Powerful yet simple persuasion techniques to improve website marketing

The art of getting skeptical prospects to believe the claims you make in your web site promotions, to agree with what you’re saying, is one of the most difficult challenges facing advertisers and copywriters. And bottomline – if the prospect doesn’t believe you, he’s not going to buy from you. One of the most effective writing methods for getting prospects to believe your claims and turning them into customers is a technique known as ‘Pacing and Leading’. Let me define these terms. Pacing statements are statements of fact. They are easily proven as true or are commonly accepted as true. Some examples; · "No effective solution is possible unless one understands the problem" · "Doctor visits are increasing across America…with more heart disease and obesity than ever before" See…the prospect is consciously aware of the veracity of these statements. Leading statements are the statements, the claims, you want your prospect to believe, but have not been proven true, or are not commonly accepted as true. Some examples: · "The use of commonly available vitamins and minerals is insufficient for improving our health." · "We would all be healthier and less disease-prone if our doctors and nutritionists understood the root problem." · "Our product will revive your energy and protect you against age-related disease." Notice the difference? The truth of our pacing statements are obvious. The leading statements are the ‘selling’ statements we want our prospect to believe, to buy into. So…how do we turn these statements into powerful and compelling copy? It’s all in the rhythm. Example: Pace - “Most middle-aged men would love to feel like 20 again, to have more energy…to be free of worry from those age-related diseases, such as heart disease, cancer, alzheimers.” Pace - “However, we have all either read about, seen or experienced the fatigue and disease which strikes a large proportion of men as they age. Lead - “Product X’s unique blend of vitamins, herbs and minerals, used for centuries in Eastern medicine, specifically address male related aging maladies. Now eliminate the two pacing statements and allow your lead sentence to stand alone as a ‘selling’ statement. Not very credible, is it? However, when these statements are strung together, notice the powerful effect as the lead grows naturally out of the pacing statements. For your prospect, it’s another ‘yes’. And as any experienced marketer knows, each prospect’s unconscious ‘yes’ is a suble, yet powerful, means for comfortably moving that person to your desired end. A good rhythm to use in your copy is to write two or three pacing statements, or questions, where ‘yes’ is the only answer. Follow with your lead statement. The writing style should be conversational, with a logical flow between pacing and leading statements. Throughout your copy, gradually reduce the number of pacing statements between leads. For example; three pacing statements followed by a lead…two pacing statements followed by two lead statements…then one pacing statement and three leads. Try it. List the ‘truths’, the pacing statements that apply to your product or service. Now list your leads, those statements which you want your prospect to believe. Experiment with the pace and lead rhythm mentioned above. As subsequent paces follow naturally from the previous lead, you will experience the power of this technique. Copyright Alan Richardson

Internet marketing predictions for 2006

Internet marketing has been making some pretty dramatic changes over the last few years, like the growth and evolution of the search engine optimization industry, viral marketing, pay-per-click advertising and the mainstream adoption of blogging. Despite the recent changes I predict that even greater change is still yet to come, thanks in part to the growth of broadband internet access, advances in hardware and software technology, and marketers need to reach consumers through multiple mediums. As people's lives become more busy, fragmented media will result in more opportunities for both advertisers and web site owners. Standard advertising mediums such as television, radio and newspapers have been loosing effectiveness (partially because of new technologies like TiVo and XM Satalite Radio) while online advertising has become more effective. As an advertiser, there are more opportunities available than ever before to reach highly targeted prospects with a relatively small investment by advertising online. As a web site owner, there are more opportunities to generate additional revenue by providing advertising space on your web sites. As people spend more time online, this trend will continue to grow. RSS will become a powerful, trackable marketing tool. In it's current form, it is a great tool for reaching out to people who have the technical background to use it but it does have some limitations. Many customizable web portals (My Yahoo) let users display RSS feeds on their home page, but require users to sign in with cookies. Some email programs can display RSS feeds and several programs have even been specifically designed for displaying RSS feeds. However the user base is still fairly small. With the release of Microsoft's Windows Vista, RSS will become mainstream and be adopted by soccer moms everywhere. Once that happens you can expect to see tools developed to manage and track the traffic from RSS feeds. The search engine optimization industry is another area that will change considerably. All of the major search engine companies have taken considerable steps to reduce web site owner's (or an SEO firm's) ability to manipulate the ranking of their web sites. As the algorithms that determine the importance of a particular web page become more comprehensive and better able to filter out spam you will see two things happen. First, the search results will become more relevant. Second, the SEO firms that are using dishonest techniques in an attempt to rank higher will collapse one by one until only honest, ethical firms exist.