Call Only To The Readers That Are Ready

by Carl

Remember the door-to-door salesmen who used to call on your house when you were a kid? I often wondered how hard those guys had to work just to make a few sales. They had the advantage of ‘being there’ with the customer so their sales pitches could not easily be ignored. But many, if not most of these face-to-face prospects would listen politely, but never buy anything. He's Ready....

On the web, we don’t come to the buyer, he or she comes to us. We call out to those who may be interested in what we are selling. We have at our disposal a  neon sign to call those readers who may have an interest in what we sell, it’s called a headline. The headline is the most important piece of a sales letter. The headline functions as an announcement to all ‘passers by’ just what the offer to sell is about, and most important, why the reader should stop and read more.

A headline calls to those, and only those who are interested in what we have to say- and those are the only people that interest us. Think about how you read the newspaper. You scan the headlines and stop to read more when the headline offers something that is compelling to you. You may not be interested in a story about gardening – but understand that there is some reader out there who can’t wait to find that story about trees and shrubs that you simply passed by.

Web surfers read at a more frantic pace than even newspaper readers. Your job as a marketer is complicated because visitors to web sites are used to ads, sales pitches and offers. Our job is to get them to pause and read. The most carefully-crafted ad copy is useless unless the reader stops to read. Spend as much time on your headline as on your sales copy.  Make your headline clear, but compelling – offer the reader a benefit to consider your offer. Don’t try to hide your intent – the reader knows you are selling something, make them glad they stopped to read.

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{ 6 comments… read them below or add one }

Thatsblog July 7, 2008 at 6:57 am

Thanks for your submission to the eleventh edition of the Blog Carnival: Blogging. Your post has been accepted and its live: http://thatsblog.com/?p=90

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Anthony from Outsourcing Sales Solutions February 11, 2010 at 8:25 am

Quality content on your site will not only help with conversions but will also help improve your rankings in the search engines which will in turn bring more people to your site.

Kevin from Web Development February 19, 2010 at 2:29 am

I think the main thing that will increase conversion is if web users find what they looking for on your website. Surely good content and quality will drive visitors to your site but that does not necessarily mean that they are going to buy something and that is essentially what you are aiming a. That is why you need to be specific to your market so that users looking for products within that market will buy from you.

Tony from Italian Shoes February 24, 2010 at 10:40 am

With what we’re doing, we want people on and off of our page fast because we’re into affiliate marketing. Our goal is to for the customer to go through us and then purchase within a time frame. I digress. Having new content on your sites everyday will help to you to be recognized when you are crawled. This will help rank you higher and in turn, will do wonders for your conversion rate.

Paul from Decorative Door February 26, 2010 at 4:34 am

Selling should be persuasion with integrity. And as for marketing online, integrity could be shown with the quality of the content that we have in our websites and in order to persuade these visitors to buy something it is first important to build up a connection in addition to a good copywriting skills which is also a must.

Mark from Garden Tools March 4, 2010 at 6:47 am

I have seen many retailers let down by poor content on their websites. Remember customers are after informative content, great images of the products they are looking for. Any additional content such as videos or 3D demonstations add in that extra level. Remember content is king!

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