by
Karl Augustine
Yes and no.
With any business, credibility is a key element to building trust
which should ultimately lead to making a sale.
This is never truer than in Internet marketing for these reasons:
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*People don`t want to be sold to, they want information.
*People mostly use the Internet to get information at no cost,
not to purchase a good or service.
*People are skeptical about purchasing online for fear of being taken.
*The would be customer most likely has no idea who the seller
is and isn`t guaranteed any type of communication after the sale,
no matter what the website may say about a guarantee.
*Internet marketing has been around long enough that savvy prospects
have seen their share of scams, shoddy products, and outrageous
promises and their defenses are heightened because of it.
So what does the newcomer and mid-level marketer do to gain
credibility amidst all this skepticism? Validate their USP (Unique
Selling Proposition) by ensuring that their prospect`s perception of
who they are and what they have to offer is one of quality.
Until the sale is made and the prospect turned customer actually
has the product in hand, the perception of quality is just that,
merely perception. Once the product is in the hand of the new
customer, the perception of quality is purely defined by the
customer, not the seller.
How the customer views the product after the sale is made determines
his/her perception of quality of the product. However, before the
sale is made, the perception of quality is largely determined by
seller, and that`s where sales are made or lost.
Why is the perception of quality determined by the seller? Because the
prospect can`t possibly validate a product`s quality without owning
it. The seller tells the prospect what makes the product have quality
and how it will benefit them. The sales copy on the web site, the
clarity of the graphics, the proposed benefits the product delivers,
and the overall message that validates the USP that is relayed to the
prospect, all define the perception of quality of the product as
dictated by the seller. It is up to the prospect to decide whether
he/she will believe the message that the seller is relaying to
him/her.
Because of the prosect`s skepticism, validating the USP and
establishing credibility can be a chore for the newbie and
intermediate Internet marketer regardless of the quality of the
product itself. Since the newbie or intermediate marketer isn`t
a household Internet marketing name, action needs to be taken to
establish online credibility.
How? Have other Internet marketers and would be customers help. Go
to the well-known forums on the Internet and post messages asking for
feedback in return for a copy of the product being sold. This is one
of the most common methods to collect testimonials for products and
services.
Another effective way to gain credibility as it is perceived by the
prospect,is to gather testimonials by giving the product to their
list or a small portion of their list in exchange for a testimonial.
Yet another way to gain testimonials and thus credibility, is to
approach well-known experts within the product niche and ask for
their impression of the product being sold with the caveat that, if
the expert was in agreement that the product was quality, he/she
would send you a testimonial. Experts won`t endorse products if they
aren`t quality because they`ve spent far too long establishing
themselves online and unwarranted testimonials for sub par products
damage their credibility.
Ideally, the newcomer and intermediate Internet marketer will
get unsolicited testimonials, but the tactics listed before are
simply ways to add to credibility. The fact that some testimonials
may be obtained through bartering, doesn`t deter from the
testimonial`s credence.
If the product is truly quality, how the testimonial was obtained is
irrelevant to new prospects because to them, the testimonial`s origin
is unknown.
Another effective way to establish online credibility is to publish
articles to various websites. The same principle holds true here as with the expert testimonial scenario. If an Internet marketer gets
his/her articles published in newsletters that have sizable
subscriber bases, that marketer`s credibility is heightened. Many e-zine owners that have large subscriber bases will not publish sub-par
articles, because doing so would damage the credibility of the
publication.
While getting articles published in other popular e-zines doesn`t
deliver specific benefits to prospects about the product being sold,
it will add to general online credibility of the seller.
Whether the newbie or intermediate Internet markerter use
testimonials or article publication to establish online credibility,
the true measure of credibility is in the product itself. Before the
sale credibility is established by the seller through the overall USP
and through testimonials.
After the sale is made, online credibility is defined by the customer.
The question at this point is: Did the product live up to the sales
message? If so, online credibility with regards to customer-to-
seller one to one relationship has been successfully established.
Work hard, be humble...
Karl Augustine
(c) Karl Augustine
http://www.9mistakes-online.com
http://startingsmart.9mistakes-online.com
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