If you’ve been looking high and low for the secret to Web success, today is your lucky day. These “18 Web-Marketing Concepts That Make a Difference” may just give you an edge on your competition—or an edge, period.
So if the same old left-brain thinking that everybody else is using just doesn’t get you where you want to be, try these creative concepts on for size.
1. Think audiences not markets
What’s your market? Hire a consultant to help you with your Web-business problems, and one of the first questions he or she will ask is, What’s your market? How about 18-34-year-old, single male college graduates with a dog named Spot; or maybe 45-59-year-old married women who hate their husbands and can’t get their adult children to move out of the house. Maybe, just maybe, they’re asking the wrong question.
The Web isn’t about markets, it’s about audiences. Audiences need to be entertained, enlightened, and engaged; and if your Web site doesn’t, you’re never going to achieve what you want.
Time to rethink how you’re delivering your marketing message. Start treating Web visitors like an audience, not a market, and you might just find what it takes to be successful on the Web.
2. Think people not customers
You know all those visitors you attract to your Web site with your brilliant search engine optimization schemes? How many actually purchase anything? Stop treating visitors as if they are already customers and start treating them like what they are—people. That’s right, people. You know, the two-legged funny creatures with wants, needs, desires, and maybe even a few bucks to spend.
Customers are always looking for a deal and they’re leery of Web sites that only want to take their hard-earned cash. Treat your Web visitors like people who can satisfy their wants, needs, and desires with your assistance… and guess what? Maybe it will make a difference: one small step for Web credibility, one giant leap for Web success.
3. Think experiences not features
Bought any good features lately? Didn’t think so. You would think the way business pushes them that features are exactly what people are looking for; but nobody buys features, they don’t even buy solutions (doesn’t that whole solution provider nonsense really get to you after a while?).
What people really buy are experiences: hopefully, positives ones. Whether it’s soft ice cream or a new accounting program, what people are paying for is the experience your product or service provides.
Does your Web site offer an experience? Does it explain the experience your product or service delivers? If it doesn’t, then you really haven’t got anything anybody wants.
4. Think emotion not logic
Think you’re a logical person, always making rational decisions based on practical criteria, and bottom-line results? So tell me what was the functional thinking that went into the purchase of those leather pants you bought last year, or that 60-inch plasma television you bought just to watch the big game?
Let’s get real. You make purchasing decisions based on what you want, and then justify them with seemingly sensible rationalizations, just like everybody else. So stop trying to appeal only to the practical, logical aspects of bean-counter sales, and start pushing the feel-good aspects of emotional marketing.
If you’re trying to appeal to an audience that gets its only satisfaction out of acquiring the most features for the least cost, then you’re marketing to the wrong audience.
