There is a common mistake that most people willing to sell their products or services make. No matter what industry or niche you are in, you will come across sales and marketing personnel who have made this one mistake.
This mistake that we are talking about is more of a misconception that they act upon.
Now, no beating around the bushes anymore and let’s just jump into the point.
This mistake is nothing but considering what they are selling. They start working with the idea that they have to sell a particular product or service. However, that is a clear mistake.
No customer visits your website in order to purchase some shiny little gadget. They come to heal a pain point, to get a new experience. And that is why you need to sell them.
What A Customer Really Looks Forward to Investing In?
As we already said, customers enter your website to solve a pain point. Which clearly refers to the fact that they are willing to buy an outcome, irrespective of the source.
So, no matter how shiny a product you are selling, they won’t buy it until they find it providing the exact outcome that they are expecting from it.
Here, we can give you an example for better understanding. Say suppose, you have an SEO firm. How would you try to pitch your business to your customers? What do you think customers would want from you?
You must be thinking that your customers deal with you because they want you to provide SEO services for their business. But that is where you are going wrong. Customers want you provide suitable outcomes. They want to increase their website traffic, gain more successful conversion and get a better life through the same. Yes, that is what they are paying you for.
Hence, they will always do business with such an SEO service provider who can offer them more traffic, better sales, and a happier life. That’s all.
How to Picture It?
If you cannot satisfy the minds of people, then they will not buy your physical product no matter how much you persuade them.
So, convince their minds first and then the rest. Concentrate on that.
These examples will help you understand it better.
- Before buying a ticket to a cruise ship to spend a fantastic weekend in the waters of Miami, you definitely do picture yourself sitting on the deck of that cruise ship on a bright sunny day and enjoying yourself. You must be fascinated to picture it in your head which convinced you to go ahead and buy that ticket. Isn’t it?
- When you finally plan on purchasing a new TV and through your old one in the garbage, you start looking for which one to buy. Then when you come across a TV that delivers high-definition picture quality and is priced reasonably enough, you are likely to get convinced to purchase it. But what was the key factor about the TV that convinced you the most? You might think that you have got a good deal and that is why you are investing in it. However, in reality, before finalizing on it, you picturized yourself watching your favourite TV show in stunning high quality without putting much pressure on your pocket! Yes, that’s it.
- When you finally decide to appoint a new cook for your home despite not being so fed up with cooking, why do you do that? You do that because you can picturize yourself utilizing that time in something for yourself and spending the rest with your family, having your tummies full.
Yes, this is the key. It is important to figure out how you should pitch your product or service to your target audience. You should focus on the deeper impact, instead of just trying to sell on the surface level.
Legendary copywriter Joseph Sugarman makes this even clearer. He refers to this kind of selling as sizzle. Yes, he says, instead of trying to sell the steak, people should concentrate more on selling the sizzle. Which means, instead of trying to approach directly with the product, companies should rather focus on what customers want from them. Yes, customers want the sizzle, sell them that.
So, considering what your product is, create a rundown of outcomes that people can expect from the same. This is how your marketing and sales department should be focusing on luring customers.
After a few sessions of brainstorming with your team, you will finally have a list of outcomes that your customers are looking for. Implement that in your marketing strategy.
You can try several ways of implementing the same. However, here are three ways that we consider as the most effective ones and you should definitely give them a try.
Way 1: Pick a Tagline
Let’s take a hypothetical example of a business organization that caters to its clients with academic assistance through tutoring them. An Edtech firm.
So, how do you think they should approach their clients? What should their tagline be?
Usually while selling on the surface, a tagline like, “helping students with their academic growth” goes perfectly fine. However, this would not be useful in generating a good number of leads and alluring students to enroll themselves with the organisation.
Here what the business organisation should do is focusing on what the clients want from them.
Yes, for such a business that helps students through tutoring, they should consider the parents as their main target audience instead of students themselves. Hence, the business organisation should think about how parents picturise it all.
Parents do not want anything like “academic growth”. So, that is clearly not something a parent would picturise in their minds.
Parents actually want their children to be academically successful. Hence, adding the term “success” would be much useful instead as academic growth or knowledge is something that is not the main target or any parent. For them, that is something that works passively, a side benefit.
