um images you can download if you want. So if you want to grab an image for an interview, go ahead and grab it.

And then uh contact info and a link to the media appearance page on my site of other stuff I’ve done. And very simple,

but but it means when somebody asks me for something, I can say, “Go here and go grab it.”

Yeah. You know, and you don’t even have to build a website for that. You can have a two or three pages. You can have one page to do all that if you want. Um, but you could put it on your main website. Most companies will put that under their about section. They’ll have the about section and they’ll have stuff like, you know, media kit or what whatever PR kit and um actually MainWP, you know, the the one of the companies I write for, they they have a media, they used to, I don’t know if they still do, a media kit page where you can download the official logo and all that jazz. Uh so if you’re a company, uh it’s it could be just as simple as making a page under the about section and saying, “Here’s our official logo. Here’s our official colors, you know, here’s official pictures that you can use, here’s a bio of our CEO, you know, all that stuff. It’s kind of like a repository for the journalist or whoever the media outlet is who’s fixing to interview you. So, I think it’s a great idea to have.

Um, logos. I think this one only matters if you’re a major company. Coca-Cola, Windom Hotels, Pepsi, McDonald’s, uh, Taco Bell.

I updated the my little note thing. I said well-known brand and customers. And I think there’s a and it doesn’t have to be international, right? So, we’re in Arkansas. Uh well, everybody’s heard of JB Hunt, but suppose you’re working with JB Hunt. Well, everybody in Arkansas knows who JB Hunt is. In fact, I was uh we were heading down the road yesterday. I was taking my mom to a doctor’s appointment and where we are on the freeway and above ahead of us was a JB Hunt truck and a Walmart truck. And I said, “That sums up Arkansas right there. JB Hunt and a Walmart truck. Uh, obviously Walmart and JB Hunter International, but let’s just say we ate we ate for lunch at David’s Burgers. Well, everybody in central Arkansas knows what David’s Burgers is. If you were doing business with Davisburg and you lived in central Arkansas, there would be nothing wrong with putting their logo on your website. It would be a tip of the cap. Now, somebody in Toronto, Canada would not know who Davis Burger is. But if you are, if you’re, you know, if you are a uh a company in central Arkansas and you’re targeted central Arkansas, go ahead and put that central Arkansas business on there. I’m not against putting smaller ones on there. But I do agree with you that you get the most impact um by putting a logo of a bigger brand on there. You want to make sure they’re well known to your audience. Um but I don’t have a problem. I have a I have a client that we put a bunch of logos on there. I think u it’s just it don’t waste a lot of time on it, but it’s just a verification that you have been being used by people who are businesses. So, if they actually have a logo and they have a website, then that’s a good place to start. Um, clearly not everybody has Windom in their portfolio or Walmart. So, you know, uh, but but if it’s just a XYZ convenience store down, you know, down the street, maybe not not something you really have to put on there. But if you don’t have very many, go ahead and put it on there. Just don’t spend all this time like you know making a big deal about it because of all the things we mentioned it’s probably the least effective

I would of unless unless you have Windom in your portfolio or Walmart or Starbucks or something like that.

Yep.

Or just get some awards. Um I think this can work but depending how you do because a lot of these quote awards

you have to submit a fee for to be called the top in Arkansas, the top in Toron. and they’ll say,

“Well, we’ll consider you and we’ll guarantee you a spot as long as you pay the fees.” So, it’s really

a lot of them are also a popularity contest. So, it was just the our friend of vendor does the WP weekly awards every year, which is fun.

We all vote for it. Well, one of my clients being WP was a winner in the WP tools department or whatever WordPress tools department and we celebrated that as we should. But it’s a popularity contest. You know, people went and voted for it and that that plays out over and over. But the certifications that I would be, you know, I have had um I had a customer who was a cleaner who went and got certified in certain cleaning aspects.

Yes,

that was appropriate to put on her site. She went and got that. If you are a digital marketer and you got a digital marketing certificate from um you know, HubSpot or something like that, put it on there. Uh c those kind of certifications kind of give you validity as a service provider. Uh if you are a um a professional that clearly you have to have like credential like a CPA or something like that, certainly you put CPA. If you get continuing ed and they offer certification, put that on the site. It just it just stacks the expertise factor. in your favor. Um, but yeah, I think what you’re pointing out is valid. The these popularity contests and these pay fors are probably least effective, but something you had to either pay to do or you had to take a test to do, those are probably a little bit more uh worthy of putting putting up on your website or, you know, in your marketing material.

Yep. And the last last but certainly not least data. Data is kind of everything because it’s quantifiable, right?

Yeah. So data I never I I I put that I I I do think it’s important. I just think sometimes um depending on what you are. So for instance, I was working with a a company a couple years ago from Chicago who does tax remediation services. They had a number of data points that they had come up with and I was like that needs to be on the website. So when put it on the website. Uh it was like you know we helped over you know so many people you know um we if you’ve got something and you know you have a tally and you know you’ve saved people $2.5 million like you know or something like that. It’s it’s the old McDonald’s thing over 63 billion served or whatever they say on their used to say um you you it’s just a it’s just stacking the you know the verification of who you are uh as a as a business. So, but there are some data that are really really good. If it if it’s very quantifiable, then absolutely that would be something. Again, don’t get too hung up on numbers. Um because people fail to remember the numbers, but it’s more or less it’s just a another tile in your mosaic of um I like that I just came up that on the top of my head. You have your your social proof Mosaic

and make sure you can prove those numbers cuz somebody’s going to call you out on them. And I’ve seen too many times where

people pull numbers out of that.

Do not do not make up numbers. No. You know, if you have something that you can point to, uh then absolutely uh if you’ve done 10 case studies and each case study there is a quantifiable number that the customer you work with said that you saved them money or made them money. You can add all those up and then somebody says, “Where’d you get that number?” I said, “Well, go read our 10 case studies where we said we saved an average of $15,000 per client or whatever.” I’m just making that up. But do not make up numbers. Make sure it’s something that you can verify. You can point to that is definitely a true statement to make.

Yeah, check out those credibility enhancers. I would suggest to use them. You need some help, reach out to Todd at Coffee Flight. And as always, Todd, thanks so much. much and have a wonderful day.

Thank you. Have a good day.