I know you’re sick of all those death of articles, but in this case, the death of the testimonial is truly here, at least in the form that we’re used to using for an effective sales letter. In this article, I’m going to explain why this is happening and what, if anything, you can do about it. Yes my friend, the times they are a changing.

So that this article is not just about the FTC ruling on testimonials, I’m going to briefly give you the Reader’s Digest version. In a nutshell, it is no longer good enough to have a testimonial where somebody says that they had certain results with your product and then somewhere under it say, “These results are typical.” That’s not going to wash with the new FTC ruling. Now, you have to say something like, “The average person gets these results.” Okay, got it? That’s the law in a nutshell.

Let me now explain why this effectively kills testimonials.

For starters, let’s say you’ve sold 500 copies of an eBook on weight loss. Let’s say out of those 500 copies, 10 people reported results to you, and all the results were in the range of 20 to 40 pounds lost in a month. In order to be able to use those testimonials, you have to be able to tell what the average results are for the other 490 people. Well, how can you do that when they didn’t get back to you? Do you have ANY idea what results they got? Do you even know if they USED the product? Okay, that’s reason number one why this kills testimonials.

Reason number two is the alternative testimonial where somebody says something like, “I bought the product. It was very well written and I really liked it.” There is nothing wrong with that testimonial and you can use it without any worry at all. There is also nothing good about it either. Testimonials where people just say, “I liked the product” are NOT effective motivators to get prospects to buy. Prospects want to see results. And since you can no longer show them results (unless you really CAN get numbers for those other 490 people) then you have nothing to show the prospect that is REALLY going to push their hot buttons…at least not as far as testimonials go.

Thus, the testimonial, for all practical purposes, is dead. Well, maybe not dead, but certainly not as effective as it used to be. I guess if you can get 50 people to say how much they loved your product without making any claims as far as results, then maybe you can make a few sales from those testimonials. But make no mistake about it…the testimonial has taken a severe hit with this ruling and, quite honestly, there is very little we can do about it…at least not on the copywriting side.

That’s where marketing comes in and where you’re going to need to read my article “Internet Marketing Tips – How To Make Up For The Dead Testimonial”

It will help you a TON.

To YOUR Success,

Steven Wagenheim

To find out how to get around the death of the testimonial, read my article at: http://stevewagenheim.com/blog/internet-marketing/internet-marketing-tips-how-to-make-up-for-the-dead-testimonial.html