Survey Reveals
Subtle Sales Secret
A research company
(Jupiter Communications) recently conducted a survey
of 2,200 Web surfers and found that 80% of them trust
online news as much as news from other sources for
both accuracy and editorial integrity. They also found that these web
surfers don't object when advertising is
imbedded in a news story or editorial column. For
example, if a button to order the book follows a book
review, the web surfer not only finds this unobjectionable, but even
helpful.
Two incidents on my
own Web sites would seem to corroborate the Jupiter
survey results. About a year ago, I signed up with
Amazon and created a bookstore on my web site. Six to
eight months went by and I sold no Amazon books at
all through them. I subsequently started
conducting interviews with marketing professionals,
accountants, business strategists, etc. and I asked these
professionals what books and web sites they would
recommend people visit for more information. I linked
the books they suggested to Amazon, and suddenly I
had sales. Not monstrous amounts, but there were
actual book sales.
Another example of
this is when I was interviewed by iVillage about my
Keeping Your Sanity in a Home Business course. In
the interview they placed a link to the web page for the
course. As a result, there was a substantial increase
in sales of the course for as long as this article
was run.
Being interviewed on
industry-related sites and including links to your
e-mail and web addresses in the interview is a great
tool for building your business. It gives you
credibility and utilizes the subtle sales techniques
that produce results on the web. A few strategies for
getting interview coverage for your business include:
- Volunteer for
interviews. Many times on business
mailing lists or message boards, you will
find requests for people to interview on
various topics. Volunteer anytime your
experience matches the article topic.
- Ask for the
interview. If you have a product or
service to sell, you can contact e-zine
editors whose publications match your target
market. Offer to either write an article or be interviewed for their publication
- Write your own
interview. Create a question and answer
interview on the most commonly asked
questions you receive in your business. Place
this on your own web site and/or submit it to
e-zines and other industry-related web sites.
Perhaps the reason
this interview method produces results is because web
surfers see it as a credible and more discreet referral rather than a direct
sales pitch; it's more like news that they can trust.
