Use Similarities to Gain Clients and Referral Partners

Once you have an understanding of who your target audience is most likely to be influenced by, you can create some great tools of social proof. Three of my favorites are testimonials, stories, and visuals.

Testimonials and similarities

You probably already know how powerful testimonials can be in your marketing. They can be very effective—if done in the right way.

As you now know, we’re most influenced by others who we perceive as similar to ourselves. This means that it’s important to divide your testimonials into groups. You would then utilize the endorsements that best fit the needs of your various specific audiences. For example, if you are a life coach who works with women in career transition, divide your audience, programs, and testimonials into sections, such as “mothers in their late thirties transitioning careers after having children,” “midcareer executives in creative fields entering a new industry,” and “midcareer executives getting back in the market after being laid off.” A real estate agent who serves three counties can segment testimonials by county or by type of home (e.g., new construction or antique charm). A wealth manager can segment by type of client, such as young professionals without children, families with school-age children, or families with children in college or beyond. A yoga studio can divide its marketing materials and testimonials into prenatal yoga, yoga for fitness and weight loss, and yoga for relaxation and spiritual renewal.

You can divide client descriptions and testimonials using any demographic (age, gender, ethnicity, race, geographical location, education, industry, job title, etc.) or psychographic (needs, motivators, goals, interests, etc.) based on the preceding action steps. It is best to segment by the type of client or by a specific benefit that a client needs, rather than doing what most professionals do, which is to divide programs by the type of service offered.

Make sure that you include descriptive information about the person who provides the testimonial so that the people in your audience realize how similar they are to that person. For example, if a niche market that you serve is executives in the design business, you would want to include the following type of information for someone providing a testimonial: “Jane Smith, Chief Operations Officer, Main Line Design, a midsized graphic design firm in the western suburbs of Philadelphia.”

If your goal is to attract new referral partners, ask for testimonials from those who have sent you referrals in the past. This may feel odd because the person has already been kind enough to send you clients and now you’re asking them for an endorsement as well. You would only do this once you’ve established a close relationship. Timing is also important—ask your referrer when she and her client have just received the most benefit from your services. Offer a sample testimonial to use, such as, “I’ve recently referred several clients to (name) for family counseling and they have greatly benefited. The work they have done with (name) has improved their communication skills, enabling me to better address their business financial plan.” If you feel uncomfortable asking a referrer for a testimonial, you can accomplish a similar objective with stories (described in the next section).

In addition to making sure that the giver of the testimonial is similar to the receiver of the testimonial (or the clients of the receiver, in the case of referral partners), the content of the testimonial needs to be similar to the content that your ideal client or referral partner needs. The more specific the description of the results of your services, the better.

Stories of similarities

Your goal is to paint a clear picture of your target audience and your services when you meet with prospective clients and with referral partners. Doing so helps create a niche for yourself, improves memorability, and activates social proof. A great way to do all these things is through client stories. As we’ve discussed, stories are one of the best ways to engage people and stimulate action.

One of my colleagues calls these “hip-pocket stories,” stories you can bring out and share whenever helpful. If confidentiality is important in your industry, consider creating a few composite stories that protect people’s identities but clearly show who’s in your market and how they benefit. Keep these stories brief and remember to tell them as stories with a beginning, middle, and end. Include as many visual aids as possible. For example, one of my clients, an image consultant, told the following story:

I remember a client who came into my office and said, “I need to be on TV next week.”

“That’s great,” I said.

“Well, yes, but look at me. I should be on radio, not TV,” he joked.

In his gray pinstriped suit and patterned maroon tie, he looked a bit disheveled and, well, drab. I realized that he was afraid of drawing attention to himself.

“If you’re going to be on TV,” I said, “you’re going to get attention. Let’s be sure your image is conveying the message you want.”

We immediately went to get him a new suit and hairstyle, and he looked like a million dollars. He took his wife out for dinner that night, and she called to thank me the next day, saying he hadn’t looked like that since their wedding day 20 years ago!

Case studies are another great way to tell stories. Be sure to include social norms in your case studies by having a specific case study for every target audience you serve. As with testimonials, you will be sure the right people get the right case studies that they can see themselves in.

As clear as you need to be about who your client is, it is also important to include yourself in the case study. My friend Mark Levy, marketing strategist and founder of Levy Innovation, recommends a process he calls “insight-based case studies.” The idea is to put yourself into the story by showing how the solution is one that only you could come up with. For example, you might say, “After meeting with Jim, I quickly discovered …” rather than just stating the changes that Jim made. This shows how you uniquely come up with solutions, and if Jim is similar to the person hearing the story, you will have used social proof to illustrate how you can help him too. Again, don’t forget to tell these as detail-rich, engaging stories rather than as typical, dry, boring case studies. Use adjectives, engage the senses, and create a bit of drama.

Visuals of similarities

My colleague Lynne treats children with anxiety disorders. Toward the beginning of treatment, the child patients are asked to give a name to their worries, such as “the worry bug,” and to draw a picture of it. When you walk into Lynne’s office, you see dozens of drawings of worry bugs (and other worry creatures) rendered by the little hands of her patients. These drawings wallpaper an entire wall. Some are big; some are small. Some are done in pencil; others are colorfully created in crayon. All are scary. All show that worry affects kids similarly, making them nervous, timid, and anxious. Also on the wall are images of what happens during or after anxiety treatment. In these drawings, worry bugs become small, silly, or squashed. The kid in the drawings becomes big, strong, and happy.

As professional service providers, we often tell our clients that others feel similarly to them or that we’ve helped others who have issues similar to theirs. This helps people feel that they are not alone and that we have worked with others like them. Imagine the effect, however, if you were a child and you saw an entire wall of illustrations done by kids just like you. You would definitely feel that you weren’t weird or unusual or strange to experience worries. You would feel that you were in the right place to get help. And seeing the before-and-after effect of what happens to the worry bugs in just a couple of months would certainly help you feel hopeful, inspired, and perhaps even excited about doing the treatment.