The secret of how to develop a powerful ad-sales testimonial campaign

Want to make ad sales about 10 times easier?

Create and launch a certain style of highly targeted, exciting, ongoing testimonial campaign.

I learned this particular technique from newspaper business consultant Eli Eisenberg and refined and perfected it to suit my personality and style and proved it. More than once.

For the campaign, use large house ads and your absolute best copywriting and design skills. Build the ads around a huge, super sharp, friendly, close-up photo and use up to 25 words in large type in quotes, and have no more than 50 words in the entire ad, including the call to action at the bottom.

Copy the ads full-size as flyers and distribute them to your advertisers and to prospective advertisers. Have your salespeople carry them and leave them. Put some of them in your media kit.

Do this right, and you’ll have advertisers lining up, calling you, and stopping you on the street with testimonials and begging to be included in the testimonial campaign. When I did this at the Ojai Valley News, I started getting those kinds of responses within three weeks of rolling out the campaign.

There IS a secret to doing this well and effectively.

Visit with your advertisers. And with only one purpose: To find out how they are doing and, if they are doing well, to tell them about the testimonial campaign. And, if they are not doing well, to arrange to help them turn that around.

This is a goodwill visit. Not a sales visit.

Keep it low key. Do not try to sell them anything.

Visit by phone and, if local, visit in person. Drop in one on your way to or from lunch every day. Just for five minutes. Introduce yourself. Tell them you just want to know how your publication is working for them. Ask them how it’s going, what they’ve noticed. And listen. Just listen.

Do this routinely.

Visit with new advertisers immediately after their ads come out.

On the visits, ask very specific questions about how your publication is serving them, about the exact results they are getting. Get specifics.

And any time you hear positive results, express gratitude and excitement and praise for the advertiser’s skill in marketing. And say, “I think I have something that will interest you.”

Immediately they think, “A-ha. Here’s the catch. Here comes the sales pitch.”

But you surprise them by showing them a full-size mock-up (or several actual) example(s) of ad sfrom your testimonial campaign. And suggest, “Why don’t we share your marketing experience and great results with our readers? This would be part of our ongoing campaign and would cost you NOTHING and, as an extra benefit, would offer your business even MORE exposure and draw attention to your ads and help other advertisers improve THEIR advertising techniques…” Do this enthusiastically, looking them straight in the eye, and then shut up and wait, however long, for their response. Watch them look down at the impressive, big free ad, promoting some other advertiser’s success and then back at you.

I’ve NEVER had an advertiser reject that offer.

Shoot a great, flattering situational photo of the advertiser that cleanly exhibits the nature of their business. Send your best photographer. For instance, with Nina Shelley in Ojai, California, who owned a fabric and sewing notions store there in the early ’80s, we shot a sharp close-up of her looking into the camera while cutting a bolt of cloth.

Build ads around the large friendly photo showing the advertiser at work in their business, naming their business, and giving, in large type, in quotes, the specific, amazing results the advertiser is getting. Not, “I always get great results when I advertise in blah blah.” But, “Within three hours of my ad coming out, I had seven inquiries and two sales that brought in more than three times the cost of the ad.”

You have to ask the right questions to get the right responses for a good testimonial campaign. And you can help the advertiser word their response, casually, in conversation with them. And while you talk for five minutes, you may only use one 10-second scrap of that conversation. And after you get back to the office, you may tighten it up a little and then, once the ad is laid out, take it back to them in proof form and get them to sign off on it.

The statements MUST be conversational and authentic and not institutional sounding. And they MUST be geared to other potential advertisers — telling them what they need to know in order for them to make an ad-purchase decision.

Have a new, different testimonial every issue, assuming that you have enough advertisers to sustain that.

If you are a weekly, get at least 26 testimonial ads built and rotate them weekly. For years. You can run more than one testimonial per issue if you have many pages with extra ad space on them.

Make it your goal to create one new testimonial ad per week.

Make sure your testimonial ads have a strong call to action at the end and tell readers (advertisers) exactly what to do next. “Pick up the phone right now and call John at 4xx-0000 to discuss how we can help you develop your own highly productive advertising campaign.”

P.S. If when you visit with an advertiser they express disappointment and a lack of results, express sincere concern and ask if you can put your best copywriter on their case to work with them to come up with a compelling offer or to tweak their ad campaign. And then do it, if they agree. Helping your advertisers develop ads that work for them is YOUR responsibility and in your long-term best interests — and especially when you learn that their ads are NOT working for them. Most businesses know very little about how to make an irresistable, compelling offer that speaks directly to their targeted customers’ pain, problems, dreams, desires.

P.P.S. The advertisers featured in the testimonial campaign become your best salespeople. They take some ribbing from other merchants in their area or field. And they feel obligated to defend their statement. And, some reported to me, that other merchants even asked them to help them rework their ads.

This is a very powerful program to implement. Do it with extreme quality, sincerety and commitment.