How Salesmanship Differs Online
Posted 30th October 2009 at 06:20 PM by Gama Seva
By Gama Seva
Even so, you may have to coax that 80% a little more to buy your stuff. They are a picky lot who may decide to research other online stores before they buy. In classic marketing, you would have a staff person attending to that customer to find out what they need and then matching his/her need to some product or service the company sells. Online, there are no virtual sales attendants, so how are you going to guide people without having to hire someone to man a phone line?
Use Search Engine Techniques
Luckily, search engines are a major strength of the Internet and can be used in your Internet marketing techniques to not only draw people to your site, but to help them make a selection. First, put yourself in the shoes of a potential customer. If you are the lady looking for the pink raincoat, wouldn't you go to a major search engine first and put in the words “pink raincoat”? Or, if you had a specific designer in mind, you would add that word too to your search engine query. That's why it's important to use descriptive keywords and know what people are searching for to get the most hits to your sales pages from larger search engines.
This way, even if someone had no idea what your website name was and that it sold pink raincoats, you would still pop up in a search engine result page as a place to go online to find one. If you want to find out what other synonyms or terms are entered online so that you can use them within the copy of your sales page and draw eyeballs from Google, you can look up their keyword tool and look at the terms being searched online. Find a few that have low competition and are highly searchable to include in your copy, within 1 to 2% of the content of the page, and you will place higher in the search engine result pages when people go to search for those terms.
Index your pages with as many descriptive keywords as you can think of that someone might search. This is not only for the major search engines, but also to help people find things through your own search function that you’ll want to make available to customers who visit your website. The search box is going to be like your friendly salesperson.
It's going to allow customers to go straight to what they want to buy and to find a listing of similar products that they might be interested in. Always include a search box as a basic strategy that markets to the long tail. Remember that these people are going to have very definite tastes and will want to have a large selection to choose from. If you don't put in a search box, they will have to first find the right product category, then the right product, and then search through them to find one in the right color, size, style, or anything else that they want. If you want to see examples of search boxes that offer just the right way to search, take a look at any major appliance manufacturer. They will normally try to take into account numerous features a person might be searching for and make it easy to find via a search box or via very well defined categories.
Objections And Benefits
In classic marketing, a salesperson can't wait to hear an objection so they can overcome it and close the sale. Online, however, it's like a catch-22: If a person echoes an objection in the middle of an Internet visit and no one hears it, does it still exist? Fortunately, we know that it does. People will always have objections to buying products; they just won't be able to voice them to you directly. You will have to have a good idea of what those objections might be and then publish the benefits that can overcome these objections.
Sales pages on the Internet tend to be really long affairs. While you'd never think of listing every possible benefit if you were face-to-face with someone, you do want to list every possible benefit online. That's because you don't know who is visiting your site and which objection they might have. Listing them all, thus, takes care of any possible objection one might have and also gives the perception of a very high-value product.
Closing The Sale
Closing a sale online can take a bit more technique than a face-to-face meeting. The offer has to be so good that people will jump at the chance to get it. Otherwise, if given enough time to think about it, they can easily jump to another site and compare features and prices, to your detriment. In many ways, closing a sale online is going to invoke the best of classical marketing techniques, understanding that if the sale doesn't close, the next best thing is a sales lead.
Unlike a regular face-to-face meeting, when someone comes to your sales page online, you will not have any means of identifying that person. You can't see what he/she looks like, won't be able to ask him/her what he/she wants, and you will definitely have no idea where to contact him/her. If you are trying to close the sale to get that information, you are missing a valuable opportunity to get the sales lead, even when you don't make the sale.
The easiest way to do that is to automate a pop-up form that offers him/her something for free as he/she is leaving your site, in exchange for his/her email address. This way, even when you don't make a sale right at that moment, you still have a way to market to him/her later. Otherwise, once he/she is gone, you might not have another opportunity to get a hold of him/her again. It's not always about closing a sale online. Take time to build a relationship, offer something of value, and continue to market to him/her until he/she is ready to buy.
