Now here’s the thing with Marketing–for some reason, we’ve been conditioned to expect it to work ‘instantly’. In technical (ish) terms, that’s called ‘Direct Response’... in the olden days, this looked like an ad in a magazine with a ‘reply coupon’ or a postcard you sent off to get details, or an offer you could phone up and buy right away. And yes, of course we still have ‘instant’ marketing today–there are ads online (in Facebook and Google, etc.) that often will ‘sell’ directly as a result of you seeing them. But most people take a while...
I don’t have the exact stats on this, but for arguments sake let’s use the good old Pareto principle as I love a bit of 80:20–20% of people who ‘see’ your marketing will be interested ‘straight away’ (or fairly quickly... say, they might see your ad and then go read your blog, have a stalk for a couple of weeks, buy your book or attend an event or webinar you’re giving, etc.). THEN the ‘other 80%’ might take a while... it’s not that they are not interested, just they’re not quite ‘ready to buy’ yet.
Think about something you bought recently–something for your house, or for your business. Did you buy right away or did you think about it for a while? I have loads of things I’m interested in and haven’t bought yet–I get travel emails from all sorts of agencies and deal sites and might not book for ages, we were ‘thinking about’ getting a new TV for ages before we finally bought one (we’d wanted one all that time, just took us a while to get it).
And this is very often down to ‘need’–do you NEED this Thing right now. If something breaks, you’re probably very receptive to ‘direct response’ advertising; if your TV blew up last night and you see an ad the next morning for a ‘great offer on TVs’, chances are you might buy from there. But if you’re still ‘thinking about it’, you might file that ad in your head and not buy for months.
Now I know you’re probably not selling TVs, but your Thing is very similar–you’re marketing as if everyone wants to buy RIGHT NOW AS WHAT THEY HAVE IS BROKEN, but actually most people who need your Thing are probably OK with what they have right now, even if they know it can be improved, until they decide it’s time to do something about it.
Good marketing will help ‘remind’ and ‘prompt’ people about what will happen if they don’t take action sooner rather than later. I’m never shy about reminding people that if not knowing their Thing right now is annoying them, that’s only going to get MORE annoying until you perhaps get to a point where you want to hit it with a big stick!
But don’t overdo it–no one likes ‘screechy’ marketing where you create a ridiculous false scarcity and panic. What you need to do is remind people that they want the Thing (because they do, they’re just not buying it right now), nicely explain the benefits of sorting it out right now (a few opportunity costs alongside ‘look what you could have’), then a great offer–where you make it really easy to say yes right now–and you’re set.
So if your marketing is ‘not working’ at the moment remember:
- Not everyone is going to buy right now
- Keep on being consistent with your message and sharing the results you get for the ‘thinkers’
- Have reminders of why you want to take action now, instead of later (without screeching)
- Have a great offer that makes it really easy to say yes right now
Be consistent, keep to your message, and really ‘show off’ how you can really help. You need to be there when ‘today becomes the day’ people are ready to do something about that Thing you can help them with. If you blast out now and then, and then wonder why it’s not working, that’s probably also your answer...
Want to talk more about this?
Leave a Reply