As you know this blog is about getting the very best from your computer; and making money with it is certainly a good use to put it to.

There is a certain basic fact to all marketing, not only internet marketing: That fact is that one needs customers or one might as well never have bothered in the first place. – Getting customers involves attracting prospective customers to one’s online "stall", and then funnelling them through a number of levels, passing a number of products, each with an option to purchase, as they go. When they make a purchase then they become a customer. – ‘Quite logical really.

Advertise More Products

But think of it this way: When you go to the supermarket, you might end up going there solely to buy a specific product, yet come out with several products. Why is this? Because the supermarket is marketing further products to you as soon as you enter it.

As you walk around you notice other products on special offer that catch your eye, and you decide that you could do with some of them – especially the ones where you buy one and get another free, and/or those marked at half the recommended retail price perhaps. (‘Same difference really.)

Attraction

- But before you visit the supermarket you’re only a prospective customer. The supermarket needs to attract you to it first, and then get you inside its doors so that it can start marketing product to you. This is commonly achieved by advertising in offline business, but online it’s a lot more likely that you’ll get most of your customers through relationship-marketing and social-media-advertising. – Another post’s worth there, perhaps?

Grab The Customer’s Interest

When you finally arrive and enter the store, the supermarket doesn’t want you to go away again without making a purchase; so they make the area just inside the entrance as pleasing and eye-catching as is possible, as well as placing lots of products on special-offer nearby for you to see.

(All right; not all supermarkets do this; but they should in the interests of competency and sales-generation. – The problem might possibly be that recently a lot of spotty-faced teens without a clue about marketing or commerce might have been promoted from shelf-stacking, by an equally semi-competent under-manager, to management for whatever reason… But that’s their problem…)

- Department-stores are maybe a better example to use in this single analogy, where the managers tend to be a bit more on-the-ball.

In the same way, when online marketing, it’s a good idea to position your best offers and loss-leaders right at the top of your sales-funnel, so that prospects whom you’ve enticed in can see good value and, even if they don’t purchase, they’ll probably proceed to the next level with the expectation of more great deals.

More Choice

Back to the supermarket-example: As you walk toward the area where the specific product that you have in mind is located, you see many more special offers and other offers; products stacked on the shelves in clear view with their prices and discounts displayed for you to read. Eventually you notice something you’re interested in that wasn’t what you had in mind when you approached the supermarket. You look at it, see the special offer on it, and in your shopping basket it goes, ready to purchase at the checkout along with what you originally intended to purchase.

This probably happens a number of times, and you end up taking a few products to the till to purchase, even though you intended to buy just the one product originally.

It may be an idea to show other products on the way to the advertised product when marketing on the internet; although the logistics of this can be tricky. Certainly after the target product is reached as the customer goes through the sales-funnel can be a good time to advertise other products in addition to the main item for sale.

Relocate Position

Another tactic supermarkets use at times is to move stock to a different area, from where you can see, or see signs pointing to, the product you wanted to purchase. – When you arrive at the point where you thought the product you wanted was, you see another special offer on a different product.  Some customers might also buy that product too.

Maybe you might like to try reorganising your sales-funnel from time to time, making it clear to the customer or prospective customer exactly what’s happened, maybe with an apology for any inconvenience caused perhaps?

Suck It And See

Supermarkets sell product en-masse every day, so taking an example from their tactics and applying it to your internet marketing business can’t be a bad thing. It’s certainly something that I’ve tried once in the past, and will try again in the future.

Important: Don’t A-Maze Your Prospects

Just a word of warning here, though: Don’t make the prospective customer have to think too much if at all: -

A supermarket can appear in a way to be a bit of a maze, but the customers inside it can’t simply leave without passing even more great offers and, most likely, having something take their interest before they walk out the door empty-handed.

An online sales-funnel is easy to leave though; and if customers find themselves in a maze of multiple levels and choices then they’ll probably take the easiest choice and click the little X at the top-right-hand corner of he screen.

Your sales funnel needs to allow the customer to travel, as if on a conveyor-belt, past products and offers without having to “walk” – in other words without having to click any link: The only thinking a prospective customer should have to do is decide whether they want to purchase or not. Every other question should be answered for them and every action made or provided for them before they see the product and also, sometimes, at the time when they see the product. – If the prospect has to think about navigating the online store then the prospect isn’t thinking about purchasing, and instead is probably thinking about the fastest way out so that they can visit one of your competitors that is easier to purchase from.

Imagine visiting a supermarket and being carried on a conveyor belt, which you can step off of at any time in order to examine any product further: The only work you do is ask yourself “Do I want to purchase that product?”: That’s how it should be for your online prospective customers; and that’s the only necessary difference between an online market and an offline supermarket.

___

Do you have anything to add, or that you’d like to correct, in what I’ve written above? If so I look forwards to hearing about it in your comments.