marketing

Turn Down The Volume

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A well-known saying from an unknown source:

“We lose money on every sale but we make up for it with volume!”

There are several web sites which sell discount vouchers to groups of online shoppers. A business will publish a discount offer on such a site and as long as a certain minimum number of folks buy it, the discount vouchers are e-mailed to the buyers. If there aren’t enough buyers, the discount is cancelled and no one’s credit card is charged.

This volume discount voucher system can work well for a company that sells “widgets”, meaning anything where the marginal cost is very low. It can also be good for a business such as a sports, theatrical or other event that needs to unload unsold tickets. Unloading leftover or end-or-line product at a discount can help reduce a loss.

But…
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Restaurants and Photographers

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What do restaurants and photographers have in common?

When it comes to choosing a restaurant, or a photographer, a consumer in a larger city usually has many hundreds of choices. In the eyes of the customer, most restaurants, and most photographers, are more or less the same.

Why choose one restaurant, or photographer, over another? Convenient location? A positive previous experience? Price? Good word-of-mouth? Maybe the web site looked nice?

Restaurants rely on their menu to entice customers. They usually post menus online and near their front entrance. But compare how restaurants present their menu.
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Why you should avoid cheap pictures

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In case you missed the memo: it’s a waste of your time and money for your business to use cheap stock photos. A company that chooses cheap pictures is fooling no one but themselves. Cheap photography can harm both your business image and your bottom line, (which means “cheap” actually costs too much).

Here’s some proof pudding:

A study using eye-tracking technology was released yesterday by Jakob Nielsen, titled “Photos as Web Content”. Important points to note:

• Bland stock images on web sites are completely ignored by users.

• Feel-good images that are purely decorative are mostly ignored.

• Stock photos of generic people are intentionally disregarded.

• Photos of real people, (as opposed to stock pictures of models), are viewed as important information.

• Pictures of key people at a business are very important. Business portraits are always a win for the company.

Conclusion of the study: “Invest in good photo shoots: a great photographer can add a fortune to your Web site’s business value.”

Do your business a favour and call your local corporate or commercial photographer today. A professional photographer is worth much more than what they cost.

 

The Four-letter F-word

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If you search the web for the most powerful words used in marketing, the most cited word, as you might guess, is the four-letter F-word, “free”. Certainly, the word free can get customer attention but is it really effective in making sales?

The F-word is so overused these days, that we almost automatically tune it out. We know that any e-mail which starts with “FREE” is spam and any web banner ad that yells “FREE!” is a waste of time. We also know that nothing is really free, there’s always a catch. Free will get attention, but it’s never taken seriously.
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Photos key to online sales

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Today’s Toronto Star newspaper did a business story about local artisans who sell their products to a worldwide audience using only a web site. The newspaper’s (print) headline included “Photos key to online selling.” Some of the business owners pointed out that, “having excellent photographs helps…” and “you can’t sell without a decent picture.”

We knew that, right?

So why do so many businesses, both large and small, fail when it comes to website photography?
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Riding along a new path

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If a customer needs a package to be delivered from point A to point B, they don’t care whether the courier* is talented enough to ride an odd-looking bicycle or not. The only value to the customer is the ability to deliver the package on time. The customer won’t pay more for a fancy set of wheels or any extra cycling skills because these have no value to the customer.

No matter how talented a photographer thinks they are or how many awards they may have won, it’s the customer who determines the value of the photography. The customer’s perception is the photographer’s reality. Unwanted value isn’t any value at all.
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Dumb or dumber

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There are two ways to sell your products or services:

Option A: Make your customers smarter. Let them know how and why you do what you do. Educate them on what to look for and what to avoid. Help them know what’s possible, what questions to ask and what to expect. Smart customers are informed customers who, in turn, are good customers.

Option B: Make your customers dumber. Don’t let them know about your products or services. Don’t tell them about variables, options or warranties. Don’t give them choices. Dumb customers are helpless customers who, in turn, are good customers because they will always run to you for help.

Option B is the easiest and that’s why many businesses do it. You could choose this option and be successful, but only until a competitor decides to go with Option A. When this happens, Option B is no longer an option.

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