Trying To Motivate People To Change? Reward Them!

Want to build sales, change consumer reaction to your marketing?

Then reward them. 

GWP - Gift With Purchase is a great way to build sales!

What’s in it for me? Motivate people by answering this question with a reward. Buy this notebook get a FREE backpack. Agree to meet with me and I will give your a Starbucks Gift Card. These are but 2 examples of using gifts to increase sales. In addition to building sales a gift/reward can create great awareness for your business. Try to offer a gift/reward that ties into and supports your product, service and business! If you offer  athletic gear or clothing then a FREE water bottle makes sense. If you are a dermatologist, then a gift of body or sun tan lotion would be excellent. But we often get the gift/reward wrong. We don’t offer a strong enough reward - or a sufficiently clear call to action. So here’s a mini-marketing refresh on strengthening the reward part of your benefit exchange. If you’re trying to persuade someone to do something, think about sharpening the “what’s in it for me?” answer with a better reward. A compelling reward has five important attributes - it should be: immediate personal reflective of your audience’s values better than competing rewards credible. Immediate: The best rewards are available to our audience right away. Few of us take action based  on a reward that we expect to receive in the far future. It is human nature to seek instant satisfaction  over distant gratification. So think about what your call to action will do for someone in the short term.  Eating a hamburger satisfies our hunger, drinking beer makes the ball game more fun, and wearing  cologne makes us feel sexier. Donating to charity makes us feel we made a difference for one person,  today. How can you show an immediate result may be possible? Personal: The reward needs to make people feel their life will be better as individuals or within  their tight circles of friends, family and community. Take the attributes of what you want people  to do and sell them as benefits. What will recycling or sidewalks or education policy do for your  audience?  At the end of the day, the personal connection, not the grand concept, grabs our attention. Grounded in audience values: We can’t easily change what other people believe, but by plugging  into their existing mind-set we unleash great power behind our message. Make sure the reward  you are offering is something others seek - not just what you want. Those two things are rarely  the same, but we often imagine they are! Better than the competition: Think competitively about your reward. Is it better than what  people get for doing nothing - or something else? Don’t forget there’s a reason people aren't taking action. They may be deriving benefits from those behaviors. How can you make your reward better than what people get from maintaining the status quo? Credible: Last, you need to make sure the claim of your benefit is believable. People need to believe they can get the reward. Show other people gaining the promised benefit or telling a good story can bolster your case.  Make the promise change credible. If people aren’t doing what you want, you may find out why by reviewing this list. Are you making your offer sufficiently irresistible? Or could you sweeten the reward in one of these areas? It’s worth the effort to consider, because a great benefit exchange makes it far easier (and faster) to get to yes.

Become Visible

The best advice I can offer is be out there with your marketing, i.e. unless you are out there marketing you won't build the awareness necessary to move your business forward. There is never a perfect plan or execution of it, so realize that the hare actually wins the race and the tortoise is an also ran. Email once a week, use social media often, (but don't sell, be personal and informative) and use video where ever possible. Every day video and You Tube become more important.

Adopt A Gray Wolf Gray wolves inhabit mostly wild and inaccessible areas in a very limited portion of their former range within North America. Their diet consists of deer and smaller prey, such as beavers and hares. Gray wolves are part of the dog or Canidae family, a group characterized by their intelligence and adaptability. Like other members of the dog family, wolves are very territorial, laying claim to familiar den sites, travel routes and feeding grounds. Wolves suffer not only from habitat loss, but they also endure revenge killings for attacks on wild stock.

Infographic: The Fear of Public Speaking

Courtesy of: Miami Public Speakers

10 Keys To A Super Web Site!

1. Keep search engines in mind when designing your site. Include keywords and META tags in your Web pages to improve your ranking with search engines.

2. Include an “Opt-in” form to collect your visitors’ email addresses. An opt-in form captures the email addresses of interested prospects and gives you permission to email them. Getting your visitors’ e-mail addresses and building opt-in email lists is essential to staying in touch with your prospects and turning your visitors into buyers. Offer something valuable to get your potential buyers’ email addresses such as a free report, newsletter, consultation, discount, or special offer.

3. Stay in touch with your visitors. Visitors rarely a conversion the first time they visit a site. They want to get to know you before they are willing to spend money. Communicate consistently with your prospects through online newsletters and email messages. Give potential buyers reasons to return. Provide valuable information via social media and email. Mention what’s new on your site. Provide special offers and discounts to your contacts. Invite them to visit your Web site again and again. These techniques work. Try them and watch your prospects become buyers.

4. Design your Web site based on your Unique Selling Proposition. Why should prospects buy from you instead of your competition? What sets you apart? What makes your products and services unique, better, and more desirable? Do you provide hard-to-find expertise, the best customer service, lowest prices, highest quality, fastest service, or strongest guarantee? Back up your claims with testimonials, statistics, results of studies, and other data. Stand out from your competition. Offer more. Make your offers unique. Be original.

