How do you make buying decisions?
Have you ever bought a car because the salesman loves his job and has been in business for a long time?
Did a large and impressive picture on the wall help you get out your wallet?
Did a speech about his qualifications and job history get you over the line to make that purchase?
I thought not.
Or did being told the features of a particular car, upholstery, fuel range, resale value, all combine to help you decide?
Did the salesman offer you a special price if you purchased that day?
Or maybe he showed you a different model after asking you a few questions about what you needed.
A good salesman markets the product to you
A good salesman will find out what you are looking for. They then highlight the benefits of a particular solution or deal to help you decide.
It’s highly likely that good marketing has helped you make a purchasing decision more often than you realise.
Good salesmen know this. A good salesman will market a product to your particular needs, explain the benefits, and get you over the line.
How does your website help buyers make a decision?
The internet is a huge marketplace. It’s full of salespeople. But most of them are not very good.
How many websites have you seen that talk about themselves? How long they have been in business. How they have a passion for what they do.
Many are littered with industry jargon, or don’t even give you any information.
Many rely on a large photograph to try and convince you.
If doing that didn’t sell the car to you, then it isn’t likely to work on the internet either.
Internet users aren’t dumb – if they’ve seen the same talk before, they will just click elsewhere.
So many websites make the mistake of failing to sell effectively. Many even pay good (SEO) money to get traffic to their site, but their site is losing most of the opportunity because it simply isn’t marketing.
Next time you visit a site as a prospective customer, take note of why you’re leaving a site instead of buying. It’s almost certainly because it isn’t marketing well in one form or another.
It’s a good way to waste money on your website.
Why do many websites not market well?
In the showroom a good salesman will convert many undecided visitors into paying customers. It’s a skill, and a good salesman has many years of experience.
But on the internet many website owners and designers are not marketers. They do not know how to sell on the internet.
Selling on the internet is more difficult because your audience does not need to be polite. They can stop the conversation at any time, and never come back. Typically this happens within the first 15 seconds.
Many website owners will either create a website themselves, or get a budget site and create the content themselves. It seems, to them, this is saving money.
But it isn’t. The customers who click away from their site will go to a competitor’s, and the sale is lost.
Make the most of your website
The internet has a far greater reach than a car showroom. It makes sense to make the most of that opportunity. A well designed website costs a lot less than a salesman, and doesn’t require a salary.
Internet marketing techniques, while having a lot in common, are also different than in a car showroom.
You can’t easily read your customer, but you can track their behaviour and learn from it.
You can’t easily adjust your style to suit different buyer types, but you can present different information to different groups of potential buyers and guide them through to eventually purchasing.
You can’t hold off, or jump in early, with an attempt to close the deal without the risk of getting it wrong. But you can use other marketing techniques to appeal to undecided customers, or to contact them again at a later date with a different offer. You can make sure the majority of buyers have the right opportunity to purchase at the right times.
Good website design and layout is needed to keep a visitor on the path to making a sale. It helps keep them on your website.
Good copywriting appeals to their reservations about purchasing, and helps convince the visitor your product meets their needs. It needs to present the opportunity to purchase at the right times, without being pushy.
Make the right investment
An internet presence is becoming mandatory in the business world. With more websites, your internet presence needs to be more competitive to keep your customers’ attention.
If you cut corners on your website, you are loosing a huge opportunity.
If your website is not following solid marketing principles in both design layout and copywriting, you are wasting that opportunity.
A wise investment up-front in both professional design and copywriting hires the equivalent of a good showroom salesman who knows how to market your business.
Even better, you don’t have to keep paying them a salary.