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Your Customer's Goals Come First
Each time you make contact with a potential client, think of what you can do to help them achieve their goals. Hard selling tactics do nothing to build your prospect's level of trust. With the Web, people have the ability to control what they view and which marketing messages they choose to engage.
To help prospects meet their goals, think of how you might alter your current core marketing message. Does it communicate how your products and services will make their lives better? Show them this is the case by sprinkling testimonials throughout your website and into your direct mail pieces.
While there is absolutely nothing wrong with selling, you can sell until your presell. Preselling will build the confidence needed to turn prospects into actual paying customers. Meeting your business objectives means focusing on the needs of your prospects and customers first and foremost.
It's Not the Features, It's the Benefits
I still see many company brochures and fliers that focus on the product's feature while virtually ignoring the benefits. It is important that your marketing materials clearly illustrate how the product or service solves some critical problem within your target market.
Give Stuff Away
A great strategy for educating your prospects and building trust is what I call content marketing. With content marketing, you presell by giving away free information that helps reduce the friction to purchase. Examples might include free downloadable product guides, PDF tips sheets and white papers.
The more quality stuff you give away, the more trust and credibility you'll build and the more clients you'll attract. Some aggressive marketers give away 95% of what they produce in order to sell the remaining 5%. This may sound like a poor strategy but it has literally made millionaire after millionaire.
My personal recommendation is to give away information in the form of ebooks, tip sheets or white papers. On the very last page of your download, you can add a little commercial about your products and services as well as your website URL and complete contact info.
In addition, you should require web visitors to enter their name and email so that you can start building an online list of interested contacts. Be careful to not ask for too much information at this stage. Most people will not fill out long forms even if the information is free.
Developing A Persuasive Guarantee
There are many ways to stand out from the crowd that don't rely on a particular product or service offering. Another way to do this is to create a compelling guarantee that no one else in your industry offers.
How about offering a 2-year product guarantee instead of the 1-year guarantee your competition offers? How about double your money back if not satisfied? How about a lifetime guarantee? Even if you offer a commodity-type product, you can easily set yourself apart by creating a compelling product or service guarantee.
By following these four simple strategies, you'll find your ability to convert prospects into customers naturally increases.
Each time you make contact with a potential client, think of what you can do to help them achieve their goals. Hard selling tactics do nothing to build your prospect's level of trust. With the Web, people have the ability to control what they view and which marketing messages they choose to engage.
To help prospects meet their goals, think of how you might alter your current core marketing message. Does it communicate how your products and services will make their lives better? Show them this is the case by sprinkling testimonials throughout your website and into your direct mail pieces.
While there is absolutely nothing wrong with selling, you can sell until your presell. Preselling will build the confidence needed to turn prospects into actual paying customers. Meeting your business objectives means focusing on the needs of your prospects and customers first and foremost.
It's Not the Features, It's the Benefits
I still see many company brochures and fliers that focus on the product's feature while virtually ignoring the benefits. It is important that your marketing materials clearly illustrate how the product or service solves some critical problem within your target market.
Give Stuff Away
A great strategy for educating your prospects and building trust is what I call content marketing. With content marketing, you presell by giving away free information that helps reduce the friction to purchase. Examples might include free downloadable product guides, PDF tips sheets and white papers.
The more quality stuff you give away, the more trust and credibility you'll build and the more clients you'll attract. Some aggressive marketers give away 95% of what they produce in order to sell the remaining 5%. This may sound like a poor strategy but it has literally made millionaire after millionaire.
My personal recommendation is to give away information in the form of ebooks, tip sheets or white papers. On the very last page of your download, you can add a little commercial about your products and services as well as your website URL and complete contact info.
In addition, you should require web visitors to enter their name and email so that you can start building an online list of interested contacts. Be careful to not ask for too much information at this stage. Most people will not fill out long forms even if the information is free.
Developing A Persuasive Guarantee
There are many ways to stand out from the crowd that don't rely on a particular product or service offering. Another way to do this is to create a compelling guarantee that no one else in your industry offers.
How about offering a 2-year product guarantee instead of the 1-year guarantee your competition offers? How about double your money back if not satisfied? How about a lifetime guarantee? Even if you offer a commodity-type product, you can easily set yourself apart by creating a compelling product or service guarantee.
By following these four simple strategies, you'll find your ability to convert prospects into customers naturally increases.
About the Author:
Corte Swearingen is the founder of the SmallBiz Marketing Strategies website and the author of the Integral Marketing System. He has been a professional strategic marketer for eighteen years.
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