5. Put the benefits of your site and your USP right on top of your home page. Many Web visitors never scroll down past the first screen of information. Give your potential buyers the information they need as quickly as possible.

6. Ask for feedback. Find out what potential buyers want. Use feedback forms and email surveys to conduct market research. Ask what products and information they’re interested in. What benefits are most appealing. What price they would pay. Analyze the feedback and adapt your site as needed.

7. Write compelling sales copy. Effective copy works just as well on the Internet as it does in direct mail. Write to-the-point copy. Attract potential buyers with benefits. Start each Web page with a compelling, benefit-oriented headline. Tests have proven that the more you tell, the more you sell. If people aren’t interested in your products or services, they won’t read past the first paragraph. If they are interested, you can’t tell them enough.

8. Motivate readers to do what you want them to do with action verbs. A call to action such as “call now,” “order now,” and “click here” can dramatically increase sales. Give precise instructions. Tell them exactly what to do. For example, tell them to subscribe to your ezine and give you their email addresses. For more examples of action verbs, see our article “Increase Sales, Subscriptions, and Traffic With Action Words.”

9. Make purchasing easy. Take a good look at your ordering process.

10. Include your URL on each Web page. This will make it easier for people to go back to your Web site when printing or saving your Web pages.


Take a look at your website and see how many of these elements are missing. Implement these proven direct marketing strategies now to increase your online sales.

Go Mobile Or Get Left Behind

Why You Need A Mobile Site

Check your web results/Google Analytics probably 20% or more of your traffic is coming from iPhones and other smartphones. Without a mobile site chances are you are not making the most of the visits from mobile sources.

2013 is the year you must make it easy for your customers/clients and potential new ones

to engage with you on their smartphones. There are now 1 BILLION smartphones on the planet.

Mobile is a huge opportunity. It allows us to reach people at new moments, including dawn (66% wake up with their phone). Around 67% of people already shop on their phone. 
 

You cannot afford to ignore mobile any more than you can ignore the Internet.
This will be the year that more people are interacting with their smartphones than on their desktops.

Are you ready?
 

The first step is to assess how you’re doing given the number of people reading your

emails, visiting your site and learning about your business on their phones.

Read your emails and visit your site from your smartphone. Try to shop,
sign up or any web site action offered.

See what happens when you try to move across devices as most people do ‐ 

from desktop to tablet to phone.

Ask yourself:
 

1. People come to you for information.  Is your website mobile‐friendly so that information is easy to find and use, on any device?

2. Are your emails easy to read on mobile devices?  Do the calls to action on your emails lead to easy ways to respond on mobile?

3. Are your events mobile‐friendly?  Can people easily check the agenda online during the event ‐ and share content via social media?

4. Are important articles or reference materials available in a format that can be read on a mobile device?

5. Is it easy to share your content on social media with a click or two on a mobile device?

No?  Then you could be missing out on opportunities in an era when they are more often than not on their smartphones.  
 

Note: Mobile, like all technology, doesn’t work on its own. You still need a compelling call to action and conversion strategy that reaches people at the right time!

Turn to SAS Digital, they build great mobile sites, ask the Southland Mall! (view it from your phone to see the mobile site)

Make Sure Your Web Makes A Great 1st Impression

 

The impression your web site creates can make your business soar or decline.  

All of your web site visitors are potential leads and new customers!
Your homepage is  the place where you can make that valuable first impression.

Make sure you make a great impression. Please realize you are selling the
unique characteristics, qualities, products and services you provide.

It is a competitive world and your web site should make your look world class and the top
in your field.

Your home page should highlight what makes you special and the best choice!

All the referrals you get are verified by viewing your web site, make sure you convert
those referrals to customers/clients.

Don't expect a web site to build your business if you:

>have a "cookie cutter" web site and look like everyone else

>don't promote your special qualities on the home page

>don't make it easy for someone to connect with you digitally

>don't use video to get your message across

>you don't update your home page often

Here are some basic tips on how to optimize your homepage and help direct users where you want them:

Bring all important content above the fold. If a user needs to scroll down to see a registration form, it might as well be on a different page entirely. Keeping all valuable functionality and content high on the page will maximize exposure and heighten general engagement levels.

Experiment with color contrasts. Our attention immediately goes to that which jumps out at us. Consider highlighting important sections, buttons or areas of your site with a different color to emphasize and draw the user’s eye.

Above all, keep it simple. Whatever the goal of your site may be, try to keep the homepage as straightforward as possible. If some users find the initial page overwhelming, confusing or difficult to navigate, then chances are they won’t stick around.