One of the tenets we strongly believe and practice in our marketing services is that you cannot make anyone do anything they do not want to on the internet. We have all been empowered with access to information and vendors around the world with Google search. We can connect with whomever we like in an instant.
Attention is scarce and people are used to clicking on and off sites that are hollow with content and only try to sell. Even if you do get some attention, keeping it is even harder. People forget where they have been and they move around from one thing to another quickly without any loyalty. You do this as an online citizen.
We are all competing for attention. If someone would give you full attention and focus that is a viable prospect for what you have to offer, the likelihood is that they will buy.
The truth is that with so many options, buyers can try out other ways of solving their problem or fulfilling their desires. They may just have to do so to come to a realization that you are the one they should do business with.
Many times, there is nothing that is a better sales persuader than failure. In a lot of ways, it’s like dealing with children and their learning process.
We Are All Still Children
“Some people, if they don’t ask, you can’t tell them.” – B.B. King
Anyone that is a parent comes to a rude awakening with kids. They are not adults. They don’t know how the world works yet and they are continually discovering for themselves.
We like to teach kids with our words, our logic and our passed on experiences. Telling them not to touch a hot stove or go too fast on their scooter is great advice. But until they get burned or fall off their ride, the whole concept is theory.
Kids learn by failing. It’s a much stronger teacher than trying to convince them of what will or will not happen if they don’t listen. This same process continues through life. Teenagers want to push the boundaries to test limits. After all, what a forty year-old knows and what they think they know are spheres apart.
Your prospective customers may absorb all of your helpful content to understand their problem. They may have engaged your content in a way to delve deeper than the surface glance that an onlooker gives.
You may have even optimized all of your marketing systems to allow for the ultimate self-service experience. However, like a child, there may be things that are out of your control. You can influence someone’s mindset, but it is hard to change someone’s mind.
Your prospective customer may have to fail first. Until they fail, they won’t fully appreciate what you are saying in your content and marketing. When they fail and see that you highlighted the problems or had the answer, they will be able to value what you offer.
Does this mean that marketing content, positioning and automation are for naught? No, these are all important as part of the buying process. We just can’t expect people to take the actions we would like when we want it now. It will have to be when they want it. And they will want it when they have come to their own conclusions, many times through failure.
Many of the people in your pipeline will have to experience failure first. Your best opportunity to be the choice when your buyer is ready is to be helpful and persistent in your content marketing. Your words will make more sense after failure rather than before.
Don’t close doors with prospects. Keep them wide open and be available. Know that buying is complicated a lot of the time and your continued positioning and expertise has to be presented, thought it may not be acted upon immediately.
If you push before someone is ready, it can close a door that would open later with more optimal timing. The buyer has a mindset and it shifts with failure.
So, if you had to look at how you are marketing, do you have systems set up for those buyers that have to experience failure first?