The Marketing Strategy That Sells Without Selling

Surf the web. You will come across many frustrating messages asking you to buy something. Read those messages. You will discover the wildest hypes you have ever read. The owners of those messages use hard selling. This marketing strategy doesn’t work effectively because ‘people want to buy but they DON’T want to be sold to.’

Nobody becomes happy when she pays out her hard-earned money for a product. But everyone becomes happy when offered a FREE valuable product.

Rand Fishkin says the best way to sell something is not to sell it. Just earn the awareness, respect and trust of those who might buy it.

You might be wondering as to what a weird opinion this might be.

But Andrew Davies adds on to say ‘content builds relationships. Relationships are built on TRUST. Trust drives revenue.’

If you don’t sell, what should you do?

To answer this question satisfactorily, we have to look at buying trends of consumers.

Consumers buy from people they like and trust.

What trust and liking can a marketer derive from prospects by shoving his product to them to buy? Who enjoys persistent advertising messages?

To increase conversion rates and sales there is a gap that should be filled.

Before we look at what this is, let us find out what statistics say about those millions of leads generated every day.

Among Business2Business marketers, 61% of them send their leads to sales pages.

What is their average conversion rate of these leads?

Only 27%!

This is a finding from Marketing Sherpa.

Now, what should you do to increase sales?

I will answer that question in a minute. I would like to comment on some more conversion rate boosting methods.

How do other conversion rate boosters perform?

I will comment on just two of them.

One way of increasing conversion rates (turning web visitors into either buyers or subscribers) is A/B split testing. Using certain web resources you could find out where your visitors go on your web page.

You could equally find out weak areas which require tweaking. By making necessary corrections you improve conversions as you do what your web visitors want.

According to Conversion XL, however, only one out of eight (1 out of 8) A/B split tests have driven improved conversions.

Another conversion rate booster is cold calling. Online contacts with prospects could create leads. But according to Leap Jobs, only 2% of cold calls result in appointments.

Why are these methods ineffective?

As I said earlier on, prospects want to buy. However, they don’t want to be sold something. They want to make their own buying decisions.

A marketer should, therefore, create that enabling environment to make their own buying decisions.

Secondly, a marketer and her product should make herself be KNOWN, LIKED and TRUSTED. That is what marketing is about.

Cold calling and split testing can’t create that ‘ready-to-buy’ mindset.

Now, let us get back to the unanswered question above.

What should you do to increase sales?

There is one method that dramatically increases sales. The leads generated from this method are a nurtured type. These nurtured leads could make 47% larger purchases than non-nurtured leads, according to findings by Annuita Group.

You can sell without selling by making yourself known first. One way you can do this is to provide content that helps your prospects solve their problems. Offer it for FREE.

Secondly, make your prospects like you. The same valuable information you offer freely could create that liking. Who hates somebody who offers him free help?

Thirdly, make yourself be trusted. The same useful problem-solving content will help you be trusted. Your content will let your prospects know they are dealing with an expert. Somebody they know can help them solve their problems.

This is not the end of the road. You will not reap optimum benefits by just doing this. There are various techniques you could rely upon to mold buying decisions for your product. I discuss these in my article referred to below.