The latest ‘Site Reference’ newsletter has been released. The featured article by Jerry Bader is titled “Turn Knowledge Into Sales: Discover Hidden Web-Profits.” [Site Reference Newsletter]


The latest Site Reference newsletter has been released.

‘Turn Knowledge Into Sales: Discover Hidden Web-Profits’

by Jerry Bader

Your company’s collective knowledge and know-how is its greatest asset, not the products or services you offer; products and services are merely the means to implement your expertise. Your capacity to grow and prosper is dependent on your ability to effectively present your know-how in creative, informative, entertaining, understandable, and above all memorable ways.

To excite, inform, and motivate people by showing them how to get the most out of what you sell is where your profit potential lies. The way you present your expertise is how you will be remembered; it is the basis of the experience each client has when dealing with your company, and that experience is what will make or break you.

The Web-Experience Factor

There is plenty of excellent information around about website design, information architecture, search engine optimization, and even usability, but few Web-business articles deal with the experience factor. No matter how attractive, user friendly, or SEO perfect your website is, you are never going to convert visitors into a customers if they are turned-off by the experience you offer.

By providing your expertise and know-how with style and flair, you are telling visitors that you are prepared to help them maximize the benefits your product or service potentially delivers – a value-added benefit your competitors will find hard to counteract.

When so many products and services on the market are generic, interchangeable or widely available brands, the only thing that will differentiate you from everyone else is the knowledge and expertise you offer as a value-added perk.

The Paradox of Choice

‘The Paradox of Choice’ is a term coined by Swarthmore College Professor, Barry Schwartz, in a book by the same name. Everyone likes choice, this is obvious, and no one likes to feel they have no options. But when options become overwhelming, the ability to make a purchase decision is hindered. Too many choices generate a diminishing marginal utility and actually hinder conversion.

When you visit a website that offers a large quantity of similar products that serve the same basic purpose (cell phones, cameras, computers, televisions, guitars or just about anything else) each with a list of options and features that seem interchangeable and at the same time incompatible, the result is confusion and buying-paralysis. This is where your knowledge and expertise comes in.

If you invest in a video and/or audio presentation that explains who would benefit from each product and why one product is more appropriate for one customer than another, you are not just delivering a sales pitch, you are providing a welcome service that helps your visitor decide what is best for him or her. The result is a happier, more satisfied, better-informed customer.

Even more importantly, by helping your client decide what is the best purchase option, you are cementing your relationship with that customer, and when the time comes for an upgrade, replacement, or add-on, you will be the ‘go-to’ company, and not your competitor who offers nothing more than an online flee market.

How To Monetarize Knowledge

Depending on the nature of your business, you can market your expertise directly through the sale of online videos, DVDs, audio-casts, and white papers.

As an alternative, you can use your knowledge as an indirect sales tool. By providing professionally produced media at no cost, you enhance your reputation and attract interest in your company. For example, we provide over fifty articles, and dozens of videos on our site, explaining how best to use video and audio on the Web in order to brand Web-businesses and maximize profits.

A kind of hybrid solution would be to provide your video presentations at no-charge, but allow them to be monetarized by including a sponsor’s ad at the beginning or end; or you can distribute them through one of the increasing number of video directories, or distribution networks that will add an advertising message to your content, and pay you for the privilege.

How To Turn Advertising Into Content

The idea of turning advertising into content leaves some people with a bad taste. Television commercials are a distinct form of communication separate from the programs you watch, and display ads in magazines and newspapers are separate and distinct from the editorial.

But now you have movies, where ad placement has become a significant force in funding and revenue creation for the producers. Are you watching a movie intended to entertain, or a two-hour advertisement for the latest cars, computers, and sports drink? One wonders if the latest blockbuster is merely a fifty million dollar ad for the upcoming Christmas toy-buying season?

The melding of advertising and content is already here; it’s just a case of doing it honestly and creatively, making it worth watching. The Apple iPod commercials are basically sponsored music videos and are more entertaining and memorable than many hour-long programs, and they do it without any sales pitch.

Memorable Web Experiences Require Memorable Content

Web-content should grab your attention, be informative, instructive, interesting, entertaining, memorable, and even stimulating. It doesn’t necessarily have to be all these things but it has to provide something more than just a sales pitch.

The actual material being presented is only part of the experience; it’s the presentation of the material that makes it worth retaining. How you deliver content is a long-term marketing and branding strategy.

Most advertising tends to be a short-term tactic demanding continuous promotion with short-term gains; it is most often heavy-handed and hype-laden, tending to exaggerate claims, disrupt attention, and irritate the audience: an approach that often leads to a quick exit from a website, even when that website contains exactly what the visitor is looking for.

Sales pitches produce a natural resistance, while knowledge-based content and expert advice creates natural curiosity and confidence in the provider.

