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:

Using cartoons can help brand your marketing and drive home important messages. Although surprisingly inexpensive to acquire, humor can be one of your most powerful marketing tools.

Humor puts your readers at ease. Readers appreciate a touch of humor in an otherwise overly serious world.

Humor operates on an emotional level, driving home your message in a far more memorable way than words alone. Humor makes sensitive topics more approachable while summarizing and reinforcing points that would otherwise be lost.

Different types of humor work best in different contexts. Many speakers begin with a joke to put audience at ease, or a story about ‘a funny thing that happened on way to meeting.’

But jokes and stories are less appropriate for written communications. Jokes can be misinterpreted and depend on delivery and timing for their effectiveness. Stories can take too long to tell.

Cartoons are perfect for print communications. Readers who typically check them out before reading adjacent articles appreciate cartoons.

More important, cartoons communicate at a glance. A cartoon can attract your reader’s attention and drive home an important point in a memorable way.

The editorial page of any newspaper shows how effective humor can be in simplifying complex subjects and driving home a point of view.

Humor also adds a visual dimension to your marketing, differentiating your message from your competitor’s. Cartoons encourage readers to look at topics they might otherwise skip.

Where do you get cartoons? One of best sources is Cartoon Bank, www.cartoonbank.com. Here, you can license reproduction rights to cartoons that originally appeared in New Yorker Magazine.