=======================
1 Way Permanent Do Follow
Backlinks For Only $1!
=======================
Even so, you may have to coax that 80% a little more to buy your stuff. They are a picky lot who may decide to research other online stores before they buy. In classic marketing, you would have a staff person attending to that customer to find out what they need and then matching his/her need to some product or service the company sells. Online, there are no virtual sales attendants, so how are you going to guide people without having to hire someone to man a phone line?
Use Search Engine Techniques
Luckily, search engines are a major strength of the Internet and can be used in your Internet marketing techniques to not only draw people to your site, but to help them make a selection. First, put yourself in the shoes of a potential customer. If you are the lady looking for the pink raincoat, wouldn't you go to a major search engine first and put in the words “pink raincoat”? Or, if you had a specific designer in mind, you would add that word too to your search engine query. That's why it's important to use descriptive keywords and know what people are searching for to get the most hits to your sales pages from larger search engines.
This way, even if someone had no idea what your website name was and that it sold pink raincoats, you would still pop up in a search engine result page as a place to go online to find one. If you want to find out what other synonyms or terms are entered online so that you can use them within the copy of your sales page and draw eyeballs from Google, you can look up their keyword tool and look at the terms being searched online. Find a few that have low competition and are highly searchable to include in your copy, within 1 to 2% of the content of the page, and you will place higher in the search engine result pages when people go to search for those terms.
Index your pages with as many descriptive keywords as you can think of that someone might search. This is not only for the major search engines, but also to help people find things through your own search function that you’ll want to make available to customers who visit your website. The search box is going to be like your friendly salesperson.
It's going to allow customers to go straight to what they want to buy and to find a listing of similar products that they might be interested in. Always include a search box as a basic strategy that markets to the long tail. Remember that these people are going to have very definite tastes and will want to have a large selection to choose from. If you don't put in a search box, they will have to first find the right product category, then the right product, and then search through them to find one in the right color, size, style, or anything else that they want. If you want to see examples of search boxes that offer just the right way to search, take a look at any major appliance manufacturer. They will normally try to take into account numerous features a person might be searching for and make it easy to find via a search box or via very well defined categories.
Objections And Benefits
In classic marketing, a salesperson can't wait to hear an objection so they can overcome it and close the sale. Online, however, it's like a catch-22: If a person echoes an objection in the middle of an Internet visit and no one hears it, does it still exist? Fortunately, we know that it does. People will always have objections to buying products; they just won't be able to voice them to you directly. You will have to have a good idea of what those objections might be and then publish the benefits that can overcome these objections.
Sales pages on the Internet tend to be really long affairs. While you'd never think of listing every possible benefit if you were face-to-face with someone, you do want to list every possible benefit online. That's because you don't know who is visiting your site and which objection they might have. Listing them all, thus, takes care of any possible objection one might have and also gives the perception of a very high-value product.
Closing The Sale
Closing a sale online can take a bit more technique than a face-to-face meeting. The offer has to be so good that people will jump at the chance to get it. Otherwise, if given enough time to think about it, they can easily jump to another site and compare features and prices, to your detriment. In many ways, closing a sale online is going to invoke the best of classical marketing techniques, understanding that if the sale doesn't close, the next best thing is a sales lead.
Unlike a regular face-to-face meeting, when someone comes to your sales page online, you will not have any means of identifying that person. You can't see what he/she looks like, won't be able to ask him/her what he/she wants, and you will definitely have no idea where to contact him/her. If you are trying to close the sale to get that information, you are missing a valuable opportunity to get the sales lead, even when you don't make the sale.
The easiest way to do that is to automate a pop-up form that offers him/her something for free as he/she is leaving your site, in exchange for his/her email address. This way, even when you don't make a sale right at that moment, you still have a way to market to him/her later. Otherwise, once he/she is gone, you might not have another opportunity to get a hold of him/her again. It's not always about closing a sale online. Take time to build a relationship, offer something of value, and continue to market to him/her until he/she is ready to buy.
=======================
1 Way Permanent Do Follow
Backlinks For Only $1!
=======================
Total Comments 0
