23 Apr Celebrating your Successes Online
One of the things that I love about the Internet is its ability to place all businesses – large or small – on the same playing field. It is the great equalizer, whether you’re the challenger brand or the brand leader. Even a new startup has equal opportunity online.
Why? Because it all comes down to this…people don’t buy products because those products are exceptionally good. They buy those products because they believe those products are exceptionally good. We don’t buy a thing for what it is. We buy it for what we think it is.
Success in sales and marketing is all about perception, and that’s where the Internet comes in. Mind you, I’m not saying that we should fake it until we make it. The way in which we market ourselves should be a true representation of what we do or sell. But still, there are certain things that we can do that will not only increase our sales but change our prospects’ perception of who we are and how we do business.
One of these things is showing ourselves to be successful. Yes, success is a powerful thing. We all like to work with successful people. We like to buy from successful companies, and often, given the choice between a new startup with no track record or a well established successful company, we will choose the one we know can deliver.
Back to the Internet: How can we create the right message online even if we are a new startup? Simply this, we celebrate our successes and we tell people about them. Here are five quick tips, things that you can do that you can implement into your online presence that other people like you giving them of course a reason to like you too.
Number one, use testimonials on your website. It amazes me how many business websites I visit where there are no testimonials. You have customers, don’t you? Do they ever say good things about you? Then tell other customers those things. Show your testimonials. Put them up for everyone to see. Of course, these days most people don’t just volunteer a testimonial, do they? You have to ask! Or, if someone says something to you face-to-face or over the phone that sounds great, say it back to them and ask if ‘they would mind if you were to write that down as a testimonial on your website.” Most people will gladly say yes.
Number two, showcase your finest work. Are you a visual artist? Use a gallery. Do you sell a product? Does it look good? Use a gallery. Do you provide a service? Can you represent that somehow in illustration? Use a gallery. If you can show people what they’re going to own once they’ve made the decision to buy it, your chances of making that sale increase ten fold.
Number three, encourage reviews on your Google local business page, your Facebook page, or on LinkedIn with recommendations for skills and endorsements. These things help build your credibility and improve your authority in the eyes of your customer. Again, chances are you’ll have to ask, so don’t be afraid to ask people. Have you just finished some work with someone? Say to them, “By the way, would you mind leaving a review on my Facebook page,” or wherever.
Number four, video reviews. Oh, what a powerful tool. Do you interact face to face with your customers? Have you ever had some who were just so happy with the work that you’d done for them or the product that you’d sold them that they wanted to rave about it and they told you so? If you know them well enough, ask. Say, “Would you mind just repeating that for me on video, I’ve got my iPhone here, let me just record, say it again Sam, I’d love you to, thank you so much.” Video reviews are a powerful tool that we can use to help get potential sales over the line. When you’ve made a successful sale or interaction with a customer, absolutely you should be having them tell other people about it.
Lastly, number five, rich snippets and schema markup. This is a powerful tool that you can use with your SEO, search engine optimisation. You may have seen it sometimes in Google results where you look for something, and in the results you’ll see the title and then you’ll see perhaps a picture or some gold stars and a rating for that product or service. How is that done? It’s done with schema markup and rich snippets, depending on the type of product or service. This is, again, a powerful way to voice to your potential customers that you have a quality business, that you offer excellent service, that your product is second to none.
When it comes to celebrating our successes, yes, we must celebrate, but we must also shout about it, even though it goes against our Australian traditional values and we worry about things like the tall poppy syndrome. Here’s the deal, if you want to be successful in your business then you must show yourself as already being successful. The Internet is the great equaliser. Once you get a few runs under your belt, shout them out to the world. Let others see just how happy your customers are and they will flock to you, because people love dealing with successful people.
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