Why is this key marketing truth so often ignored?
I spend a fair amount of the day on my computer. Writing copy for clients. Surfing the net for ideas. Linking IN. Checking to see if Steven Tyler did anything outrageous the day before. Important stuff.
And I gotta tell ya….I still am amazed at how many marketers seem to think they are communicating with “the masses” via billboard when it comes to their marketing.
Is it that difficult to bring yourself to use the word YOU and actually create a sales proposition? Your web copy, emails, sales letters and free reports are usually being read by…..one person. Not a group of people who sat down together in the lunch room with their peanut butter sandwiches and decided a fun activity would be to look at websites or read emails together.
So many websites and emails lead with what the business owner does usually in the form of some incredibly boring “seen it all before” list of services or features. Whatever happened to SELLING??!!
Case in point. Let’s take a company that sells technology. New time tracking software system that will blah blah this and blah blah that.
You might think that the buyer (and reader of the web copy) of a system like that is a techie. Let’s assume that’s the case. The techie gets to your website and sees your ‘sales message’ front and centre:
- Easy and accurate time tracking using web based timesheets
- Track time & expense towards projects, clients or any entity your business requires
- Easily track billable and non-billable time
- Smart e-mail notifications for timely timesheet
submissions/approvals
Do you think that maybe, just maybe, the techie might have seen this stuff somewhere before? Like when he visited the other 23 web sites where he was hoping to find someone who was addressing what he really wanted?
He EXPECTS a system he buys to have easy and accurate time tracking. He EXPECTS it to be able to track project time and expense. What he WANTS (and needs) to know is why he should choose their offering, whether or not they can deliver and not make him look bad and who else has used the system and what their results were.
If the web copy is simply used as a billboard listing services, then what’s the guy going to use to make a buying decision? That’s right. Price.
And the first ones to scream, ‘All they want to do is talk about price’ will be the software company’s sales team because the selling message isn’t communicating the value they offer.
When a prospect gets to your web site, he or she knows what you do. Maybe not all the ins and outs but for the most part, they get it. That’s why he or she came to your site.
Our job, as marketers, is to communicate with the reader on a personal basis (yup, even the techie needs to be reassured your software system won’t blow up and cost him his job) and lead them to the conclusion that we are ideally suited to solve their problem or fulfill their need.
That requires a YOU approach.
