Mal Gordon – How to Sell on the Web

A car calendar with no cars? Genius!

Whilst having simultaneous conversations on Facebook with a former member of Australia’s BRW Rich 200 (i.e. appeared in the BRW Magazine top 200 rich list in 2002 and is still incredibly wealthy) and my local member for parliament, something dawned on me.

In the past, you had to get through many gatekeepers when making your sales calls…you had to defeat the…

Why social media is a game changer

You can now bypass the gatekeepers and communicate directly with the decision makers

You would be amazed at some of the heavyweights of industry who have profiles on social media such as Facebook, Twitter and Linkedin.

What is even more amazing is how ready they are to actively connect and engage with those who believe they have something to make their business better, faster, leaner and more efficient.

Have you searched Linkedin, Facebook or Twitter for the elephants in your industry? You know, the dream clients with deep pockets who you know could benefit from your product or service? If not, why not? It costs nothing to try and they may be a heck of a lot more approachable than you first thought.

Okay, somebody’s got to say something. I know that Facebook advertising is a bit of a new thing for many but the quality of the images used in most ads is just appalling.

It’s just mindless wallpaper, it’s like someone raided the generic istock image library and stuck it up on Facebook and prayed that we would make sense of it all. Too many ads use images that are:

Generic
Bland; and
Unoriginal

They break the first cardinal rule of advertising which is – GET THE AUDIENCE’S ATTENTION FIRST

because they clearly fail to do so. It’s like every small business operator in the land let their ten year old choose some generic image that is vaguely related to their business and thought “that looks professional.”

Well I have news for you lot – it doesn’t!

It screams “i’m too bloody cheap to employ a photographer or have a graphic designer knock up something whiz bang for a small fee!”

These images do not grab your attention and are filtered out, they are a waste of space and would be considered visual pollution if we bothered to notice them in the first place!

Would you want to click on any of these?

Your image will be king amongst men and your response rate will probably be alot higher than that of the dross that surrounds it. So if you are going to take a hands on approach to your online marketing and do opt to try Facebook Advertising I suggest that you spend a bit of time and effort planning the campaign so that it has a greater chance of being effective or employ a professional to do it for you. For god’s sake, don’t just stick any old rubbish up there because it’s vaguely related to your industry and we’re all supposed to know this.

Are you a member of a group or organisation that is keen to learn more about social media and online marketing?

How to Sell on the Web is a short (less than 20 minute) live presentation I give to groups.

It covers some real life case studies of businesses I have worked with to help them effectively sell on the web.

If you would like me to present How to Sell on the Web at your next function or meeting please email me mal@malgordon.com or call 0422 886 623 to discuss.

There’s a right way and a wrong way to market on Twitter. Here are some examples where marketers didn’t get it right.

An automatically generated direct message upon follow that was way off target.

And some Tweep thought that they would spam me with their offers of plus size women’s clothing.

The beauty of social media is that it allows us to connect with like minded people which makes for very highly targetted and appropriate word of mouth marketing. The whole direct mail scattershot approach that turns it into a numbers game kinda defeats the purpose.