Sunday, June 05, 2011

The Blah Blah Blah of Online Sales

How many times have you been sitting at dinner when the phone rings and you pick it up only to hear a sales pitch being blasted in your ear? We all know how it starts - the peppy introduction, the insincere "how are you doing?", the lame "I'm a regular guy just like you" joke and then..... THE PITCH. What do we do? We keep telling them no - do they listen? NO. They keep going and going and going & eventually you simply tune them out until you find the opportunity for another no and a take me off your list.

I remember seeing the cartoon below in a book when I was a kid and thinking "that's how I feel when my dad is talking to me". This all too familiar scene is the same whether it's a parent and his teenage daughter or a person in an online social media platform trying to convince everyone to purchase their product. Keep this in mind when you are about to pitch something and remember that no one wants to hear sales language whether on the phone or when they're reading it online.



What is sales language?... Simple - It's any language that includes a pitch of some sort - sales, marketing, campaigns, verticals, leveraging etc. These are all examples of things that use sales language. Sales language generally serves only to alienate your potential customer rather than actually sell them, & the only time it really succeeds in this day and age, is when the net is cast so wide that it simply can't help but to scoop up a few fish as a default of the numbers game. We all have an inner lie detector that goes on immediately when we know we are being pitched to, that has us seeking out the thing within the pitch that makes it too good to be true. When that "too good to be true-o-meter" goes off (which happens quickly) you've lost your audience, and have become just like that time share salesman who looks up after talking for 2 hours, only to realize that no one is in the room and he's been talking to the dust mites.

Just remember, online marketing in social media is all about engagement, interaction and value. Those things don't come from you posting your events, products and services out the wazoo on your pages, and they surely don't come from you blocking people from commenting or posting on those same pages. Your level of interaction and sincere engagement with your potential customers about things of value related to your niche, is going to be directly reflective of your level of success with social media marketing.

Always remember that the person who posts their own views without interaction with others, or the person who's only emails to people are about their own products, events and services is no different than the telemarketer with the lame joke on the end of your phone during dinner. Just like you tune that telemarketer out - your followers and friends will do the same to you - that's why FaceBook has the option to hide people from your news feed and many other platforms have similar capabilities. Don't be deluded into thinking that because you are posting everyone is reading what you have to say. If you are just posting sales lingo posts and/or are blocking people from engaging your page, you're most likely like the time share salesman who looks up to find he's talking to the air because I can guarantee you that most people are simply hiding your posts from their view.

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