Sales pitch and marketing style for IM to IM
I know this is kinda like stating the obvious but I wonder how many people are cognizant of this: have you noticed how the IM community is an industry in of itself and plays by different rules and scripts to most other online businesses?
Let me explain - if you go to most B2C and even B2B sales websites, which are not connected in any way with IM, you'll see a completely different style of sales presentation than with an IM site.
IM is its own cottage industry that's grown to the size of a castle. It generates and circulates revenue within the industry and only rarely connects with the 'real' world. If you go to some of the big companies who are outside of our community, sites like L.L Bean, Gander Mountain, any major vitamin store, or just about any other non IM website, you'll see that they all have a very different style of sales presentation than any site selling to the IM crowd.
To help visualize the contrast, think about 'big' vitamin stores whose primary focus is to attract IM marketing affiliates, then compare their style with any of the non-affiliate focused sites....and it's completely different.
I think IM has never really grown up. Its roots and methodology are still set in the mid 90's, it has never moved on.
If you're wondering what I'm talking about, think of the style of presentation of a WSO, or go to one of the male enhancement supplement sites, or some site selling affiliate software or a backlink builder or whatever. If it's a site servicing the IM community the pitch is big and bold and brash, full of hyperbole, crazy statistics and size 30 fonts. If it's a site selling to the average Joe it's more laid back, more friendly and less in your face.
So we sell among ourselves using one style and we hope to eventually get to sell to the outside world where we'll need to use a completely different style. Does that strike you as a little inconsistent, or odd?
Now I'm not saying every site fits into this mold, there are obviously many examples of sites that approach marketing in a more 'grown up' way.
Is it time for the IM community to grow up and stop being so......90's?
Even when we sell products/services/affiliate offers within our community, would it be so much less effective to adopt a more professional style of presentation? Maybe we're all still copying stuff from the 90's and don't have the wherewithal to implement an update?
This might be a long shot, but when I look at some of the companies who've transitioned from the IM community and become more mainstream, they seem to adopt a more mainstream style of selling. When I look at some of the home pages of the IM sites, I can pretty much guarantee they'll never sell outside of their own little incestuous circle of colleagues, unless they change their style radically.
Just a thought, I may be wrong.
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