Lulu is looking for information on natural cleansing. She doesn’t know a lot about it, but she’d like to start down a health path. So, she Googles ‘natural cleanses’.
Up come some 2 million sites including colon cleanses, intestinal cleanses, 10 day cleanses, etc.
She clicks on a couple.
1. Site A offers “the best, high grade, scientifially proven MD-approved cleanse with XYZ products”.
2. Site B offers “7 things you should know about natural cleansing before you decide”.
Which site do you think Lulu will stay on and likely bookmark?
Website copy tip: If you are selling a cleansing product (or non toxic cleaners, or nutritional supplements or natural weight loss, etc.), remember that most people are looking to LEARN about that topic. That’s why they search first, then contact a site or two. They seek to learn, not be sold.
Isn’t that what we all do?
Quiz: What kind of information might you include in the first paragraph of your product or business website to demonstrate to searchers that you realize they’re looking for information to solve their problem?
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Don’t have your own website and don’t know how to get started? Here are some options. Hope you consider the new iGaggle Network also, where your profiles end up in the two new mini search engines for the network marketing industry, Ahaho (for our specialty products) and Network Marketing Central for all those networkers looking to try the business again.
>remember that most people are looking to LEARN about that topic.
Are they? In this time-deficit & attention-challenged era, I say most folk aren’t.
Instead, they’re looking for a quick’n’easy attractive solution – the key to which is something which near-matches their aspirations.
The whole ‘x things you should know about…’ approach is becoming too cliched – a throwback to the low-rent tags this business should be trying to shake off. (Regrettably, I’ve a site full of ’em.)
Quality brands don’t do it. ‘7 things you should know about computers…’, ‘7 things you should know about automobiles’… hell, I cannot imagine Apple or Benz doing that stuff.
Instead, they choose to present a good product in a sensible way which picks-up the aspiration theme.
As practical intelligent examples – and I’m connected with neither – from NM, Sh*kl** do it well. And, from mainstream, MethodHome.
Always good to get your perspective, g.
In this case, I’d say someone looking for an Apple or a Benz already has made that first decision on the brand. If a person didn’t know much about computers, and were looking to buy a computer with really no information about what to buy, they Google, say, “buy computer”.
I did that, and if I were not sure, I’d click on the Buyer’s Guide links there on that first page of results, before I’d click on a specific one, e.g. Dell.
So while “7 things to know about X before you buy” is not the only way to go, it does help many folks, as do “buyer guides” etc versus jumping onto a specific brand.
And within good brands like my fave, Apple, what they are known for is their “Genius Bars” throughtout their stores, and the huge online and instore educational programs to help people choose the right computer, and the software programs for their needs.
Very different approach from pushing the biggest baddest package onto every customer that walks into the store. Even though they have walked into an Apple store, which I do almost daily, they offer education to anyone who needs it first. And nearly everyone does before they choose and buy.
Good. Discussion.
>I’d say someone looking for an Apple or a Benz already has made that first decision on the brand.
Agreed. That’s the edge of brand positioning – to be perceived (then desired) as the wise purchase. And it’s a process begun early and conducted in a sophisticated manner – way more so than ‘stuff you should know – grab this report’.
Whatever’s said about WOM etc, ‘professional branding’ (whether for premium placement like Apple/Benz – or ‘many similar offerings’, example: detergent) remains prime. We mainly buy stuff on ‘bytes’ – brief promo in print/broadcast media, in-store displays, packaging, whatever. That pattern hasn’t shifted significantly in 50 years- and likely won’t in the next 50.
Ask most consumers for in-depth info about their purchase and you’ll likely not be impressed by their ‘all round knowledge and wisely-informed purchasing decisions’. They probably bought it because it looked nice or was priced right or the person in the store suggested it.
Where consumer education is brought into play and done well, it’s on a less-invasive and more subtle level than the ‘8 steps, 7 dysfunctions, 6 imperatives, 5 practices, 4 situations, 3 dimensions, 2 powers and 1 secret’ examples. Those are of limited reach – an under-educated market looking or a quick fix (which certainly includes the target audience of many Network Marketing and Internet Marketing operations).
Doubt me? As an example, directly compare the positioning and marketing of e-books with physical counterparts. In most cases, the former is a low quality treatment of a low quality product for a low quality audience – how the hell else could you even hope to sell stuff with such value-questionable (read: overpriced) pricing?
Although many will likely take strong exception, in most cases NM products have very real mainstream counterparts – similar quality, lower pricing, more acceptably (and effectively) marketed. Bluntly, the NM option is too often over-priced – which is why they’re relatively hard to shift. (And that’s why most folk in this business fail – and will keep on failing.)
In most cases of NM ‘success’, you’ll find a relatively smart person leading a less-wise following hooked on the opportunity – whether that be the money or ‘making a difference in peoples’ lives’. (And it almost always comes down, in the final analysis, to the money.)
Returning to where we began…
I’m personally & professionally all for ‘educate thy market’. Let’s all become mavens. Really. I mean that. ‘Consumer connoisseurs’. Sure, right on.
On a practical level, the smarter marketers offer intelligent guiding support – not prepackaged cookie-cutter linear formulae. Something as blunt as ‘7 things you should know’ can only ever be effective on lower quality audiences. There’s a far more intelligent approach – and one that’s already in process, at least apparently, in the websites/promo material of many of the major NM companies – who design & deploy good quality creative material.
The point at which the wheels start to come off is when the typical distributor enters the process and the ‘drink this and you’ll grow wings on your feet’ spiel spreads. Most NM-er’s aren’t ‘advisers’ – they’re sellers. And there’s nought wrong with that.
Like any business, NM is about ‘making money by shifting product’. And that’s undertaken by creating a large organization of loyal customers who find the product or service of value and they will buy and continue to buy because of the value of the product or service.
NM products are usually high quality. And they’re often overpriced. (Many good things are – and that need not be a problem.) What’s lacking is an appropriate high quality marketing process.
Placed in an appropriate ’boutique’ surrounding directly comparable with ‘Apple Store’, many of the products would enjoy critical acclaim and a whole new market. But, when traded on the basis of ‘Dave told Annie who told Terry who then passed it on to Mike’, the results are the familiar disparagement among the wider world.
Can that be shifted? And still retain the ‘personal’ element of inter-people marketing? Sure. We ‘just’ need a higher-level approach. NM already has high quality products. What it doesn’t have is high quality people. So how do we raise that bar?
g, you write:
“We mainly buy stuff on ‘bytes’ – brief promo in print/broadcast media, in-store displays, packaging, whatever. That pattern hasn’t shifted significantly in 50 years- and likely won’t in the next 50.”
When it matters, I do not buy based on bytes or brief promos. Now that I have the luxury of searching and spending a few moments first, I do.
For one bar of soap versus another, perhaps. But for things that have to do with things I care about, and want to learn about, no, I do not buy based on store displays or bytes.
I think people making changes in their lifestyle, e.g. health, environment, and much of the type of product NM companies create are those at the bottom, and beginning of the market bell curve. They need to be explained and demo’d just like the original Apple computers had to be.
That’s where I think more network company product lines are, although I agree that some of them, as those products enter the mainstream, like the sugary pick-me-up juices, are becoming commodities and the NM price is hard to justify compared to what’s on the Whole Foods store shelves.
But for most NM products (excluding Amway which sells about everything) they’re still pretty new to the market.
When that changes, in a big way, our edge will have to be personal service. That will be a challenge for some reps, who value recruits over customers.
🙂