It’s impossible to sell a product or service without demand – no matter how low price or how big discount.

Education-Based Marketing creates demand by showing prospects why they need your products and services, how to make intelligent buying decisions, and how to best use it after they buy.

Education-Based Marketing creates a ‘halo’ surrounding everything you sell.

When you promote an individual product or service, only that particular product or service benefits. But empowering customers and prospects benefits every product and service you sell.

Information pre-sells and differentiates. It builds customer confidence and positions you as credible, knowledgeable and trusted. Information sets you apart. You become a unique, trusted advisor.

Education-Based Marketing answers questions that must be answered before prospects will buy:

1.Who benefits from product or service?

2.What benefits does product or service provide?

3.When is product or service needed?

4.Where is product or service used?

5.How do you choose and use it?

Conventional advertising is hard to create because it’s judged by its creativity – how effectively it attracts attention, how cleverly it delivers its message and how memorable it is.

Education-Based Marketing, however, is easy to create because goal is to inform, rather than interrupt, manipulate or show-off. All you have to do is answer five questions listed above.

One often-overlooked asset of your business is testimonials you receive from happy, satisfied customers. Most businesses receive favorable customer comments and testimonials, but few translate these powerful marketing weapons into additional sales.

Testimonials work because customer comments are more credible than your words. When you say something about your business, your words are viewed as claims. But when your customer says them, their words are viewed as truth.

When a customer says something nice about you, your business, or one of your employees, how you respond is critical. Customer testimonials come in many forms, including conversations, emails and letters. Few testimonials are ready-to-use, however. Most can benefit from a little effort before you can put them to work.

Although you may receive testimonial letters that include permission to use customer’s words and name, in most cases you’re best off contacting customer, verifying quote and asking permission to use their words and their name.

This is especially true if you are going to quote from a conversation or an email. Customers will appreciate your integrity. More important, verifying gives you a chance to clean up customer’s grammar and also improve upon customer’s original quote. For example, when verifying (or rewording) their comments, you might also ask: “Were there other aspects of buying from us that you might care to comment on?”

Simply showing an interest in customer’s words is often enough to open testimonial floodgates.

Here are five ways to get most from your testimonials: