Businesses and marketers often face a common obstacle: How to advertise a brand, its products and services under budget constraints. With the many costs involved in running a business, advertising budgets are one of the first to shrink when funds are tight. Therein lies another challenge. With less advertising, how can businesses garner enough attention to attract consumers and generate sales?

The solution is a concept called Credibility Marketing. It’s the idea that support by third-party consumers has higher credibility than messages created by marketers.

Here are three ways to generate third-party endorsements:
Testimonials- Offering prospective customers testimonials or blurbs about another client’s positive experience is a big credibility booster.

Case Studies- Consumers like product demonstrations. It gives them a chance to see how the product works, what it can be used for and how effective it is. Case studies are demonstrations on paper.

Press Releases- If your business is looking for a large audience, media publicity is the way to go. Dabbling in the publicity arena may seem scary because businesses feel as though they have no control over what is being said.

Using testimonials, case studies and press releases is a cost effective way to advertise a brand, product or service. These third-party endorsements are great credibility boosters that give consumers more confidence in a business.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, March 25th, 2008 at 9:31 am and is filed under Marketing. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.