The second type of content you have is advertiser-supported content. On the web, this is the type of content I see people screwing up the most often.
To see what I mean, let’s go back to the TV analogy.
Here on the West Coast, the movie Oscar, starring Sylvester Stone just went off. While I was watching the movie, there were commercials. The one I remember most was for Cancer Centers of America.
Now I ask you. What the hell does Cander Centers of America have to do with the film Oscar?
Not a damn thing – at least not on the surface.
So why would CCA run their commercial during that movie? We’ll come back to that in a second. First, let’s talk about your site.
Maybe you sell sunglasses. So you build a site that is a store about sunglasses, and everyone and their mother will beat a path to your store anytime they need a pair of sunglasses, right?
No way. Thanks for playing “how to go broke with a website”. We have some lovely parting gifts for you.
Here’s where the model goes wrong: unless your store is located within the online equivalent of a mall like ebay, and people are there specifically to shop, that really isn’t what you want to do with your site.
People don’t turn to a channel on TV to buy things, unless of course they are looking at QVC or the Home Shopping Network. They turn on the TV to be entertained, to get information (like the news), or because they’re lonely and they want voices in the background.
So how does this relate to you?
Well, think about why people come to the internet. If your site is about sunglasses, you don’t want to just build a store. Why?
Even when someone goes online to find a pair of sunglasses, unless they’re already signed up to get updates at your site, they’re probably going to an online chain site like Target, a site that will put them in touch with places to buy sunglasses, like Ebay.com, or they’re going to a search engine to look up something like “best deals on Raybans”.
Knowing this, you should realize that your site model is a little backwards.
Your products are the advertisements for your site, they aren’t the content. I didn’t come online to surf the web equivalent of an infomercial – though, under certain conditions, that model can work..
But normally, if I’m a potential shopper, I came online to be entertained, to find information, or because I’m lonely and I want someone to reach out to me.
And if I came online just to buy a pair of sunglasses, there’s only two ways you’ll get my attention – if I find you in a search, or, if I already know about your site and you’re smart enough to remind me that you’re there to help me.
Given that information, how should my site be set up to catch that buyer at the right time?
There’s two modes that you’re going to get your potential customer who needs a pair of shades. Either you’ll get them in their surf mode, or you’ll get them in their buy mode. Your site needs to be set up to capture them in either mood.
Or mode.
Come on, you know what I mean…
Anyway, what I’m saying is, don’t hide all the sales pages on your site but don’t scream BUY SOME SUNGLASSES either.
The main pages of your site should be funneled to one purpose – getting some way to follow-up with the surfer. You want them on your list, subscribing to your feed, joining your community, whatever. On TV, they’ll tell you a story in the form of your favorite show, with characters you grow to know and love, despite the fact that they’re fictional. Or they’ll give you a decent movie, with promises of a different film that you’ll enjoy if you come back to the bat place at the same bat time tomorrow, later that day, a week from today.
In a word, content.
And every site has it. Some have content in the form of yucky gate way pages that you run away from as soon as you see them. Others have 12 pages of pretty dry, but useful, information. Then there are sites that seem to have a new page, or a new product, or a new tip posted to their forums, just about every day. You like the content, but you can’t possibly keep up with the volume. So you join the newsletter, subscribe to the RSS feed, or join the community because you don’t want to miss anything.
Did you get that?
Set your site up to have more content than can be consumed in a day, with the promise of more. Good content.
Now here’s the thing. You have a site about sunglasses. What are you going to put on your site that someone who needs sunglasses will want to come back for every day?
Maybe you have the lowest price sunglasses that will get to my house the fastest, guaranteed. Perhaps your site has the now famous “Whether” report – telling me whether or not I’ll need sunglasses today in my home town or at over 2000 locations in the world. Or your site has the Shady Destination of the Day, a short spiel on what fabulous sunny place I can’t afford to go to but love to dream about, complete with pictures.
Whoever said the entire content of the site had to be about sunglasses directly?
I sound crazy, don’t I? Well let’s go back to the TV model, shall we?
I was watching the film Oscar. And there was a commercial about Cancer Treatment Centers of America. Do I have cancer? No. But someone I know does. And the people who ran that commercial took a gamble on a little thing called demographics. They figure I’m between the ages of this and that, and I make this amoung of money, based on stats they get from the Network, so the best time to show this information is the time that I saw it, among others.
Now it doesn’t quite work that way online. But the issue of demographics teaches us something. If you look at your web statistics, or poll your audience, you’ll be able to figure out what interests they have in common, and you’ll be able to target advertising towards them. Your product can be the commercial, or you can use someone else’s, through Google AdSense or sites like TextAd.biz – you just don’t want to go sending them off until you have presented a way to get in contact with them again.
And if, ultimately, you can’t find a way to make your topic appeal to the group that would want to buy what you have, it may be time to go back to the drawing board and research another topic to specialize in.
I’m inclined to think that a lot more models work on the web than people think. I have a friend who co-owns the top selling watch site to advertise on eBay. He makes a pretty, shiny penny. From watches for crying out loud. There’s got to be a niche for you too.
So to sumamrize, with the incidental browser at your site, you can entertain them with your content, inform them with articles about what you’ve calculated may be their interests, or build a community where they can talk to other like-minded people.
Now for the person in the second mode – the buyer.
As we’ve discussed, you will get the buyer through a search, or from keeping up with the contacts you already have.
In the first instance, this is just another selling point of the content-rich site. If you’ve got great, fresh content that ranks well in one of the major search engines, you will get that keyboard traffic. But you have to know what I’m likely to type in – it won’t be “sunglasses”. It will probably be “Raybans for less than $20″ or “cheap sunglasses”.
And how do you know this? You go to Nichebot.com or some other keyword research resource and find out what I would type., or you go to Google AdWords and buy spots for a bunch of related keywords that I’ll type in.
In the second instance, you know that odds are, when I fire up my computer and go online, I’ll either check my email, or my news feeds before I open up my browser. It’s just something people do out of habit, log on, read the mail, check the news – probably habits that were transferred from the offline world. The first popular internet service providers kind of forced it on you – if you have AOL, you’ll see the Mail button and a bunch of news before you ever get to thw Web.
Normal people – not web heads like us, but the average Netizen – don’t get a whole lot of email that they read. They may only check it once a week.
Now if I open my email and I have 20 new items in my Inbox, I might see a note from my mom, some spam that made it through the filters, your notice about this week’s sunglasses specials, a chain letter from a pal at work, and my joke list.
I go to click on Mom’s note and something triggers my memory of why I logged on in the first place – that’s right, I’m going to Bora Bora on Saturday, I want some sunglasses!
And there’s your lovely note with the cheapest deals.
Done.
So the next time you prepare yourself to start a new site, or add a page to your existing one, or are thinking about remodeling, think about content. Think about the way content and advertising is approached on TV. Not all the examples will translate. But it may give you some pointers on how and why to arrange your site to make more sales.
On to type three, after these words from our sponsors.
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