Friend first, Sell second
I've noticed that a lot of people seem to be falling into the trap of thinking that the main purpose of marketing is to make a lot of money. It isn't. Making money is a nice bonus and obviously we'd all love to do it but the primary focus of building a website, campaigns, building mailing lists and so on should be to build relationships with people who share your interests.
Once you've established a rapport, by showing that you are knowledgeable about your shared passion, then you build a relationship by sharing knowledge with your community (just like we do here at WA), which takes time, sometimes a long time.
Then, and only then, should you think about suggesting to people that they might be interested in a product or service you've heard about.
Notice that I said 'suggesting', not 'telling'. There's a huge difference. Nobody, absolutely nobody likes the 'hard sell'. The idea that you have to be aggressive, persistent, never giving up until you've achieved a sale is not only wrong, it's practically unethical. Lots of companies tried that approach back in the 80's, at least here in the UK, and every single one of them has gone bust.
These days, in my opinion not only as a marketer, but equally as a consumer, if you want to sell something to somebody, you'll fail. If you want to help somebody because you know of something they could find useful, you'll succeed.
Why? Because your motivation is to help people and if you happen to be helped in return, that's a reciprocal relationship, a two-way street. The old way, the 'hard-sell', is a one-way street. A one-way street to oblivion.
Now, which street do you want live on?
Recent Comments
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Rapport with your readers soon to be prospects is pivotal to a successfull internet business. I think readers will leave your website within seconds if they smell a rat metaphorically speaking.
You couldn't be more correct Dave! You need to establish a common similarity between yourself and other people, that makes it so much easier to gain their trust and then possibly lead them towards your product.This is all true and unfortunately, there's a lot of money-craving people who just stuff it in your face, which either works negatively or just doesn't work at all.
Loved reading your post, keep up the good work! :)
- Stephen
I always think of walking into any commission based store, in particular one that has high attrition rate with employees. One thing they all have in common, ANNOYING sales people.
The same actually happens online as well when people try to create a business without an understand of the customer purchase lifecycle and what actually leads to the highest rate of conversion, TRUST.
If you cannot build trust, it will be very difficult to convert someone.
If you go into an electronics store and you feel like you are being sold to no end, you are going to be turned off, shell up, and likely spend way less.
If someone just seems thoroughly interested you and like they are going out of their way to help you with no expectations in return, you will buy much more.
First comes the trust (friending), then comes the selling. Always.