Walking Away is Awkward, Clicking Away Is Not.

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A Click. This is the key difference between the sales process within the online world, and the offline world. Online customers are in full control of their experience, what they want to see, and what they don't want to see. Exiting from their current "state" is no more difficult than a click of a button, a toggle, or a movement on their computers track pad.

So why does this matter to you?

Well, to be frank, it means everything. It means that you cannot offer thin, invaluable content. It means that you cannot be overtly promotional or pushy. It means that you cannot be irrelevant with your offerings. It means that you have to be interesting and engage your audience. It means that you have to actually be helpful.

To give this some overall context, I want to give you a real life example within the offline world, and the online world to exhibit the apparent differences between the overall sales processes.

You walk into a furniture store...

You have a sales rep come up to you, and ask you what you are interested in buying. You say a "brown couch", they then proceed to show you every couch in the store, and work to get you purchase one. I anticipate this sort of salesperson when I go into a furniture store.

Now I don't want to portray ever single furniture salesperson as pushy, but from my experience most have been. This type of marketing does work in some cases though, and it does actually lead to people buying.

To be honest, I really don't love this type of experience. I have always found pushy salespeople really annoying and there are much better things I would rather be doing. But I have the tendency to "stick things out" within the offline world. I deal with the pushy salesperson, and I may or may not end up buying something.

However, within the online world people's activities are much different.

That exact same activity is treated much differently by a prospective customer. Let's say I do a search online "best brown sectional couch with recliners". That is exactly what I am looking for. I end up on a website, they offer some information, but nothing of value and I feel like they are just trying to sell me a series of couches that I don't really like.

What do I do? Do I stick it out on their website? Nope. I am long gone, I CLICK away.

What do I do if I ever encounter scummy sales practices within the online world? I always CLICK away.

That is the luxury we have as customers within the online world. We don't have to deal with pushy salespeople, or irrelevant offers. We can navigate to any source of information that we want until we find one that we trust. Yes, one that we trust.

So if your goal is to sell someone something, and that appears to be the only goal to them, guess what their response is going to be? Clicking away. Every single time.

It's Simple. Help People, Don't Sell to Them.


I just want to spend a few moments reminding everyone of something that should always be at the forethought of all of your activities online. If people don't like your content, they don't like your pitch, if they don't like your video, or they don't value what you are offering, they will CLICK away.

When you are sitting down to create your content, put yourself in your visitors shoes and ask yourself these questions.

  • Is this content relevant to the title?
  • Am I offering value to the reader?
  • Is the content engaging and interesting?

If you answer yes to ALL of these, then you are heading in the right direction. That will keep your audiences interest, and keep them from "clicking" away from your website.

But once you have your visitors attention and once you establish their trust, you don't want to lose that trust by being overtly "salesy".

If you over SELL to people, they will leave faster than a toupee in a hurricane. I personally despise being in a sales situation where I feel as though I have a dollar figure on my head. This I suppose is ironic because I am in a business where marketing is a big part of my day to day, but marketing is much more about offering value and establishing trust than it is "selling" something.

So I guess that the real irony is that people think that selling is marketing. In reality, it is far from it. Selling is about building a relationship with someone, it is about offering insightful information. It is about establishing trust with your respective audience. If you can comprehend that "helping" is the core element of converting someone, you are going to be much more successful within the online world.


I want to remind everyone that we all make mistakes when it comes to "selling". I have done it, and I know I still do it. Sometimes I have to pull myself back and look at my own content, or reassess a video and view it from the perspective as a customer. Do I feel like I am selling something here, or do I feel like I am helping? If I fall into the "selling" category without offering value, then I will fix the glaring sales folly.

Don't push your audience to "click away". Help them, build trust, and you will have a much higher probability that they will be "clicking" through to an offer based on your recommendation.

I would love to hear your feedback on how you approach "selling" within the online world. Do you find yourself being overtly pushy at times? If so, how do you catch yourself? What are some strategies that you utilize within your content to convert at a higher rate, while retaining a feeling of being helpful?

And one more thing...please don't click away! lol

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Recent Comments

180

I thought to leave WA due to this not making any money now for over a year. My niche "which I love" is not affiliate driven. My page is more about personal spiritual growth. I offer information to others to help them understand the journey and its nuances. (I've listed/posted crystals, other healers products, books, Amazon...and nothing) Anyone have any great ideas that could help me, before I jump ship? I am at a huge loss literally.

Are you getting good traffic counts?

You might try reverse engineering your product offerings. Do keyword research around those products. See if anyone is searching for them, then build your content on those product specific keywords and try to get ranked and traffic of course.

Have you looked into Clickbank? They have quite a few products in the spiritual and personal development areas. Some of them are selling very well. Just my thoughts, hope it helps.

Never Give UP!!

Rex

That's so sad. Have you looked into Bootcamp?

Have not as of yet. Was hoping my site would do it as that is a lot to handle at the moment. I might just have to do that. Thank you. Love and light

Thank you Rex had not thought of Clickbank. Will check to see!
Love and light

Yes and no. I get ranked by Google as needed. In fact all my articles have been. But the whole google - analytics is a thing of its own. I wish I had the time to focus on it, learn it, so I could understand it better.

Well you still need to think of an audience. You can head in a passion direction, and you don't need to promote any affiliate products/services on your website, you can monetize through ads or otherwise.

I would recommend that you focus on keywords when you are creating content. That is your path to rankings and traffic. I would recommend you share your content socially, that will lead to traffic.

To create success in any niche comes down to establishing an audience. And if you writing for the sake of writing, with no focus on the overall traffic element that will not lead to traffic unfortunately.

So I recommend you make that your first focus, your niche direction can certainly be the direction that you head if it is a passion, but you need to have a plan of attack for your audience.

Ok, after I move I will try to do just that. At this point, I "have to" move locations. The "focus" of the world sure has change in 2020.

Great post Kyle. I am guilty for clicking away, if the first paragraph doesn't capture me l'm off. There is no attachment, so it s easy to do that. We have to remember to turn the table around and put ourselves in the customers shoes, asking what's our purpose and whose looking in to learn being informed and then maybe buy! Thanks for the nod in the right direction :-)

That is the normal behaviour now, and if you can appreciate that when you are creating your content you will create content that is much more captivating, helpful, and that engages your audience better.

This will naturally lead to better rankings and more revenue!

Hi Kyle,

Although what you wrote here is obvious, I need to hear this message often. In my zeal to show people how good the Wealthy Affiliate platform is to encourage them to join, I know I have been guilty of being in your face sometimes.

I already have a plan to review and update old posts now that I have hit 100, I will also evaluate my posts from the pushy factor.

Wouldn't it be great to have an option on Site Feedback on this factor? Sadly none of my requests for Site Feedback have been fulfilled for several months now so this may not be of much help.

Thanks for reminding is about the importance of helping our readers over selling to them.

Cheers.

Edwin

Hello Kyle, I really enjoyed your post. It is so spot on, anyone can click away. In fact it's not only easier than waking away, it is also more difficult that hanging up on someone. Because you don't have a bond with this person on the other end of the phone yet, . Therefore more reason to protect you and your family.

Sincerely,
Kathy

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