Marketing on the Internet is possibly the most impersonal method of doing business imaginable. In real life you meet your customers, but not so much when you are on the Internet. You almost talk to them on the telephone and it is likely that your only method of communication with them is via chat e-mail. For this reason, it is extremely easy to forget one critical thing about your business and all business, which is that it is personal contact that counts. This is true whether you are dealing with online or offline customers.
Your customers are real people and they have exactly the same needs, hopes and desires as everyone else. Consequently, when you put your marketing materials in front of them, they will have one question that your marketing materials must answer if you are to achieve success.
Without fail, they will look at your advertisement wanting to know ‘What’s in it for me?’ This is not selfish; it’s just how humans act when they shop. They want to know the benefits of buying before they get out the credit card. This means that all of your marketing materials must be constructed in such a way that they answer this question. You have to tell anyone who is looking at your marketing copy exactly what they will gain if they buy your product. You need to tell them how their life will be enhanced if they buy your product or how their life will stay the same or even deteriorate if they do not.
In order to place maximum stress or emphasis on these benefits, you need to have a very clear picture in your own mind of what your product can do for anyone who buys it. By doing this, you can come up with a ‘marketing angle’, a specific way of highlighting the benefits that will ring a bell with most of your web site visitors.
The bottom line is, effective marketing materials tell your customer how they will gain pleasure or avoid pain in their life by buying your product or service. You need to talk to them about benefits, and if you can include a unique selling point, that will make your marketing materials all the more effective.
Effective marketing is all about focusing on the benefits that a product or service can bring to anyone who buys it and it therefore follows that the more effectively you can highlight these benefits, the more sales you will generate.
