Think About Who You're Selling To
Posted On: 2011-12-30
Throughout this month I've been encouraging you to think about your business and how to achieve better sales figures and I thought that I might carry that theme right through to the last column for this month ... and this year ... and encourage you to start thinking about who you're selling to.
And why is that something that we should be thinking about? We should be thinking about the people we're selling our products to so that we can better target our sales message.
Now that's something that a lot of newcomers to this industry don't think about ... and many of us who have been around for years tend to forget about. We simply jump right in and start building our free sites and galleries and use terms and images that appeal to us because we think that if those elements appeal to us then they'll appeal to everyone.
In some ways the galleries and sites that we build are reflections of ourselves. We use language that appeals to us ... we use images that appeal to us ... we even use page layouts that look good to us ... and that's cool if we're buying what we're selling.
But we're not our own customers ... we're not the ones that put money in our pockets ... we're not the ones that our galleries and sites should be appealing to.
Those galleries and sites may look great to us but are they really selling our products to our target audience. Sure what we're producing may look fine to us but how do they look to the people we want to target.
Are our words connecting with those people? Are the images we use encouraging those people to part with their cash? Is the page layouts we're using really sending the right subliminal message to our potential customers?
If you're a twenty-something porn-geek and you're trying to sell to older guys are you even on the same page as those guys? If you're an older guy trying to sell to people in college is the language you're using too out of date for your target audience to connect with?
Then there is the question of what images to use ... just because you like to see chicks getting banged in certain positions does that mean that every person you're selling to gets the same buzz out of those positions?
And if you're so sure that you're doing it right then why are you so sure?
It's almost impossible for me to give you all the answers to those questions ... even if I knew all the answers ... because I'm not you. I don't know how you try to interact with your audience ... or even if you try to interact with them. So don't read on expecting to find any definitive answers because they're just not here.
Even if I could give you some definitive answers I'm not sure that I would want to. It's far better for you to go in search of the answers to all those questions yourself. It's far better for you to question and review your sales and marketing techniques than it is for me to try and force what I might think are the right answers down your throat.
It's far better for you to do some research on your particular niche and discover why it might appeal to some people and not to others. It's far better for you to do some research on the language ... the words ... that may create the responses you're looking for in the people that might buy what you're selling.
It's far better for you to discover the triggers that get people into the buying frame of mind ... the words that tell them that you know what you're talking about when you 're telling them how good a site is and how much of the content they want to see that it delivers ... and the right images to use to get them hot and horny and ready to spend some of their hard-earned cash.
And it's far better for you to start thinking beyond what might appeal to you and look at your audience and think about what is going to be irresistible for them and what will ultimately put more money in your pocket.
But why should you do all that when you can just go on throwing up vanilla sites and galleries? The answer to that is simple ... this coming year is going to be another tough one and if you want to still be in this business this time next year then you better start sharpening your marketing skills.
The smart people will survive ... the lazy and dumb people won't.