A mistake you are most probably making
First let me clear the air, I am NO EXPERT and you shouldn’t take my word for it as no research has been carried out on this findings.
Now after that opening sentence, what are you thinking?
1. This article has no substantial proof
2. This guys doesn’t know what he’s about to say
3. This guy is not an expert
Exactly, now you see , people will believe what you tell them or want them to believe.
Had I started this article with lots of facts saying how much of an expert I am and why you shouldn’t doubt my words you will have probably thought the exact opposite of the above the 3 responses.
(this are all assumptions and as always this will not apply to a small few. We call these few “exceptions” and most of the time they are so small they don’t really matter hence the focus is on the majority.)
Now let’s get to the story. I got up this morning and as usual picked up my phone and checked the usual, forums etc. I stumbled across something which has been intriguing me for quite some time as to why people keep on doing it over and over again. This might be working but I’ve got no proof to support it. ( so if you use this method please let us know if you got more conversions)
Case study 1 : The bad brain seed ( epic title )
John is currently operating his business and on his copy or whatever he sends out to his prospective clients or whatever and wherever he advertises he includes something like this :
1. 10 reasons you should buy my product
2. 10 reasons you should trust Bla Bla Bla LLC
3. 10 reasons you should work with Bla Bla Bla LLC
4. Bla Bla Bla …..
Do these titles sound familiar or ring a bell at all? Today I fell on the second title and in the past I’ve come across one of these at least once.
Do you notice anything strange?
I do! What these titles do to ME and I assume the majority (note : we aren’t focusing on the minority here) is that, it sows what i like to call “a bad seed”
“A bad seed? WTF?”
Here me out, please. The type of titles above assumes lots of things and hence sow a bad seed in my head. Here are the things it assumes :
1.I don’t want to buy your product
2.I don’t trust you
3.I dont want to work with you
These are all bad seeds or let’s say negative assumptions you’ve sowed in my head and this therefore makes your task harder.
Why harder? I thought these were to help me make more sales?
It makes your task harder because you have moved me from this :
Option 1. An interested prospective buyer who was genuinely going to buy your product
To this :
Option 2. A prospective skeptical customer whom you have to NOW CONVINCE to go through your sales funnel
So now you’ve made your task harder by just adding that part which you thought at first was meant to help you make more sales.
Note: Please don’t get me wrong, I believe the “10 reasons to….with me” works and generates sales. But most of those sales will be one offs and you and I are more interested in quality sales(yes, there is something like quality sales). This will be people who will love your product/service so much that they’ll sell your products/service by word of mouth. Those are the ones we want.
I know it wouldn’t be fair if I leave without talking about the other type of seed
Case study 2: The good seed
John after making little to no sales with his product comes and asks Martin. How can I sell more of my product ?
Marrinsays: Implant a good seed into your prospective customer by :
ASSUMING YOUR CLIENT HAS ALREADY BOUGHT YOUR PRODUCT/SERVICE
So John changed his lines from:
1. 10 reasons you should buy my product
2. 10 reasons you should trust Bla Bla Bla LLC
3. 10 reasons you should work with Bla Bla Bla LLC
To this:
1. 10 things you can do with..
2. How to best use your product
3. What happens when we work together and what can we achieve together
Results?
Want real proof this worked out for John? Today is the 3rd of may, beginning of the month and all over the blogosphere you will see tonnes of April income reports. I advise you go check them out and take a look at their affiliate earnings and you’ll notice that :
Most affiliate sales were made by bloggers who:
-Assumed their readers had purchased the product they wanted to promote and therefore focused on informing them on all the awesome things they could do with it.
Those who were far less fortunate, were those who:
-Did the opposite and assumed their readers hadn’t purchased the product and spent their time reviewing the product instead.
Another proof?
Example 1:
Sainsbury, a local supermarket has it’s own inhouse made brand and the label says :
“Taste the difference”
This automatically sows a seed in your brain that THERE IS A DIFFERENCE! and trust me, your brain will want to imagine there’s a difference before even trying it.
Example 2:
What do you think of when you watch Absolute Vodkas advert and they say:
“…..can you see the difference”
Again, here they are telling you there’s a difference and you’re automatically switched to think there’s one.
Martinsays: Next time you’re about to push a product to someone, assume they’ve already purchased it from you and move from there.
And …..
“…..you’ll see the difference”
HI Martin, You invited me to visit and I totally agree with your premise. How you invite others – often with a title, will change how they perceive your offering. In general, I never sell from my blogs. All I do is share information, thoughts, sometimes feelings, and ideas that either fit me or the topic of the blog. I teach a lot. But I also teach a lot in person so that fits. Most people are turned off by people who sell to them. Content marketing is the opposite. Content marketing provides people information and creative titles can make the difference.
Julie Walraven recently posted..Give someone permission to try!
Thanks for commenting Julie, really appreciate the support so far. As you rightly said how you invite others is very important and this post covers a little but important part abot communication. Little do we know the power words have and how they affect us subconsciously.
Martinsays: Thanks for the comment
Hey Martin, Great article. I guess a lot of people put the cart before the horse when it comes to marketing their products/ services.
it has happened to me once too. I think it stems from thinking that you have invested time and money and have built such a “great” product, people would just naturally by.
How wrong? We mostly forget that at least several ’000s have a competitive product online too.
Cheers
Hey Olu,
Glad to see you stopped by! We should definitely talk more on twitter. You’re spot on, lots of the time we get overwhelmed by our product that we end up placing a wrong idea in our potential customers mind.
I am more than interested to hear what your experience was and what you learned out of it .
Martinsays: Thanks
Martin, are you kidding me. You do all this from the phone. Do you mind me asking why?
Most marketing efforts for the most part go completly over my head, especially from the marketers who think that bombarding me with their marketing message, is going to make me go ” oh..I know what I need to buy such and such thing”, because they have sent me the same email 16 times. if that makes any sense.
I’m not doing any marketing yet, but I really like what you said here ” Assumed their readers had purchased the product they wanted to promote and therefore focused on informing them on all the awesome things they could do with it”
I never thought of it like that before.
Hey Stacey, nice to see you around once more! Yep I do this via my mould and I must say I am starting to love it. Apparently I type faster on here than I’ll normally do on my laptop hence the long posts and the often silly mistakes
I do this mainly because I’ll love the independence of knowing that I could control everything I own online via my mobile thereby increasing my mobility.
The assumption that the customer has already purchased your good I think makes all the difference and now I’m going to assume that :
1.I’ve got an audience
2.You’ve subscribed to my blog
Martinsays: Thanks for stopping by!
Truly, it blows my mind you can do this all from your phone. This post was incredible! I often mess up my site and posts while using my laptop. I can’t imagine the struggles you must have. But maybe not… you seem to have a good thing going.
Keep the good thoughts comin’!
Thanks for the RT and stopping by David! I must say the beginning and still now it’s still daunting but who doesn’t love a nice challenge?
The good thing is I believe I am more focus than I’ll be on my laptop since I haven’t got the flexibility to easily multi-task. Also this permits me to capture an idea wherever I maybe and add pictures, screenshots and videos all from one device! I even write a post listing the apps I use!
Martinsays: thank you
Ps: just wished many blogs were mobile friendly.