If you read my monthly newsletter the other day, you understand that I think that the Web is ushering in a new way of communicating with customers. Instead of the breathless hype of the old days designed to make one sale, we need to solve a customer’s problem to create one relationship. If we truly help people, you can be sure that few of them will remember to buy from us. Unfortunately, more and more of our target markets are turned off by the old sales pitches and will look for true help elsewhere. If you grew up with old-style marketing, you might not agree with me, but let me explain.
A few weeks ago, the owner of a small business approached me—let’s call him Les Daring. He’d seen one of my appearances and really likes the idea that you can put content on the Web that captures customers early in the sales cycle, even before they know what kind of product they want to buy. In my books, I’ve called this content “Learn” content, because that is what the customer is doing. (For more details on this, take a look at my article on Search Engine Land called “Are Your Customers Looking for a Problem?“)
Les wasn’t ready for totally helpful content. He wanted to write his content more like a traditional direct mail letter. He farmed the job out to his regular direct marketing agency and came back to me a few weeks later with the result. It read like a—you guessed it—direct mail letter.
I told him that this isn’t really the kind of content I have in mind. I am talking about content that looks what a newspaper or magazine would print as editorial content, not advertising. Now, sure, when you write your page about the three ways that you can solve the problem, it’s fine that the third way is the one you sell. And it’s perfectly OK for you to link from that third item to a more sales-y page on your site, but that’s as hard a sell as you should do.
Why? Don’t direct mail letters work? Well, sure they do. And if that’s the way you want to market on the Web, you have every right to do it. Moreover, if you can show that it works better than what I am suggesting, even better.
But I think the old direct mail tactics don’t work as well. I’ve seen over and over again how a more plainspoken, factual approach works better. Let’s look at a two different companies to show what I mean. Before we start, I want you to know that I don’t know the folks at these companies nor have I ever bought their products, but I am familiar with their work. Each are in the broad business of search engine marketing, so I have researched them for my books and my other writing.
The first is SEO Elite Software, which sells a well-respected search optimization tool set. If you look at their marketing materials, they resemble nothing so much as a direct mail letter on the Web. Lots of exclamation points and large fonts and a long, persuasive story. Again, there’s nothing wrong with any of this. I am sure it is somewhat effective.
Contrast their approach with Aaron Wall’s. Aaron is also very well-respected—he sells an e-book called “SEO Book” that is a direct competitor to my first book. And I am told it’s very good. But look how Aaron does his marketing—it’s much more helpful than sales-y. The cornerstone of Aaron’s marketing is his extremely helpful blog, which has huge readership, some of whom decide to buy his book.
Now I am have no way of knowing whether Aaron sells more than SEO Elite. But I believe that SEO Elite’s sales are transactions—someone buys that product because they think it was good. Only buyers of that product would think to buy another product by SEO Elite. They have little relationship with their customers.
Aaron, on the other hand, has a strong relationship with his customers. Not only do they buy his book, but they might even get some consulting from him. If he comes out with more things to buy, they’d be interested in that also—even those that have bought nothing but only read his blog would be interested. I believe that the difference is the way that Aaron does his marketing. Aaron understands the difference between helping and selling.
Eventually Les Daring did too. He decided to write the content himself, rather than having his agency do it. He just created a few pages that answered questions he gets all the time. And he put contact forms on the page. And suddenly he started getting people contacting him. Not in droves, but a nice trickle of potential customers he wouldn’t have otherwise gotten, all for the total cost of a few hours of writing. Les now understands the difference between helping and selling, too.
Do you? Do you purposely set out to solve your customers’ problems? Do you provide a free tool or helpful information that attract a following? Information that will be passed on by others? If not, your old-style marketing message is probably becoming more and more invisible, as people ignore it to spend their time with companies that help them. Those are the companies that develop relationships, not just make transactions.
