[image courtesy of ansik] Whether it’s in customer reviews, blogs or forums, people are talking about products and influencing buying decisions. Blaring out sales messages merely antagonises skeptical prospects, who place their trust in the objective advice of their peers. Research is showing that the ROI of traditional marketing methods is falling, whilst customer interaction […]
Boost Your Sales with Customer Reviews
People might be ignoring overtly salesy marketing, but they still listen to each other. One of the most persuasive voices for selling your products can be your customers themselves. Whether you’re selling eBooks, renting skips or promoting your expertise, reviews and testimonials can enhance your credibility and build trust with hesitant buyers. Reviews ‘social proof’ […]
Is Your Copywriting Giving Enough Value?
In a world cynical of advertising and sales spiel, copywriting has to not only persuade but to build trust. An effective way of doing this is to be able to offer value in exchange for your reader’s time – where value is not giving away coupons, but being entertaining or informative. People like to do […]
Want to attract higher paying clients? Offer them some luxuries.
(Image courtesy Betsssssy) Last month a group of US investors announced their plans to blow $200 million on a chain of 50 luxury movie theatres. Whilst this might sound mad to anybody in the business world, people always want to be entertained, and when things are grim it’s indulging in the small pleasures in life […]
Are Your Customers Happy? Then Tell People Why!
I had scribbled down half a page of notes about the foolishness of forcing every website to be written in English until I realised what day it was yesterday and swiftly cancelled my order for a Chinese dictionary. Instead I’m going to focus on why it has never been more important to harness customer service […]
Time to charge for access to your content?
Regular Crucible readers, and anyone who has read my eBook, will be familiar with my sermons on the need to provide informative, useful content in order to build trust and credibility with website visitors. Whilst giving away free content is a great way of making friends, it’s not going to pay any bills and it […]
Why a Recession is Great News for Conversational Marketing
Whilst the storm clouds of an economic downturn are covering most in the business world with gloom, for some marketers it could be a storm with a bright silver lining. With no amount of hastily assembled ROI stats likely to save many marketing budgets from the finance manager’s guillotine, there might not be any glossy […]
How to Cultivate Buzz with Journalists
Last week I published my top ten tips for marketing your website, although admittedly many of them have already been covered to death elsewhere. But one tactic that has always posed a puzzle for every marketing and PR agency is how to generate buzz in the traditional media. It’s all well and good being able […]
Top Ten Tips for Marketing Your Website
If you’ve started the New Year with a shiny new website, and invested in some copywriting for the landing page, you might be thinking that you can just sit back and wait for the sales to come flooding in. Well, it’s not that easy I’m afraid. It takes a lot of effort to successfully market […]
Content Marketing. Who’s on board?
Whilst the economic outlook might be doom and gloom, the content marketing bandwagon is rolling at full speed. It’s filling up with enthusiastic new supporters at every stop, and gathering pace towards its destination in marketing boardrooms. The ideas I first encountered when researching business blogging have been picked up, dusted off and given a […]