The web is not a sales man, the web is a tool of discovery, an educational tool.
“On the surface, the Web seems like a great environment for reaching out to customers. But in many ways it is one of the most difficult environments for getting customer attention. For most of us, the Web is a place we go to do things we have already decided to do. It is a place where our habits are reinforced. If we love Salsa music the Web deepens our love by helping us find obscure Salsa recordings. If we’re liberal then we engage with the liberal Web. If we’re conservative we hang out in conservative places.
When we come to appreciate this we can ride the wave and not fight against nature. People settle into niches, we all long to belong. How we go about getting there is very predictable and repetitive. We pick out subject of interest and put it in a search engine. We place a certain priority on the first three search results. We ignore anything that looks like a graphical ad (banner blindness.) We are forever impatient. We quickly scan webpages in specific ways. We only scan on average of 20 seconds. We either find what we want or we move on. This search eventually leads us to some author and that community that are fans of the author and we follow along.”
We are selling to a band of folks and their followers. ie “lonelyboy13@aol.com” and his 250 followers.
You cannot sell a Ferrari to a man who just wants bread but he might buy some butter.
It takes something really special to get them to click something they had not intended to click. What if you go online to buy a ticket to the Caribbean, what are you chances of buying a stove? Pretty close to none I would say.
Traditional communications and marketing are built on a belief that if you can be creative enough with the message you can grab customer attention. This is fighting against nature. You might have some success but not enough to sustain the campaign and make it worth your while. Here is the one secret word. RELEVANT. You want your products and services to be relevant to your audience. Be helpful, Give them the right info at the right time, be relevant and you will ride the very nature of the web: digital persuasive conversation
So here are the action steps to consider that are so plain simple that many tend to over complicate.
- If you already have a product or service then find the audience for your product and align to those niches. If you sell pampers find groups of mothers.
- No idea is so important that you skip the introduction or supportive data that users need to be educated about your product or service. You may know in your head but your audience may not.
- No idea should be dragged out longer than need be and do your best to connect it clearly to the interest of your audience.
- If you are flexible with no set of products then just Listen to clients, watch what is going on around you and follow their rituals. Either find the bread or the complimentary butter they are asking for and give it to them.
Stephen Choo Quan
Stephen is a double threat holding both SAP business objects certified architect as well as being a certified IBM DB2 Database Developer. read More…
