Staying relevant is Useful in the Online Traffic Formula

by Trisha Frauenhofer

For going on forty years, the mantra of marketing is that he who yells loudest is heard. There’s been an ever growing backlash as people get tired of being manipulated by marketing, and a growing case of ennui about marketing and options. You’ve seen this for yourself - you’ve probably seen TV ads that made you go “Eh, no” about their claims, and the revolt against advertising has taken many forms.

The most common rebellion against advertising is the DVR, like TiVo - it’s now almost impossible to get a TV ad to any consumer who has a television with one of these devices. On the Internet, the analogy to Tivo is add blocking software, and RSS syndication, which filters out ad links. With 90% or more of all ads being blocked, how does your business get its message out?

One way to get noticed is to have positive consumer voices. Who do you believe when you visit an online business? Do you listen primarily to the description and claims by the marketer, or the reviews by actual consumers? If you are at all like me, you probably read all the reviews and even one negative can totally throw you off.

The downside of trusting your readers is negative reviews. Amazon almost lost two publishing houses over negative reviews, but eventually got them back. Ultimately, a negative review doesn’t hurt you; it’s simply telling the customers what didn’t work about the product for that person. It’s difficult, when you’ve put your heart and soul into a product, to look at a negative review with calm and poise, but the rewards for doing so are very high.

That isn’t to say that you shouldn’t read negative posts. Negative posts are a filter. They’re being put up by someone who cares enough about your message to tell you what didn’t work about it for them. If you make or design a product, this is the most valuable feedback you can get. Remember not to attack back - just thank them for their input, and if you can, offer a few suggestions, in the form of “In the interests of making this work for you, how do you feel about options A or B?”

Second, look at their review as an avenue on how to improve your product. This person cared enough about your message, what you were saying, to try your product. It didn’t work for them, and they cared enough to tell you why. Use that information to make your product better! Just remember, you’ll win more arguments with reasonableness than you will with defensive temper tantrums.

Let’s look at two sites that do a good job of maintaining relevance and a customer commitment, Amazon and Google. With Amazon, they track what you last purchased and, based on what other people who’ve purchased similar things have bought, can make recommendations. Some people get terrified about having their purchase data tracked, but it’s one of Amazon’s major breadwinners.

In Amazon’s system, let’s take books for an example. When you pull up an item, they list other similar and relevant books relating to the keywords you typed. They also have what other consumers bought along with it and reviews. All these methods are successful in use with the online traffic formula.

About the Author:

Trisha Frauenhofer is an online marketing professional who loves teaching her most potent online secrets including the Online Traffic Formula