days in one test and 90 days in another (longer guarantees generally work better). You might even use a lifetime guarantee. Experiment!   6. Get The Word Out.   Once youve tested and found a guarantee that youre comfortable with, publicize it! Make your full guarantee -- in writing -- a part of your advertisements and marketing communications. Put it in your newspaper and Yellow Pages ads, your business cards, your Website, your letterhead, your brochures, etc.   Breaking Down Your "Soft" Guarantee   Breaking down your guarantee into specifics can turn a weak guarantee into something powerful that builds trust and reduces skepticism. This tactic works well not only for "hard" guarantees but especially for "soft" guarantees.   * * Sidebar * *   What are a "soft" guarantee and a "hard" guarantee? Hard guarantees provide a promise based on specific results. For instance, assume you have a flat tire and you get it fixed by a company that guarantees you that if you tire gets a puncture wound within the next 12 weeks you can bring it back and theyll fix it for free.   Thats a hard guarantee because it makes a promise based on specific results. You should always try to use hard guarantees in your marketing message because they are more powerful and tend to stir peoples emotions.   However, what if you have a product in which you cant make a promise for specific results but want you want to let your customers know that you still stand behind your product. This calls for a soft guarantee. A soft guarantee makes promises based on generalities and not specifics. For instance, "We guarantee to be kind to you." This is a soft guarantee because its very general and not specific. You should be kind anyway.   * * End Sidebar * *   A technique for turning your soft guarantee into a powerful statement is to break it down into pieces and explain what each part of your guarantee means. The following is a live example from a credit counseling company for which I just did some copywriting.   Allow me to give you an example from a recent copywriting project that I did for a credit counseling firm. This company didnt want to make any hard, fast promises (unfortunately, thats typical of most businesses). But they did want to express that they were willing to stand behind their product.   So what I did was take their general marketing statements and break them down into guarantees. Each guarantee taken separately is weak but when they are put together it