PREselling… The Profitable Heat Wave
PREselling, on the other hand, warms up your
visitor with high-value information that fosters trust and credibility. Your
information fulfills a wish and/or provides a much sought-after solution for
her. As a result of this positive/beneficial experience, the visitor begins to
like and respect you.
Great content encourages your visitor to
think about you as a “friend” making a recommendation rather than a stranger
making a sales pitch. And if you create a truly info-rich site, you’ll actually
become a trusted expert, sharing your wealth of information.
Effective PREselling creates an open-to-buy
(or open-to-hire) frame of mind in your visitor and gets the click through to
your monetization model. It’s this “openness” to find out more about you and
your business that produces higher Conversion Rates and generates more income
for you.
The key is to reinforce your credibility to
your visitor/potential customer every step of the way. To accomplish this, get
inside your visitor’s head and think about how she will react to your
PREselling efforts.
Whatever you do, consider the impact on your
visitor...
If it does not make her more “open to buy or
hire,” don’t do it. PREsell your way to high Conversion Rates. It’s easy to summarize
the whole point of effective PREselling with this question...
Which person would you respond to?
A
stranger with a sales pitch...
or...
A knowledgeable friend making a recommendation?
No matter what your business may be, the key
is to building targeted traffic is… Deliver excellent content that pulls in
warm, motivated visitors, who become PREsold about you and your business and
who then buy your products/services, or click on your ads, or visit your
merchant’s site or whatever other monetization models you use.
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Successful PREselling is all about looking
after the needs of your visitors first and foremost, and putting “the sale”
second. Believe it or not, although this seems paradoxical, it is only by
following this mantra that you will actually begin to earn real income on the
Net.
In short... Take care of the needs of your
audience. Good things will follow. Give, then take.
So here’s the million dollar question…
Where do you find all these great words, all
this great content? And the answer is… inside you! Because you know stuff other
people don’t... things people would pay to know. You might have learned it “on
the job” or through your hobby. There’s a good chance that you don’t even
realize what you know. It’s often right under your nose. Everyone is an expert
about something.
As an example, let’s assume that you have a
rather unusual area of expertise. You love concrete. Yes, cement! It’s been
your hobby, your passion, for years... Concrete statues. Concrete painting.
Decorative concrete. Concrete in the garden. Repairing concrete. The various
types of concrete. Hand trowels.
Things to do with cement blocks. Concrete
trade shows. Concrete and swimming pools. Concrete molds. Cleaning concrete.
Ready mixed concrete. Concrete countertops.
Anyway, let’s say that you decide to create a
theme-based site that is all about concrete. Your home page explains how your site
is the site for everything concrete, from structural to esthetic.
You also build lots of content pages – each one
focuses on a keyword that a searcher might use to find your theme.
For example, your page about concrete statues
explains all about how to make and repair striking statues for the home and garden.
You could even expand it into an entire “Statue Section,” with a page on the
history of concrete statues and another one about how to market and sell the
statues that the visitor makes.
The main point, though, is that you create
truly excellent, high-value content that delivers what your reader sought at
the Search Engines. See! It happened again! By writing about a niche that you
know and love, the content is easy.
OK, a second “concrete” example that comes at
you from a different angle... John A. Smith is a passionate lover of all things
concrete, and owner of “Smith’s Concrete Repair Service.” Mr. Smith’s company
repairs foundations, retaining walls, driveways, statues, swimming pools --
heck, if it’s concrete and it’s busted, he’ll fix it!
The first thing of note is this...
Smith’s “Concrete Repair Service” is a
locally-based service, but Mr. Smith has great vision. He builds a Web site
that appeals to both local and global interests.
Here’s how…
1) His well-written concrete-related articles
provide a valuable information resource for all visitors, regardless of their
geographic location.
2) Local visitors (who are not currently
clients) come to trust Mr. Smith as he demonstrates over and over again through
his articles, and his e-zine, two very appealing attributes -- his unwavering
commitment to the "putting-the-needs-ofthe- customer-first” philosophy and
the breadth of his knowledge pertaining to all things concrete.
Before long, Mr. Smith becomes established in
his visitors’ minds as “The Concrete Man.” When these local prospects need a
concrete repairman, guess which business they’re going to call?
3) Local visitors come to recognize Mr. Smith
as more than “some guy with a concrete repair service.” Thanks to the bio (About
Us) page, they learn he’s a dedicated father, an active member of the community,
and a little league coach, as well as being the owner of a company. This
information adds to his credibility.
4) Global visitors produce a secondary income
stream for him. Mr. Smith can refer these surfers to merchant-partners (and their
products) that he represents (ex., books about landscape design, a retailer of
concrete statues, a garden supplier for concrete molds, trowels, etc.). And, of
course, he could also sell his own e-book, consulting services, Google’s
AdSense, etc.
Mr. Smith’s warm-and-willing-to-buy visitors
trust his knowledgeable advice. His PREselling efforts make it easier for him
to convert these visitors into customers.
Bottom line?
PREsell effectively… to sell effectively.
It’s as simple as that! And this means… The needs of your target group must be
your #1 priority, the reason behind every action you take. Your need to
generate income always comes second.
So keep your visitors in constant focus and…
1) PREsell... don’t sell! Use great content to
create an “open-to-buy/hire” mindset in your customer. Warm up your visitors
first.
2) Maximize profit by maximizing your traffic
(by delivering lots of topical content) and Conversion Rate (CR).
3) Your CR depends upon what you do and how
you do it. You will achieve higher Conversion Rates if you...
• Reach targeted traffic in a reputable
fashion (ex., visitors find you via the Search Engines).
• Deliver valuable, appropriate editorial
content that PREsells.
• Recommend visitors to your income-generating
source (ex., your sales/order page, the site of the merchant-partners that you
represent, your online store, etc.) after they come to respect and like you.
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