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The_secret_weapon_of_successful_web_marketing_is
| The secret weapon of successful web marketing is...
Copyright 2005 Liz Micik
Impulse shopping in the checkout lane may be what drives grocery
store profits, but chances are it doesn't do a thing for your
business. Your customers are far more likely to need up to nine
contacts from you before they trust you enough to buy from you.
Nine!
That's up sharply from when I entered the marketing field lo
those many years ago, and you should expect that number to
continue rising over your career too. The good news is that
there are some very simple steps you can take to eliminate some
of those contacts, or at least shorten the time span from
initial contact to first sale.
The first step is to acknowledge that we've created our own
monster in our efforts to build our businesses. On average,
we’re bombarded by more than 3,000 sales and marketing messages
everyday. That's 3,000 times a day someone waves something in
our face, or shouts something in our ear in an effort to get us
to buy this, do that, and spend the rest now.
Next, think about how you react to this daily assault. As
consumers (for ourselves or our company), we’ve all gotten very
good at tuning ads out online. It's a basic survival tactic.
Like warriors on a dawn patrol in enemy territory, we'll jump
from a site two seconds after we land there if we catch a
glimpse of an annoying animated gif whosits or doodad in the
corner of the page. We use weapons like search engines, popup
blockers, personal portal homepages and newsreaders to filter
out all but the information we want to see right now.
But we do more than try to avoid them. We sneer at blinking
yellow “security alerts” that offer to eliminate adware
deposited on our computer when someone clicks on something like
a blinking yellow security alert message. We roll our eyes at
Hollywood style hype. And our response to claims of “new and
improved” anything is a yawned, “yeah, right.”
We’ve become jaded, cynical, distrustful, and focused on nothing
but fending off all distractions between us and the information
we’re online to retrieve. Is it any wonder we arrive at the end
of our day exhausted, with cramped hands, hunched shoulders and
clenched jaws?
Now switch hats quickly and look at this from your perspective
as a business promoting yourself online. Any way you can help a
battle weary consumer get more value out of your website and
emails will help you earn their business, right?
Obviously, giving them a clearly marked path from landing point
to information source wrapped in an appealing design is
something you must do. But that alone may not be enough to win
their dollars. You still have to win their attention and their
respect before they’ll set foot on that path.
Fortunately there is a very simple, affordable way you can do
it. With no shouting. Today’s streaming video tools allow you to
easily provide visitors with a brief personal message that does
more than command instant attention. A simple greeting that you
create and manage yourself opens the door to a genuine
conversation. All the technical barriers of the web fall away in
the face of it and your visitor learns what he needs to know
about you in seconds.
How? Your expressions, your gestures, your smile, and your tone
of voice, hold more power to attract attention, convey a deeper
meaning to your message and convince people of your sincerity
than anything else you can do. Scientists have proven that up to
93% of what we learn and remember from a conversation comes from
these unspoken, and unwritten clues.
Your human visitors absorb and process all that complicated
information a matter of seconds in an attempt to answer one
question. They’re looking for the consistency between your words
and your non verbal message that will tell them whether or not
they can trust you and believe what you say has value to them.
That makes you the very best tool you have to increase your
credibility. If you’re feeling too shy to step in front of the
camera consider this. As a consumer, you wouldn’t dream of
turning off your spam filters and popup blockers, or opening
every attachment that came your way.
As a businessman using the Internet to generate leads or sales
for your company, can you really afford to leave your big gun at
home?
About the author:
Liz Micik turns your video learning curve into a fast and easy
profit curve in her newest book, “Cue the Director: 10 Simple
Steps to Online Video Success.” Visit www.powerpresenters.com to
have free weekly video tips emailed to you.
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