Every Product Has a Story

The one part of doing business on the web is that everyone always seems to forget that you still have to sell your products! You go through all this time, effort, and money to get someone to your web site and when it happens you don't bring your sales "A" game. It's an opportunity wasted.

Every day I see web sites and print ads that just show a product and a price. No attempt to sell, no romance, just a picture and a price. That's great if you're only dealing with repeat customers but how about the other 90% of people that are just kind of thinking about it. Consider some of the higher dollar purchases that you have made, chances are you decided to make that purchase because someone sold you on that particular item. If you went into a car dealership and asked about a car and all they told you was "2009 Camry, $23,995, sign right here" you would probably bail. Why should your web site be any different?

When I bought my new bike this week I choose it based on an hour long conversation with an experienced sales guy. I had already seen the brochure and done lots of research on the web, but I needed to be sold to actually buy it. The salesman told me why that particular bike would be good for me, how I could modify it to make it better, showed me how all the parts worked, and let me know that the store would do free adjustments for the first year. Now think about your products, what aren't you telling people? You are the expert on your products and services, act like it! You basically have unlimited space on your website to promote yourself, use it! Put your own pictures on the site not just the stock manufacturer images, show how your product works, share customer stories, do anything that will build value. If a visitor is interested in your product and you build enough value into it via your presentation you will make sales.

One company that I think does an exceptionally good job of selling their product is Trader Joe's. They send out sales flyers like everyone else in the grocery trade except their's is completely different. (check out the whole thing here) Instead of staged pictures and a price they're taking the time to tell a story. I pasted in a short article by Trader Joe's about goat cheese logs. That's about as uninteresting as you can get as far as I'm concerned. But look at the way they tell a story that reinforces the brand, sell the product, give you ideas on how you can use it, and build value. That's a home run!

Now think about the ads you usually get from bigger grocery stores, they're selling on price alone. You get a picture and a dollar amount. For some people that's ok because they buy that product every week anyways and just want to know where to get it the cheapest. But for those that want more information you give them no substance.

No one style of presenting a product is absolutely correct. I recommend using a mix of methods. Personally I think the best thing to do it lead off with a condensed big grocery store style price and picture that gets straight to the point, and below that start selling. You have all the space you need, don't be afraid to tell everyone exactly why they should buy from you. If you don't try to sell you're just throwing your ad dollars away.

Traditional Media is "Not Dead Yet"

Predictions of the death of traditional media by evangelists of new media remind me of the famous statement from Mark Twain "I am afraid that the rumors of my death have been greatly exaggerated." The media of print, TV, radio, mail, and many others will be with us for long time but they do need to learn to play well with the new kids. The truth is that businesses need to balance their marketing strategy based on how each media-type works with their specific target.

I was recently invited to be part of a Marketing Experts Panel by Softec, a local technology trade association. The event drew about 45 people for dinner and a discussion on marketing their business and there were some great conversations. The organization is largely technology-based businesses, but the subject of the evening was marketing and you could tell that it was a challenge to many.

The panel consisted of Dave Cox, CEO, Barnett Cox & Associates, Lynne Biddinger, CEO, 20/20 Creative Group, Starr Hall, CEO, 2 Point Media and myself. As I reflected on the discussion it struck me that within the marketing field we really have brand leaders and brand followers. Dave and Lynne fall into the category of a brand leader and our business is very successful being a brand follower.

While the brand leader might be more glamorous, the marketing team needs good brand followers within their niche specializations. This is clearly where Google Adwords belongs in the marketing team. We need to bring data back to the brand leadership in a form that they can use to make good decisions. Adwords is a direct and measured channel and the brand managers need to understand what that data says. We have to transform the mounds of data in to actionable information. We also need to tune the AdWords system to support the overall brand strategy because if our tuning is "off-message" the results are not pretty.

We have business relationships with both Lynne and Dave, although both are indirect. I never got a chance to make a point at the event, so I am doing it now. In Dave's case we are running a Google Adwords campaign for a client that he managed the branding of for many years. That organization enjoys a great search engine position largely because of the overall marketing plan he designed. This site now gets great paid traffic because the brand is clear and well managed making it very easy to extract highly targeted traffic. Without the traditional media support and comprehensive marketing plan this site would not consistently be at the top of Google with expanded placement for their highest volume keyword.

Lynne is the brand manager for another client and that client has the best performing landing page in our entire business. As of this morning this page converts at an amazing 36%! The results are actually even greater than that because the primary response design is for phone and we only measure the back-up response by email form. The reason this converts so well is because the landing page and Adwords model are exactly on message. 20/20 did the branding and landing page design for the client; we just got the right people to the page.

The brand leader can be internal or external but their job is to be the brand cop. They need to up hold and communicate the brand standards and the core messaging. The brand follower on the other hand needs to excel at their specialty and work within the brand. When structured properly with everyone knowing their respective roles this process works great. Lack of brand leadership is a problem but so is excessive leadership.

As I look at the clients that have enjoyed the most success there is clearly a relationship between their brand leadership, clarity of message, and the success in their Google Adwords campaigns. When your message is clear it is much easier to get highly targeted traffic.