Godoploid Design by Tom Bird

The average person probably wouldn’t think of selling a product by creating an experience. No most would probably suffice with a flashy statement like “huge value” or “limited time”, but with the digital age and internet trend advertising strategies are constantly changing. Why is that? As more and more people are bombarded with the tons of incredibly annoying adware, pop up boxes, flashy statements and largely false statements with no backing they slowly become desensitized to the advertising buzz that makes use of these tactics. In fact, most people ignore the ads altogether never even glancing at them before closing their hopeless pop up boxes. Trends show that the average internet user today has only the attention span of 20 or 30 seconds on any given website and or advertisement. So if you can’t get their attention within 30 seconds your probably doomed for an exit from that user.

So what ways are there to help battle this increasing trend among users?

• Being a trusted brand, meaning having prior repore with the customer through conversation, prior purchases or relevant information that caters to their interests.

So how can we fight back against a freight train trend that is growing by the second? Well Advertisers and marketing professionals know that creating an experience is of the utmost importance when trying to win over a prospect. Creating a non confrontational, low profile experience is the key. You’re probably wondering, “How does that help me sell?!” There are many ways but most important is creating an experience, in which users can relate that product with their personal lives. If they can see themselves using the product or service they are much more likely to purchase the product.

The objective of creating an experience is to create a subconscious connection between your product and or service with the customer. Think of it this way, the hope is that sometime down the road when they consider an activity or event, they remember your product as being related with that certain event.

Creating that experience takes time and creativity. A couple main points when developing your experience:

• Always make sure you’re not directly pitching your product or service but telling how it works in their lives or how it can improve their life.
• When creating the experience it’s important to not bombard them, but find ways when your copywriting to connect with that prospects life in some way however small or big. This could be something as small but as meaningful as a priors customers experience with your product. For instance:
  

  “My son and I had a great time with the product, it really gave us the chance to connect and just become dad and son again.”

  Take the example, now you may touched a sensitive spot in a lot of fathers who may have been busy with business or whatever else and now they realize they haven’t had much time for that with their son. Likewise they may also realize its been a while and this may just be enough to spur them on into trying this activity with your product.

  • Finding that connection is the key between sales and window shoppers.

Another Great way of creating a user experience is by creating a blog. Many times companies will create blogs so that users can transmit information, share ideas and make virtual communities of the products or services users. In a way, it uses your customers to promote your product by allowing them to self promote their experience with the product. Likewise if the product is bad it could become a negative venture and should be closely monitored for negative feedback. Below is a catch phrase I had used on one of my clients homepages to promote the blog which took up just a small corner of the page but was creative enough to catch attention and intrigue users.

“Come find out all the newest and best ways to use your (product/service). Included are all the best tips from people like you about how to better use your (product/service). So come on, join and start sharing your experience with us!”

In the example above, notice that we haven’t said how great the product is but emphasize how you can use it. Naturally a person will be able to see how great the product is by relating with the same experiences others have.

Another possible idea could be to take a tutorial approach by creating a timeline of events with your product and creating steps where each event is described. With this approach making sure that you have brainstormed your topics first is a good idea, make sure you have a natural process that flows. If you were say a distributor of fold up camping chairs you would want to point out the events during say a hike when you would want to use the chair. In those events is where you can really promote your product. For instance, let’s create a quick process around a new easy chair developed for hikers (example only):

• A long hike, up the hill
  • We started our hike with a brisk early morning climb for four hours, seeing countless beautiful sights, wildlife and the peaceful serenity of being away from the outside world.
  • Once we completed our first four hour leg of the climb we quickly unpacked and sat up camp for lunch on a plateau on a shady overhang. Our “Chairs from ______” easily unpacked and were just what we needed after a four hour long hike.” You could then add in also a link for other reviews and past customer experiences.

Another good way to promote the product would be to create some promotion where customers submitted their own stories in return to be entered into some kind of drawing for something. This will help create more feedback and will help with your SEO. This promotion could be for something as simple as perhaps a giftcard or credit torwards their next purchase.

Creating a mini site for a single product also has advantages. One you know that if those people are specifically looking at that site then they must have some sort of specific interest in that single product. Many times corporations will have a corporate site which then leads down to their individual brands. Take for example Behance, they have a major corporate site and then dwindle the sites down by specific purpose like networking site, a job site, an online magazine, etc. This will help users get a better content and help them better find what they are looking for. Some might ask, “well what if they might’ve been interested in this product as well shouldn’t I have something up there?” This is a legitimate concern however I still say its not the best solution. Perhaps a subtle, clean organized thumbnail directing to other product pages may be helpful but I am a firm believer people know what they want and will find it on their own.