Hmm, please excuse the blah
Like most other online marketing people i write articles. Before they are released to the world they get a thorough going over by someone better at English than myself. Now a blog is different i am told. Here i can be excused the occasional mistake or three.
Here’s a recent article that has been ” scrubbed”.
Does your web site appeal to the silent and suffering?
People come to your web site with problems to solve.
The small minority needs them fixed in a hurry; the remaining mass are in no rush, but know that sometime soon a solution will need to be found.
Web sites that fail to use email marketing just cater to the first group, leaving the remaining crowd to browse off their sites onto their competitor’s, never to be seen again.
Let me explain why.
If you are like me, you browse the internet at speed, hopping from page to page, site to site. It’s a fast process. But it’s not random. I know where I’m going. There is usually a goal behind my pathways. I just do it quickly.
Frequently I’m looking for information to solve a problem. For instance, the other day I took to the web to find a better way to build macros within Excel. My first stop was Google. After running a few searches, I started to find the web sites I wanted and then clicked down into them to learn more.
I needed to solve this problem quite quickly. I had a project to finish that needed some work completed in a few days and Excel needed taming to help me meet my deadline.
Fortunately I found it an easy problem to solve. I quickly found a site where I could download a trial copy of the software, use it on my version of Excel and see it working in all its glory. Within a few minutes of starting, the problem was solved and someone overseas was few hundred dollars richer.
The problems your customers may be facing may not be so easy to figure out as this.
For example, imagine you own an HR consulting business. Your typical customers experience problems in protecting themselves from falling foul of the employment laws that come with employing staff.
It’s important to understand that there are two levels of motivations behind this type of customer problem.
There will be those who are experiencing a real employment issue now and need immediate help. The others probably have a nagging concern that doesn’t need fixing now, but could well do in the future.
The first group will quickly check out the credibility of the service, pick up some contact details and place a call for some advice.
The second bunch, and most likely the larger group, will either choose to subscribe to your email communication focused on their needs (depending on how well you promote this option) or will drop off your web site, never to return again.
You see, we are all very good at living with our problems. And we do so until they become so bad that they force us to find a solution. Just think of the few that you are living with yourself. It may be a web site that you have known for months needs an update. Or, it could be that the quality of your own email marketing needs improvement. They both could be valid problems; they just may not need fixing today.
And it is in this state of “mild problem acceptance” that the majority of your web site visitors will be. They know they have a problem; they just don’t have the motivation to fix it right now.
Browsers in this state will flit through your web site at the same pace as the rest except their intentions are obviously a lot more passive than those that need an immediate solution. Pages that carry statements that empathize with their problems will help them feel welcome.
But they aren’t experiencing enough “problem pain” yet to make the decision to call, but what they may have is the motivation to continue to learn more. And it is that reduced level of motivation that you can capitalize on with email marketing.
Offering these people a chance to register for a communication that contains content that appeals to them in their present state will be enough to nudge them into subscribing. And as they do, you now have the chance to talk to these people as their problem grows in intensity, so that they call you when they need it fixed in a hurry.
Without providing an email registration opportunity, your web site will just serve the smaller group of visitors that have a problem that needs fixing NOW and for whom a “contact us” page in all its glory will suffice.
Think about the problems your customers are facing when they come to your web site. Then start to design your email communications to suit those that are wandering around your web site, silently suffering, but interested in learning more.