Hence, the tagline should be, “Helping students for academic success”.
Yes, this would be the perfect way to create a tag line for such an organisation as it connects with the expectations of parents – the “success” of their children, academically.
Parents want their children to be successful in their middle school, high school and want them to get admission in the best college. So, adding something like that can really turn the tables for an Edtech firm.
This is how the “sizzle” theory works. Sell the customers what they want instead of the physical product.
Way 2: Product Descriptions
Copyblogger Media is another business organisation that has come as an excellent example of selling outcomes to customers.
Technically, earlier, they used to deal in software solutions that work with WordPress websites and now they help businesses with content marketing to help them succeed with their marketing endeavours.
Speaking of how they started, Copyblogger Media had three software solutions namely, Studiopress, Synthesis, and Premise.
Studiopress is their vertical that sells themes for WordPress websites, Synthesis used to deal in providing hosting websites and Premise was all about building customised landing pages as well as providing memberships websites in WordPress.
But it all changes when you go through how they describe each of these products.
Starting with Studiopress, they describe it as a Genesis design framework provides several amazingly designed WordPress themes. So, whichever business owner wants their WordPress website to look stunning, they could easily relate to what Studiopress was selling.
When it comes to their second product, Synthesis, the product description mentions “performance” and “security” which everyone looking for a decent website hosting service looks forward to implementing.
And, today, they deal with content marketing. Yes, due to their stunning content marketing tactics that we are discussing here right now, they have turned their business into a content marketing firm.
In their website, they have mentioned that they help content creators succeed in the creator economy. Exactly, that is what a content creator looks for. They do not just look for good content marketing tactics. That’s just on the surface.
Deep inside, every content creator wishes to succeed in the creator economy. And, that is what they have mentioned too in their website so that no matter which content creator enters their website, can easily relate to what they are trying to say.
Yes, it is all about customer intent.
Way 3: Images
Visual search is a much-highlighted thing in the marketing industry. But why is that?
That is because stunning images are more successful in drawing attention than regular written content.
But it all will be of no use if you cannot project your message properly through the images that you use.
Think of it yourself, where do the eyes of every individual get drawn towards when they visit a website? The images, right? Yes, that is why there is so hype about using high-quality images to increase the credibility of your brand. But what will be the use of those high-quality images if they cannot deliver the information that a website visitor looks for? Nothing. They will remain being eye candies. That’s all.
For example, say suppose, some business organisation deals in virtual assistant services. Now, if they put up an image of a beautiful lady who is in a corporate attire and a headset, will that be enough?
No, referring to virtual assistants, people are not looking for a secretary. Instead, they want to get help in their work so that they can invest their saved time in their family or in their work so that they can drive their business towards success with more indulgence and care.
So, to connect with what the customer wants, such a business organisation should put up an image of a business personnel waiting at an airport lounge, carefree and stress-free.
Yes, that would connect more with the customer intent. That is what a customer wants when they are looking for virtual assistants. And this is how you can speak the language of your customers.
It might seem to you that putting up an image of a virtual assistant is more useful as that is the thing that you are trying to sell. However, that is not something your customer can fully connect with. So, you have put come up with something that your customer can relate to and something that they are looking for.
Telling them just half of the entire story, will not do any good for your business, instead that will drive them away.
So, to make they stay on your website and convert into customers successfully, show they want they want, instead of what you sell.
This Is What You Need to Do!
When it comes to implementing this strategy to your business, you need to start with rectifying the current marketing strategy of your business.
How are you approaching your customers? Are you showing them what they need or are you just all engrossed about telling them what you sell?
If you are on the first path, then keep up with it. If not, then it is high time that you start working on your marketing strategy.
Start with following the three simple ways that we have mentioned in our blog.
TL; DR: Connect your tagline with the customer intent, change your product descriptions according to what your customer is looking for, use images that directly indicate the benefits of your product that your customer might be concentrating on, instead of the product itself to take your marketing endeavours in the right way and increase your sales.
At the end of the day, it all comes down to one simple thing that legendary copywriter Joseph Sugarman said, “sell the sizzle, not just the steak”. And, if you can do that right, you see your sales graph going upwards.
So, start tweaking your marketing strategy, today. What are you waiting for?
