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Online Marketing Basics - Part 2

Your visitor has a "conversation going on inside their head." If you can join that conversation by providing the information they need and "meeting them where they are now," you may win their trust. But first you must convince them you understand that need or problem. Until you create the trust and credibility required you have little chance of getting your Most Wanted Response (MWR).

So what is a Most Wanted Response? Your MWR could be many things including...

Actually there are many Most Wanted Responses on a website. Sure the ultimate MWR may be to get someone to buy something, but before that happens there are many intermediate MWRs you must gain first,

The Conversation In Your Visitor's Head

So to gain any of your MWRs you must put yourself in your visitor's shoes and understand the conversation in their heads. They may be thinking...

People are skeptical of sales pitches — especially on the web. Buying online is impersonal and still scary to many folks. Establishing a website's credibility is Job #1 for every website. Until you establish some level of trust with your visitors you have little chance of getting them to do anything... especially give you money.

Establishing Trust On Your Website

In order to convince your visitor that you are trustworthy there are certain things you must do.

  1. Put a personal face on your website with photos of principals and images of happy customers experiencing the benefits of your product or service
  2. Tell your story if it is interesting and helps your visitors relate to you as a person and your company as good neighbor
  3. Clearly state your Guarantee — you must have some sort of guarantee
  4. Show your Privacy Policy and exactly what you do with personal information
  5. Use videos whenever possible — a video establishes trust far better than static images — your voice tone and body language can come through
  6. Help your visitors — your tone throughout your website should be one of a "solution provider" that sincerly wants to help your visitors solve their problems
  7. The most important thing you can do to create trust is to provide testimonials from happy customers. This is the best way to turn a prospect into a customer

Social Media Marketing Emerges

In the last few years the biggest trend online has been the growth of "social media" sites like Facebook, LinkedIn, YouTube, and Twitter. These online community sites are places where users meet and discuss a range of topics. Some of these sites are more "social" while others are more "business" oriented.

The fact that these sites attract millions of visitors is a realty that any online marketer MUST deal with. Not having a presence on these sites means missing out on a powerful branding and relationship building opportunity.

Marketing on these sites takes advantage of the "viral" aspect of the Internet. Once a subject becomes "popular" that content can spread quickly to other users and other sites and soon thousands or millions of people may be involved in the conversation. The potential business growth can be exponential.

To take advantage of social media you can do social media optimization. In many ways this technique is connected to viral marketing where word of mouth is created, not through friends or family, but through the use of networking in social bookmarking, video and photo sharing websites. Contributing to blogs achieves much the same benefit. With a Blog you share content through the use of RSS in the blogsphere and via special blog search engines.

Online Marketing Sales Cycle