Marketing Archive

I dislike reality shows. I mean I passionately dislike them. If every reality show on tv went off the air I would consider that a good thing. And yet today as I was going through my daily blog reading I came across mention of Joel Comm’s The Next Internet Millionaire enough times that I had to watch and give it a chance. It’s an hour (50+ minutes) I could have spent doing something else. Did I mention I dislike reality tv. I dislike it just as much online as I do offline.
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What? Me mention something about Marketing Pilgrim’s SEO Scholarship Contest? I’ve done it before and I’m doing it again.

Andy Beal has collected all the essays from the two contests, edited them a bit, and put them all together in a free internet marketing ebook you can download.
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Don’t say the old lady screamed-bring her on and let her scream.
— Mark Twain

Mark Twain didn’t know it when he uttered the quote above, but his quote is the essence of what I was trying to get at the other day with my post about telling a romantic story to sell lingerie. Show, don’t tell. Instead of simply telling a visitor that your lingerie will make her feel sexy and turn up the romance in her relationship, create that experience for her on your site. If your site can create an atmosphere of romance and make her feel sexy she’s going to associate that feeling with your lingerie, which is the story she wants to hear.
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The reason all successful marketers tell stories is that consumers insist on it. Consumers are used to telling stories to themselves and telling stories to each other, and it’s just natural to buy stuff from someone who’s telling us a story.
-Seth Godin from “All Marketers Are Liars“

Last week while trying to help someone with their site in a thread on Webmaster-Talk I started thinking about how telling a good story, the right story, leads to more sales. The site in question sells lingerie and as myself, the thread starter, and several other members of the forum began the usual back and forth I began to think what I would do if the site were mine. And what I would do is sell a story about romance.
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I believe subliminal advertising works, but does it really work this well?

I think we all make seemingly conscious decisions that we can’t explain and often the explanations reside in our subconscious mind. I think we all can be affected by images we come in contact with, but never consciously perceive. I think it operates in much the same way that advertisers hope we’ll associate a specific brand with a catchy jingle or how by seeing an ad over and over again we’ll eventually buy a product even if we haven’t seen that ad in quite some time.

But really, does it work anywhere as well as it does in this video? I’m thinking no.
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Sorry National Pork Board, but if my choice is between a nice juicy pork chop and a the breast of a woman I’m going with the breast every time. In this instance it’s the breast of search marketer Jennifer Laycock. I hope Jennifer forgives my reference to her anatomy, but in this case the issue is about her breasts or rather her breast milk.
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Heard a good story lately? Do you have one to tell about your business?

In his book “All Marketers Are Liars,” Seth Godin talks about how storytelling is at the heart, or should be at the heart, of all successful marketing. The basic premise is that people buy what they want, not what they need, and that they demand stories from marketers to help convince themselves to buy what they already decided they want. If you want to sell you’d better have a good story to tell.
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Why do people buy your products? Why do they purchase any product or service? One thing’s for certain, it’s not about the price.

It’s a common fallacy that people buy based on price. Well some do, but most people buy based on value or rather their perception of value. Many small business owners begin their business life with the thought that they will enter their market and simply offer what they have at a slightly lower price and all will be good. In truth it’s not the best or even a good idea. Unless your last name is Walton and you’re an heir to the Wal-Mart throne you won’t be able to compete on price nor should you try.
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One thing that always interests me is how two different people can interpret the same piece of writing in two completely different ways. We all bring with us our own history and biases and we approach everything new with our own set of perceptions. Our perceptions as much as anything are what determines what each of us consider true and help shape our own unique realities. My reality is different from your reality, which is different from his or her reality. And we can each draw completely different conclusions from the same information.
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Though there may be a lot of articles on making web site text readable, some people forget to make their emails readable, when they send out a newsletter, manage an auto-responder or their email marketing campaign. How do you make your emails easy to read to increase conversions?
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