Why making a sale isn’t about *what* you sell

Beauty may be overrated, but having a high, peachy ass in a pair of tights? Definitely isn’t

Women the world over will agree with me. As will male ballet dancers (Man-erinas?  Ballerinos? I’ll Google it …).

It was a truth revealed to me recently when I was browsing YouTube, as one does on an idle Sunday.

Every video I watched had the same advert playing repeatedly – for black tights.

It involved a sprightly young woman gallivanting around Paris, showing off her derrière (she must do a lotta lunges) in her fancy opaque Mixa tights.

Now, it wasn’t the advert itself that intrigued me – it was the sheer number of times I saw it.

I counted at least 4 during one video alone.

When I then logged into Facebook, adverts for the same brand of tights were showing up in my feed.

I went out later the same day and glanced at an advert on a billboard … and I saw it in the Stylist magazine that was thrust into my hands as I walked into the Metro.

So, inevitably, when I got to a store a few days later (conveniently in the market for tights), guess which brand of tights I noticed and bought?

I had Mixa tights on the brain. It was uncontrollable. No other brand mattered and I didn’t care that I was sucked into the Mixa marketing machine.

You’ve heard before that a customer has to see your brand 7 times before they trust you enough to buy.

In advertising (*casually adjusts glasses*), the theory’s called effective frequency, which talks about  the number of times a person is exposed to an advertising message before they buy, or it becomes redundant.

The number itself isn’t always 7 (in fact, some dude called Thomas Smith wrote a guide called Successful Advertising in 1885 saying the number was 20 – who has the patience for that?) but the theory remains the same.

The more times your message is seen, the more trust you build, and the more sales you make

Now, repeated exposure (not that kind) is something a company with hundreds of thousands in advertising budget can do well. But what about the rest of us solo business owners who think twice about spending $200 on Facebook ads?

As a service provider working online, your challenge is to remain present in the minds of your target audience without having to resort to YouTube and billboard adverts.

To do this, remember one thing and one thing only:

People buy into you before they buy your product or service

This means they have to like and trust you (read: you’re building relationships with them, not just shamelessly pushing your services) first.

Fortunately for us, social media has made this incredibly easy:

Join a Facebook group where your target audience are, see what questions they ask, and give them answers in the same way you would a paying customer.

Twitter chats for both your audience and peers are a great way of connecting with people without having to do the weird intro thing.

Emailing subscribers (not technically social media) to your site weekly creates an expectation to hear from you, which means they look forward to it, and feel something’s missing when your name isn’t in their Inbox on the same day every week.

This is how online business owners practice effective frequency and build trust with their audience.

Add to this free training webinars, guest posts and Facebook ads, and suddenly you’re everywhere at once. So when your audience is ready to buy a service like yours, who will they turn to?

And finally … I found the answer! A male ballet dancer’s called a danseur. The French … they’re everywhere …

 

Let’s get talkin’: In how many different ways are you visible to your target audience? How does this build trust in you? Comment below, yo.