Stating the Obvious
Posted On: 2007-09-20
Well here I am running about five hours behind where I wanted to be today but at least I can sit down here in the office at home and know that I shouldn't be disturbed for a few hours at least. Well I hope I won't be disturbed because I really do want to get on and get some work done but the way things are going I guess there is no real guarantee that the phone won't ring with more work.
It's not that I actually mind being interrupted or distracted by other things as long as they're business related ... and the distractions this morning definitely were business related. We were supposed to be just dropping a quote off at a client's business but an hour and a bit later we were still there going through the quote with the client ... and ultimately we walked out the door with the deposit in our hand. Now you can't really complain about that.
The rest of the time has also been taken up talking with clients so I just have to keep telling myself that it really wasn't wasted time at all and perhaps I have to be more flexible with the tasks I set myself each day. I know I'm a big fan of daily lists and I've talked about that here before but I guess I have to control the daily list rather than have it control me ... if that makes sense.
Before we headed out this morning to visit the client I had been reading a newsletter that's produced each month by a search engine marketing company. I'm not sure how I did it but somehow I enrolled for it. The more I looked at this edition of the newsletter the more I wondered why I ever bothered because, when it comes to search engine optimisation, it's a fairly lightweight publication.
For example, here's a piece of advice from the newsletter: 'if you want to show up for a keyword - use it!'
Now how much more obvious can you get than that? At the time I shook my head in amazement but that piece I just quoted kept coming back to me at odd times through the morning. The more I thought about it the more I realized that sometimes we really do have to state the obvious to get our message across. Not everyone is a logical thinker like you and I and even though we understand that if we want to rank for a certain keyword or phrase it has to appear on our website lots of people out there don't understand that.
There are plenty of other instances where we have to state the obvious when we want someone to do something for us too. While some people might be able to read minds the vast majority cannot and so we need to give plain directions, make unmistakable requests and never rely on innuendo or subtle hints when we want them to do something..
Some marketing expert I was reading recently suggested that just by having an unmistakable link on a page was all you needed to get people to click on it but is that really so? It seems to me that unless we're prepared to state the obvious and tell people to 'click this link' or 'Click Here' we run the risk of having them do something opposite to what we expect and want.
So perhaps it's time to look at your marketing and see whether or not you are stating the obvious when you want your site visitors to do certain things. Yep, ‘click here' might have been around for years and it might not be trendy to use those words in a link. It might be an indication that you're the next best thing to an Internet fossil if you use something as basic as that but who cares if people do click that link and go on to make you money?
Who cares if others laugh at you because you're prepared to tell visitors to your site exactly what you want them to do if, in so doing, you're laughing all the way to the bank?
We have to understand that not every person who visits our sites is so focused on what they are doing that they will click on links that aren't obvious. They may be zoned out or focusing on something other than looking for less obvious links and so they need to be shown and they need to be told to do whatever it is you want them to do.
Not only do they need to be told but they need to be told in language that's easy for them to understand. The obvious needs to be stated so start using ‘Click Here' and watch your traffic do what whatever it is you want them to do.