ISEdb.COM

The other day I went to a local seminar on “internet
marketing”. I honestly didn’t expect a whole lot; it was one of those
“how to make money on the internet” things, which promised to tell
you tips on how to use the search engines to your advantage, yada, yada, yada.
But I have to say I was surprised, at least from the first 30 minutes of the 90
minute seminar.

What surprised me was that the seminar on “how to make
money on the internet” that was really nothing more than a sales pitch for
an all day seminar they would be holding several weeks later. And boy, did they
have that pitch down!

I left after the first 30 minutes. It felt like we were
still in the introduction stage of the presentation. Kind of like they kept
making promises of all the things they’ll be covering but never really covering
them. I think that was just the point. This presentation wasn’t about providing
information on how to make money from the internet, it was about how you can
learn everything you need to know about how to make money from the internet by
coming to the NEXT seminar.

The presenter was professional and he didn’t come off as a
hack. He was actually very engaging. And interestingly they covered the
“get rich quick schemes are a scheme” ground too. It was a very
effective 30 minutes. I almost wanted to sign up for the next seminar. Maybe I
would had if I had not left!

Pre-Selling Is A Legitimate (And Effective)
Sales Technique

While I don’t care for this type of pre-sales schtick, it
got me thinking about how we go about selling those things that we sell. In
fact, any good website uses some kind pre-selling technique regularly. Think
about it, rarely does our home page actually sell the products or service we
offer. That page is just an overview, an introduction, a flowery summary of
what we or our products are all about.

As we click further into the site we get closer and closer
to the actual selling, but depending on the breadth and depth of the site, we
are often just pre-selling as visitors click deeper and deeper in. This
pre-selling, regardless of what page it is on, does the job of routing each
visitor closer to the destination which is the sales page while continuing to
build expectations as they move through the site.

And how does all this pre-selling happen? Text. Content.
Words.

The Product Should Not Have To Sell
Itself

Many sites, especially e-commerce sites, feel that words are
unnecessary and that the product should sell it self. They’ll throw the
specifications onto the product page and believe that tells the visitor all
they they’ll ever want or need to know. Okay, fine, lets say the product does
sell itself. But what about the pages that lead to the product? Surely you have
pages that lead to the product pages, no? If your site has any kind of depth
visitors generally hit the home page first (provided they didn’t enter via a
search that dropped them right on the product page). From there they have to
(want) to click to a category of their choosing, and then they can click on individual products. That’s two whole pages before the “sales” page, at best. For some sites
there are more.

So let’s analyze those pages. What makes a visitor want to
click past the home page? Is it pictures? Maybe. But I’d bet there is (or
should be) some text on that page that gives comfort to the visitor and assures
them that they came to the right place to find what they are looking for.
Pictures are pretty and all but you got to make them want to click through.

If you’ve done your job on the home page then the user will
click into a category that suits their needs. What does this page tell them? Is
it just a list of products or have you taken the time to fill the visitor with
more information specific to the products in this category? Surely you can say
something compelling about your battery chargers that is different from your
batteries, or have content describing your snowboards in a way that doesn’t
sound like you’re selling ski gloves!

That’s the pre-sell process. They are on their way t the
sales page, but don’t let them get distracted… keep feeding them the content
that gives them the desire to keep moving through the site.

Help Yourself Sell That Thing You
Sell

You may think that you do not need
sales content on each page, but let me tell you, it helps! The people who ran
that seminar probably didn’t need the pre-seminar in order to get people to
come to the longer one. But they knew that a free 90-minute seminar is an
easier sell than a $20 all-day seminar. Once the get them in the door then they
have 90 minutes to make the case for the all-day seminar to follow.

In the same way, you may be able to sell your products on
specifications alone, but you have your audience on your site, why not use
every opportunity to you can to give them information that fills them with the
desire to purchase your products… long before they ever find the product they
are looking for. That’s a much easier sell!