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05.12.09 Using Aggressive Sales Strategies For Email Advertising  By Peter Da Vanzo Do aggressive marketing practices repel you? Or make you more likely to buy? Is it a cultural thing? For example, does hard sell work in some cultures, but not others? Dear Friend...... ;) Personally, when I experience the hard-sell, I immediately become suspicious that the product is worthless. After all, shouldn't the product or service, if useful, pretty much sell itself? Having said that, I have, on occasion, bought from people using the hard sell. Curiosity sometimes gets the better of us all :) The fact that aggressive sales strategies are used so often tends to indicate such approaches do work. Let's take a look at some of these tactics, and if you can think of more examples, please add them in the comments. Also, if you've had success using such tactics yourself, please share your experiences. The Time Sensitive Offer A time sensitive offer, as the name suggests, is an offer that has a specific time limit. Typically, the more time people have to think about something, especially impulse buyers, the less likely they are to take action. So the time sensitive offer will always create a sense of urgency - combined with jeopardy. People feel they might miss out if they don't act immediately. Like many hard sell tactics, it is based on fear. In this case - the fear of missing out. Typical examples: • Limited places available: "Only ten places left!" • Limited stock available: "STOCK CLEARANCE!! WE ONLY HAVE A FEW OF THESE LEFT!! GET IN QUICK BEFORE THEY SELL OUT!" • Deadlines: "This offer will end at midnight, tonight! After then, we close the program" (Of course, they re-open it again at regular intervals)
Some people use PHP or Javascript date includes to put today's date in the content, and the offer expires tonight. Of course, the same thing happens tomorrow, and every day for the next year. Others go so far as popping up a clock that counts down your 5 minutes before the special pricing offer expires. Creating Hype The hype level of the hard sell is usually off the scale compared to most legitimate business offers. I recall an offer last year where the hype level for a vaguely SEO-related service was getting quite ridiculous. Like many other people, I was getting bombarded with emails at every step of the sales process. They were going to launch in a few weeks. They were just about to launch. They launched. They had launched, but there was still time to sign up! The aim is to create an event. The advertiser also needs to make some fairly outrageous claims. Trouble is, when everyone is making outrageous claims, then s/he needs to make even bigger ones in order to get noticed. It sometimes helps if you print a lot of zeros on an over-sized check to really ram the point home. How do you avoid getting sucked in? As Sean De'Suza recently described: Continue reading this article. About the Author: Peter Da Vanzo is the founder of Search Engine Blog.com, a news resource for the search engine marketing industry. He is also a regular contributer on SEO Book. |
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