Connecting with our prospects happens through words.
How words connect a needy prospect to your solution
Words are powerful.
Words launch armies. Words elect presidents. Words land you jobs and words convince someone to marry you. But words can do more than that – words can persuade you to take another step along a path where you ultimately pull out your credit card. Words convince you to buy something.
And that’s why we read this stuff: we want people to buy something from us – online.
One Goal: The Next Action
But reading stuff isn’t the goal. We don’t care if prospects read our stuff. If they do nothing with it, we gained nothing from their efforts. We want them to take the next action.
Once your prospect clicks on your ad, your job isn’t over. Your words – through text, audio, video, or a combination – can guide your prospect even further.
As an online marketer, your aim is to help your prospect one further step along that purchase path. The next action on a landing page is different for each situation. You may want your prospect’s email address. Or you may want them to download a free report. Perhaps you’re trying to convince someone to try a loss-leader or even a full-scale purchase.
Whatever your aim, when a prospect visits your landing page, your job is to get a prospect to take the next step. That step should be one step closer to a purchase. Words help make that happen.
More Than Words: Tactics & Tools
As you might imagine, words don’t exist in a vacuum.
In online marketing, you also need tactics and tools. Pay-per-click advertising, search engine optimization, affiliate marketing, social, and other tactics allow online merchants more opportunity than ever to sell products and services. And with increasing opportunities to connect with your prospects also means it’s harder to get their attention.
That’s why you gotta be good.
But the online marketer is no longer at the mercy of old-school direct marketing timelines or guesses. Developers build tools every month to help online marketers do their jobs. These can relate to link-spying, keyword harvesting, or anything else that helps uncover the hidden motivations of your prospect – and convince them to take the next step.
Words Create Actions
Despite the intricacies of the online transaction, it still comes down to words. For a moment, forget about H1 tags, negative keywords, or link-building. If you can’t talk to a human being in need of what you offer, you won’t make a sale. All your SEO efforts come to naught if your prospect lands on your site only to click the back button 6 seconds later.
That’s why words are so important. Words connect the prospect to your solution. If you’re a good writer, you know your prospect, and you have a sensible solution to their needs – you have a sale.
If not, you have more to learn.