Web-video delivers information and subtext with nuance and meaning, as well as emotional and rational justification. Professionally produced video content communicates your expertise and your willingness to maximize your client’s return from purchasing your product or service, and that will make you the market leader.

About Us

People ask, “What do you do?” You could say we inform, enlighten, innovate, and create; you could also say we deliver our clients’ marketing messages in memorable ways using video, audio, webmedia campaigns and websites; all created in-house from concept to implementation, from graphic and motion design to Web-design, from script writing to video-production to post-production, from music composition to signature sound design.

What do we do? We motivate action by speaking to your audience’s real needs. We tell your story so your brand, your message, embeds in the minds of your clients. We are corporate storytellers.

About Jerry Bader

Jerry Bader is Senior Partner at MRPwebmedia, a website design firm that specializes in Web-audio and Web-video. Visit http://www.mrpwebmedia.com/ads, http://www.136words.com, and http://www.sonicpersonality.com. Contact at info@mrpwebmedia.com or telephone (905) 764-1246.

Top Strategies and Intelligence…

How to Optimize for Google: Part 3 of 3

You want your website in the top rankings at the titan of searchengines, Google. With a little planning and thought, there are methodsto do this without hard work or heartache. In the last of thisthree-part article series, learn the final SEO tricks to ensure thatGoogle will absolutley love and promote your site.

Put Your Website to Work – Monetize your traffic today!

Join Neverblue Ads and access 1000’s of high quality offers. With advertisers in every vertical, you’re sure to find some high converting ads to help monetize your traffic.

Web-Content Conundrum

Lots and lots of content makes you more search engine friendly, helpsestablish your knowledge and expertise, explains in detail what youoffer, and justifies that offer with all the explanations, statistics,and rationale you can muster. The problem is nobody reads it.

A Few Words From Our Experts…

Give Your Visitors Confidence To Buy: Getting Past The Order Form

Your sales are reduced when you fall victim to a very common problem.Prospects not getting past your Order Form. WHY they run is simple.Lack of confidence. WHAT to do about it is a bit more involved. You canreduce your prospects vamoosing (is there correct spelling forsynthesized words?) from your Order Form with a few simple adjustmentsand additions to your web sales process. Overall, it’s about addingmarketing copy at the top of your Order Form. The online marketing andecommerce system that I use, www.HandsFreeBusiness.com allows me to put HTML, audio and video at the top of their secure order forms…

How to Sell to the Rich – Part 2

I received some interesting comments about my last post. It seems thereare a few readers out there who are not marketers, either of the onlineor offline kind. And they didn’t agree with my contention that moneybrings happiness (and that more money brings more happiness). And, thatif you are ever to become a successful direct marketer – specifically,one who markets to the rich – you must first, as a priori, want withall your might – to be rich! One reader went so far as to imply that Iwas a moron (ouch!) Okay, so these dissenters probably either scannedthe post or didn’t fully understand it – and saw only what they wantedto see – an opportunity to disagree. I mean, after all, how couldanyone in their right mind ever disagree with anything I say? Sheesh!

Succeed With These Webmaster Resources…

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The Ultimate Guide To Personalized Search- FR*EE DOWNLOAD

I can’t stress enough that people need to understand the implication for Personalized Search in order to go forward. This could decidely change how an SEO operates as well as how they qualify campaigns and therefore plays a huge role on your site’s success…

Want Your Visitors To Keep Coming Back?

All you need to do is give them an incentive and we’ve got you covered. We’ve spent years collecting books on every topic and now you can give them away for FR*EE to your visitors in just minutes…

Questions, Answers and Discussions From Our Members…

Can I Use Google Analytics with Blogger/Blogspot?

One of our members wants to know if it’s possible to use the GoogleAnalytics sytem on her blogs through Blogger or Blogspot — and if so,what the best method is for implementing it. Find out by readingexperts’ comments.

PicScout Making Money from Finding Copyright Issues

Are you aware that there are nefarious spider bots scanning images onyour website for illegally-gotten images from libraries such as Gettyand iStockPhoto? Learn more about what web developers are dealing with.

How to Use Reviews as a Marketing Tool

Looking for a way to write product or service reviews that will generate advertisement for blog or site? Find out what other users are doing to gain traffic through writing or submitting their reviews.

Punctuation… Does It Matter?

Korat wants to know if he’s using keyword phrasing for his websitebuild, and his phrases are incorrectly written, will it cause anyeffect to the site’s ranking on search engines. Read what the pros say and put in your two cents about incorrect grammar in keyword phrases.

Redirects?

Basket Lady says she’s struggling with her web domains. She is havingto rename her business, and consequently she believes she needs torename her online address. She does not want to lose her rankings withsearch engines and needs some advice on URL redirects.

Where to Place Banners on a Website?

While I am selecting a banner ad position for my website, which ofthese positions are the most profitable ones for click generation, oris it the same everywhere? Where would you put your banners?

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