This is one of the biggest marketing mistakes that people insist on making, despite ample statistical evidence that consumers are not only resistant to marketing intrusions, they may actively dislike your brand if you come on too strong and don’t have a relatable product and marketing message.
Ride the Elephant Part 1 – When Customers Are Afraid of Your Product or Service
Why is Social Media and building a connection (know, like and trust) more important than ever? Here’s a question from a frustrated marketer who knows that his product – video emails and video “web postcards” will increase sales and conversions at a very affordable price, using an easy system – but he has an elephant problem.
Q – “The most difficult challenge we face in our Internet marketing business is how to market and promote what we are trying to sell others. Wouldn’t life be simpler and our experience more successful if this challenge was eliminated?
Does anyone have any ideas on this? How do we best overcome this challenge?
What about testimonials from others? Do you think that would help?
How would you use a “case study” to market a product? A case study, to me, simply means much more detailed proof…
But really, I’m actually looking for a simple, hard hitting or more direct approach to marketing. 🙂“
A – Here are some thoughts about what needs to be visible and shareable when people “find” his solution, and why being “hard hitting” won’t get you there.
When you’re “selling” anything – imagine a pyramid of your “niche” market – 3% are buying now, additional 7% thinking about it, 30% not thinking about it, 30% not interested now, 30% definitely not interested ever.
Are the top 3% talking about it with someone else or searching for info? Are the 7% talking, searching, waiting for a trigger that now is the time? When they find you, does your message address their problem? This segment should be your focus, finding them, learning about what and who their circle of influence contains and making it easy for them to find you is a good investment of your time. They don’t need a hard hitting approach – they are looking.
Hitting the lower 90% with a hard hitting direct approach is a waste of time and may alienate them forever. Getting people talking and looking at case studies where your product or service solves a problem that is accompanied by more info and additional problems that need solving that they aren’t thinking about is a good solid, value adding resource.
To win people over, facts and benefits are important to have readily available and easy for researching people to find. Then beyond that, your material needs to have a personalization that people will identify that they know, like and can trust your solution because they are comfortable with you or they see that people like them think that it’s a good solution, price, value.
Yes, it would be lovely if you could instantly get their attention and show them that your solution is the answer and will increase sales and conversion rates!
But hard hitting is last century and really that was the only time it really worked long term.
I talked to a friend about this yesterday at lunch… she says she looks at web pages, tv commercials and any ads for about 2 seconds – trying to create an impact in that amount of time forces you to use such extreme images and/or language that you are going to alienate people who are actually looking for a solution and doing research.
Mass media is still tossing money at doing this and it doesn’t work. Being trusted, helpful, knowledgeable and very smart about reaching that 10% that are actively interested is the best use of energy and time.
The days of hard hitting are over, looking at why people make purchase decisions proves it, but no one at some big companies is willing to admit it…and media companies will still take their money very happily while the majority of people flip the channel or TiVo it all out.
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I’m here to help! If you have a marketing challenge like this or if you can’t seem to get things going and you think you might be blind to an elephant, an hour of Marketing Consult is likely enough to get you on track or to help you evaluate if you have what it takes to ride that elephant and will it be worth it if you do? Contact me with the form below and get connected and energized! Kathryn Booth
