New FTC Rules

Originally Posted by kindsvater

I'm reading Reese's 'Internet Marketing 2010 The Road Ahead' - which in large part is an account of personal failures and lessons that may be learned.

But then he says in reference to the new FTC guidelines: "REMOVE ALL TESTIMONIALS FROM YOUR MARKETING."

That is, in all seriousness, the worst marketing advice of the year.

Testimonials should be one of the most IMPORTANT aspects of your marketing. But don't take my word for it: Kennedy, Cialdini, etc.

This is what social media is all about - getting trusted recommendations.

The FTC is NOT against testimonials. It is concerned with fraud. Just more specific guidelines for fraudulent activity the FTC always could have pursued.

As I said in a prior post on the topic, if you have 10,000 buyers of an IM product and no one makes more than $250, but 1 guy makes $500,000, using the one $500,000 testimonial as the basis for getting new buyers is clearly deceptive. But everyone already knew that.

Here's my prediction for 2010 and beyond:

Testimonials will continue to be important, will appear on more and more websites, and yes, even John Reese will be using them.

After all, that is what Reese is doing when he pimps IM product after IM product. Using himself as a testimonial, a trusted resource, so he can make some affiliate cash.

Originally Posted by Razer Rage

He's talking about testimonials on your sales letter. And it's good advice, seeing as most of them are full of hype and can't be substantiated.

Let the people on forums and facebook be your testimonials.

Originally Posted by cgallagher93

Hi Brian,

In part I have to say I agree with you.

Reese's advice is quite clearly to "remove all testimonials from your marketing" which in my opinion is complete balls.

What the FTC propose is that anyone who includes outrageous or inflated results within testimonials can be prosecuted for misleading advice. Ok, fair enough. What they now say you have to do is include some form of notice which states results that typical users will achieve. This is where the FTC become absolute assholes by making it hard for honest marketers! I mean dude, what the heck?

This is insane and quite frankly well over the top. They're asking people to literally guess what the average user will achieve which based upon the fact that everyone's circumstances differ, could end up even more misleading than the previous testimonial!

I understand they're trying to prevent fraud, but it seems to me like someone had a bad day at the office and decided to come up with a quick master-plan to counter fraud and p*ss off all marketers in the process "because they can".

Jackasses.

With my rant over, here's my simple plan for avoiding prosecution by the FTC. Remove ALL testimonials that incorporate figures our indefinite claims such as...

"I made $5783079 ZILLION DOLLARS in 7 days!"

Instead, ask your customers to submit a testimonial that talks about the benefits of your product, how it's features helped them and how your way of teaching is brilliant etc. These are people's opinions and the FTC can't argue!

The whole point of testimonials is to include a form of social proof. To me, this approach is just as good as claims of making X in X amount of time as not only do they come across as more honest and natural, but claims involving sums of money are often debatable anyway.

Either way, don't do NOTHING!

Connor :-)

Originally Posted by Scott Ames

Found it Steven

Source:

PDF Download:

http://www.box.net/shared/static/y576k2d1q7.pdf

As posted on:

Income.com Blog

Originally Posted by kindsvater

Steve:

The PDF download is on a blog: Internet Marketing 2010: The Road Ahead

and yes, it is very hard to believe because it doesn't make any sense. Reese goes further and states "you can still be very successful without testimonials."

He is conclusively saying remove ALL testimonials.

Not just false testimonials. Not just overhyped testimonials. Not just unproven testimonials.

As I said: worst marketing advice of the year. I'm guessing Reese will rethink this and come back with something more rational.

As an attorney, let me say there are are infinite number of ways to handle the issue depending on the situation. It can be as easy as: "While we don't know what results all of our customers have achieved, here are some comments, feedback, and reviews we have received ... A complete list can be found here ..."

One thing is for certain: not only will testimonials not be removed from my websites, but more are in the process of being added.

Originally Posted by Kenneth Fox

I've seen some interesting points made on this thread but I
still feel it is to premature to assume what will happen.

Anyone giving advice (like John Reese did) should bite their
tongue for a little while until things start to reveal themselves.

There's no reason to start a panic. As long as you have a
legit product or service and any testimonials are from real
people that can be tracked, you have nothing to worry about.

Look at how many TV commercials have these testimonials
on them like Nutri-system and Proactive to name a few.

Again, I think we should all sit back and wait to see the whole
picture, not just the trailer, before we move in haste and do
some things that we could regret later.