Solving Problems - It's a Marketing Tool
Posted On: 2010-01-28
So the world is on fire about the iPad ... it's all over Twitter ... people are talking about it on message boards and tomorrow it's going to be subject of just about every email newsletter on the planet.
Lots of people are going to buy one simply because they want to be seen as cool and trendy and always up with the latest technology. You may even want one ... and I wouldn't blame you if you did. All that marketing hype is definitely very hard to resist ... especially when the price ... at least the initial price ... looks so reasonable.
But do you really need an iPad? Does it really solve any of the tech or communication problems that you might now be facing or does it just create a whole bunch of new problems?
That's something that only you can answer but for me personally, it doesn't seem to solve any tech problems that I have at the moment and it does create more ... plus it gives me one more thing to carry around and that's really the last thing I need.
Just recently we turned out back on a new car because it couldn't easily cope with the stuff we often carry and it created more problems than it solved. If it had made life easier for us then we might have it in the garage right now but it didn't so it was definitely no sale!
And there's a marketing lesson for us ... even here in adult the fact that the product you're selling can solve problems for the people who might be thinking of buying it is a selling point that you should stress. But what problems might people have who are looking to buy a membership in a porn site?
Well put yourself in the shoes of the people who are visiting your sites and think about what might be important to them. Quality porn at a reasonable price might be important to many people in these times when everyone has to make every single dollar they earn go further.
No sneaky re-bills on trials might be another feature that could be important to many surfers. Now just about every sponsor offers very cheap trials that re-bill at the full price quite quickly so perhaps you don't offer those short, cheap, trials to your surfers. Instead you offer a longer and slightly more expensive trial if your sponsor offers that and in your marketing you stress that the trial is longer and gives the surfer more time to decide whether or not they want to extend their membership.
Others may be worried about the security of their personal information. Even today when many women are enjoying hardcore porn sites there are plenty of surfers who don't want their partners to know that they're joining an adult site so you need to stress that if they signup with your sponsor their information will be protected and their membership will be treated with the utmost discretion.
Many surfers are stuck on dialup ... or have even gone back to dialup to save money so those people will be wondering whether or not they're going to be able to enjoy all the action at the site you're trying to sell to them. Provide them with the answer or a link to a site that can provide a good experience for members on dialup and they'll be more likely to buy what you're selling.
Every time you can provide a solution to a problem you're going to be one step closer to making a sale. Every time you ignore something that might be a problem for your surfers you're taking a step back from making a sale.
Sure it's easy just to play the numbers game and ignore surfers who want reassurance but these days ever single sale is worth saving ... even if it does mean that you have to do a little extra work.
Sometimes that extra work that you have to put in can take the form of a landing page that provides information that will make the surfer even more interested in joining the site ... and that raises an interesting question.
Why do so many sponsors still insist that you send your traffic to the front page of their paysite? Why aren't sponsors providing landing pages for affiliates ... landing pages that then link straight through to the join page?
It's something that has always made me wonder because statistics seem to show that when you send a surfer to the front page of a website and then expect him to click through to other pages before he accesses the join page you stand a very good chance of losing him.