The marketing strategy that sells without selling

Browse the web. You will come across many frustrating messages asking you to buy something. Read those messages. You will discover the wildest exaggerations you have ever read. The owners of those messages use the hard sell. This marketing strategy does not work effectively because ‘people want to buy but do NOT want to be sold’.

No one is happy when they pay their hard-earned money for a product. But everyone is happy when they are offered a valuable product for FREE.

Rand Fishkin says that 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 what a strange opinion this could possibly be.

But Andrew Davies adds that ‘content builds relationships. Relationships are based on TRUST. Confidence drives revenue.’

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

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

Consumers buy from people who I like it Y confidence.

What confidence Y taste Can a salesperson derive prospects by offering their product for them to buy? Who enjoys persistent advertising messages?

In order to increase conversion rates and sales, there is a void that needs to be filled.

Before we see what this is, let’s find out what the statistics say about those millions of leads generated every day.

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

What is your average conversion rate from these leads?

Only 27%!

This is a Marketing Sherpa find.

Now what should you do to increase sales?

I’ll answer that question in a minute. I would like to comment on some more methods to increase the conversion rate.

How do other conversion rate boosters work?

I will comment only two of them.

One way to increase conversion rates (turn web visitors into buyers or subscribers) is A/B split testing. Using certain web resources, you can find out where your visitors go on your web page.

You might also find weak areas that require adjustment. By making the necessary corrections, you improve conversions as you do what your website visitors want.

However, according to Conversion XL, only one in eight (1 in 8) A/B split tests have resulted in improved conversions.

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

Why are these methods ineffective?

Like I said before, prospects want to buy. However, they do not want to be sold something. They want to make their own purchasing decisions.

Therefore, a marketer must create that enabling environment to make their own buying decisions.

Second, a marketer and their product must be known, liked, and trusted. That’s what marketing is all about.

Cold calling and split testing can’t create that “ready to buy” mentality.

Now, back to the unanswered question above.

What should you do to increase sales?

There is a method that dramatically increases sales. The leads generated from this method are of the nurturing kind. These nurtured prospects could make 47% larger purchases than non-nurtured prospects, according to Annuita Group’s findings.

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 FREE.

Second, make your prospects like you. The very valuable information that you freely offer could create that liking. Who hates someone who offers you free help?

Third, make them trust you. The same useful content to solve problems will help you to be trustworthy. Your content will let your prospects know they are dealing with an expert. Someone they know can help them solve their problems.

This is not the end of the road. You won’t get optimal benefits just by doing this. There are several techniques you can rely on to shape your product purchase decisions. I discuss this in my article mentioned below.