Some new internet marketers are so anxious to get search engine results and traffic that they don’t ask themselves a very important question. What’s really in it for the customer? If you fail to ask yourself this question, you could be missing the point and the most important ingredient for online success.
Your value added proposition is important. It’s more important than just about anything to most customers. Today’s online consumer has been trained to look for value.
When you work at your search engine optimisation and when you look at your profits vs. returns, it will be apparent very quickly whether or not you are providing value to your customers. Even a great salesman can fail if the product isn’t what it’s advertised to be and a great product can go unnoticed if it’s not marketed well.
Perceived Value And Received Value
Perceived value gets people to buy and received value gets them to refer you to friends and gets them coming back for more. Consider the following tips for creating the impression of value and then providing value to your customers with more than they bargained for:
• Do the online products you’re selling make someone’s life better, save them time, or help them overcome an obstacle? You could find a market for people who want frivolous things but most people buy something that helps them.
• Is your pricing value-added? Will it give people more than what they perceive worth to be? If you’re selling something for a reasonable price in the eye of the customer but that they believe delivers above and beyond that, you’re providing value.
• What does your website content provide people? Are you writing articles that interest or help people interested in your subject matter? If you’re just writing fodder to get keyword rankings, you probably won’t get very far. Successful content marketers know how to pique interest with content and get results with it.
• What’s your pre-sales support like? Do you have a FAQ page that anticipates likely questions that could be barriers to conversion? Is there someone available to answer questions from people who are on the fence? This could make a big difference to your conversion rate.
• What’s your after sales service like? Do you support the product that you sell? Will you take it back if people aren’t satisfied? Customers today are savvy and look for these things when shopping around for products.
• Value often comes from perception through brand recognition. Do you represent a brand? What does that brand stand for? Some internet marketers prefer to be nameless and faceless. Some brand themselves. If you brand yourself you increase the chances of developing a loyal customer base. Customers do still develop brand loyalty and repeat business can have a huge profit margin because there is a lot less marketing time and money involved.
Continually ask yourself whether or not you are providing value to your customers. If you have a strong enough value statement and reputation, your customers will continue to buy and keep coming back for more which will help you grow your online business dramatically.
See you at the top of Google!
Sean Rasmussen
SEO Australia Pacific
AussieSEO.com © 2007 - 2010
Hi Sean,
This is an excellent guide for providing value for your customers. You’re right; it really pays to think in terms of what’s in it for your customers? You might think you’re giving them a great deal but if your stats don’t back that up; you’ve got a problem.
I’ll be working my way through this list in the near future as I’m adding a new product to my site.
.-= Jazz Salinger´s last blog ..Finding Your Passion =-.
Am I providing value for my customers? this is the most important question to ask.
I need to be adding a positive to their lives in some way. I prefer to sell something that helps people rather than sell something frivolous.
Whatever I sell I would like to think that I am contributing to a persons growth and they are benefiting from it.
A lot of the questions you ask above I can honestly answer no too. I don’t intentionally not provide value to my customers and I definately would never rip anyone off, but when it comes to providing useful information I think I fail. I am so wrapped up in writing around the keyword that sometimes content is pretty lame.
.-= Jackie Stenhouse´s last blog ..Anxiety Separation in Children =-.
Keywords are important as we all know, but write for your readers first Jackie. Once the article is written, you can work on the on-page SEO factors
Customers are THE most important factor to online success. They spend the time on your site, form a relationship with what they read or see and ultimately spend their money. If you are promoting or selling a product you should do as much as possible to provide genuine and real information to your customers.
As you say Sean, happy customers will always be the ones wanting to give you their money and marketing your products (whether they know that they are doing it or not).
.-= Cemil´s last blog ..Thesis Theme 18 – Released =-.
You got it in one Cemil. You can do everything right (ie; great sales copy, great product, great marketing etc), but if you fail to provide value and top quality service to your customers, your success will be short lived
.