It Starts With The Message

The message is what’s important. The internet is just a vehicle for that message. When you want someone to fix your car, don’t ask for a wrench. You will end up unhappy because your car isn’t fixed and you will want to hit someone with your new wrench.

I like to tell people to focus on their message. Don’t focus on the technology, focus on what you want to say. A good message will transcend whatever media you put it on. A horrible message won’t get heard regardless of how much you spend on technology.

Always take a step back and look at the big picture. I mean the really big picture. When you focus on minutia, you tend to forget why you are really here.

Sales can come from someone looking for something or as an impulse buy (sometimes both). If your product or service is not an impulse buy, then don’t beat everyone over the head with the “BUY NOW” stick. I admit, I’m a horrible consumer. I actually take my time and think about what I want to buy. I have been told by a multitude of salesmen that my buying habits are in the .01% range of Americans. I want information about your product or service from someone else who’s opinion I trust. That philosophy may have been less of a factor in the past, but it is becoming huge on the internet.

When someone shows up on a car lot, they are actively looking for a car. Diverting the local traffic signal into your car lot isn’t going to bring you the sales you want, it simply brings you people who are not looking to buy a car. Sending a salesman over to various parking lots to drum up business isn’t going to give you the long term business you want either.

What you want is your customers to tell their friends about how much they like their car and how they really liked the service they got at your car lot. This is a message that people trust. This is a message that they will remember. This is why a company needs to help give existing and potential customers the tools that make creating this message simple, easy, and fast. If they are creating something for you, don’t make them work for it. Give them the ability to do this on a silver platter. And for the love of Cheetos, if 90% of your audience uses Twitter as their tool of choice, don’t build them a Facebook fan page because your brother told you that everyone needs to have one. Listen to your audience and build what they want to use.

Your existing customers ARE your salesforce. If they are not, then you need to seriously rethink what you are selling them. Don’t think of your website as a printed leaflet. think of it as a coffee shop where you want people to congregate and talk about their favorite subject…themselves. Give them small subtle hints about your product that will spark their brain to tell their friends about it.

How you get your message across is going to determine how many people listen to your message. Stenciling your message on a baseball bat and swinging around the room is a sure way to keep people off your website. Give them some space, some free coffee, and you will notice those corner booths will always be full. Wrap a message onto their coffee cup, have a few articles stapled to the wall near the booths. You want to establish a positive experience and then your message will get well received as opposed to trampled on the ground as they rush towards the exit.

Get help with the message if you’re having difficulty, because if you don’t have something shiny in that message, then you’re really just throwing mud on the ground.

Toff Ward
OpenSourceMarketer.com

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