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Successful Online Selling Is a Lot Like Wooing a Lover
Really, it is!
Whether it’s in romance or commerce, people hate being sold a bill of goods. Still, they are in love with buying and your marketing technique is important to winning customers over.
Too often, we fall back on simply listing features when it comes to marketing our business wares rather than demonstrating all the benefits a customer will enjoy. Since we’ve all been customers – as well as lovers! -- thinking through our best experiences should give us plenty of clues on what to do when planning customer-centric marketing. Here are some ways to improve customer engagement:
Learn your dating type
(Pick a target market)
Maybe your product or service could be used by “everyone,” but rather than being mildly appealing to a wide range of customers, it’s far more productive to focus on a specific market.
For instance, your local bar may welcome everyone over 21, but we’d bet there’s a particular crowd drinking there. If the place is full of rowdy college kids, it probably doesn’t appeal to well-heeled professionals and vice versa. This is the kind of information you can use for creating specials, coupons, and advertising specifically targeted to attract more customers just like the ones who are already giving you their money.
Choose suitable conversation topics
(Talk to your customer, not your colleagues)
The average non-technical person may not be an expert on download speeds, but they certainly know when there’s a problem loading your website pages. Save the shop talk for your team mates around the water cooler. Instead, show how your product or service will solve whatever problem is worrying your customer.
Hang out in the right places
(Be where your customer will find you)
What social media platforms do your customers use? It hasn’t been that long since newspaper ads for tires were published in the sports section because it was men who read about sports and also took care of the car. But if you advertised tires only toward men today, you would miss more than half of your market. Maybe Pinterest would be a better place to talk about tires. Do the research to really understand your target market so you can be where they are.
Sweep them off their feet
(Make it easy)
You have no doubt experienced this yourself: If a page took too long to load, you clicked on another link. If the shipping cost was not posted, you abandoned the shopping cart. If there was no menu or prices listed, you found another take-out restaurant. Instead of ticking off your customers, why not make it an easy and pleasant experience for them to buy?
Wooing a customer is more like wooing a sweetheart than you might think! When you put their interests first and work to make them feel comfortable, they’re delighted to spend time (and money!) with you. We have lots more suggestions on how to build successful customer relationships. Just give us a call!
Photo by Karolina Grabowska from Pexels
This article is an update to “Customer-Centric Marketing” dated 4/14/2014.
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Kate Gingold
I have been writing a blog with web marketing tips and techniques every other week since 2003. In addition to blogging and client content writing, I write books and a blog on local history.
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I have been writing a blog with web marketing tips and techniques every other week since 2003. In addition to blogging and client content writing, I write books and a blog on local history.
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