One of the greats in direct response marketing, Claude Hopkins, once said,
“There is one simple way to answer many advertising questions. Ask yourself… ‘Would it help a salesman sell the goods?’ ‘Would it help me sell them if I met a buyer in person?’ A fair answer to those questions avoids countless mistakes.”
How would that apply to web marketing? Well, let’s say you just pulled up some company’s website. What’s the first thing you see?
- Company logo
- Product name
- Facts about the company
- Endless product features
- Blah, blah blah
Would all that stuff help a salesman sell a product? You might be tempted to say yes at first, but you’d be wrong.
Why’s that?
Customers and potential prospects don’t care about your company.
News flash… they care about themselves.
More specifically, they care about their problem… and how your product can solve that problem. That’s it.
When someone visits your website, you’ve only accomplished the first goal of the sales process:
Attention » Interest » Desire » Action
So now they’re here, and you’ve got their attention. For a moment.
To achieve that next level to Interest, for Pete’s sake don’t throw a bunch of boring facts at them.
Help your customers want to buy from you by solving the questions they’re wrestling with most. The questions that drove them to your web site in the first place.
It requires a keen ability to listen.
How do you listen to your customers in the world of e-commerce? Research! We’re talking surveys, finding trends and discovering what your ideal customer is like.
What are their desires, fears, or frustrations? How can your product / service meet their felt need?
Once you know these things, speak to that person directly… just as if you were talking to a friend. And I mean real conversation.
Then appeal to their interest on your web site. Be a friend and help make their life a little easier. When you do that, taking care to be human instead of mechanical, you connect with people.
Making a connection is key.
Whether in a live selling situation or with printed words on a web page, people buy from people they trust.
Before they trust you, they must listen to what you have to say. And before they listen to you there must be some sort of rapport… some sort of connection.
Understand that they key to getting more people interested in what you’re selling means opening a bridge of understanding and rapport… before pitching your product or company.
By following these tips, you can increase your conversions dramatically. Keep your customer’s need and the benefits your product provides as the first priority when working on any copywriting project.
