Artem Beliaikin / PexelsToday we live in an amazing world where people can get whatever they want, and they often have several options for where they can get it. No wonder businesses spend an incredible amount of resources on marketing. However, overdoing it may result in consumers feeling manipulated and walking away. How do you not sound salesy while convincing your prospects to use your product or services?
1. Relate to Customers’ Pain
Consumers are ready to pay for a remedy to their pain points. Before you sell anything, you have to identify your customers’ needs and the ways your product or service is going to help them. Use the data from your support and sales teams, study market survey reports, and establish communication channels with your audience. Get in touch with those who are already using your products and ask what you could do better.
Next, you can use this information to give actionable tips on how to use your product. Highlight your product’s unique features and quality. Give only the necessary information so that your customer isn’t bored. Yet, make sure to put together a helpful knowledge base where you list the advanced specifications for the inquiring minds.
2. Use Content to Educate Consumers
A blog is a powerful way to show that you are an expert in your industry, building trust around your company without sounding too salesy. Here, you can delve into in-depth explanations, share specific benefits of your product, talk about trends, post interviews with professionals, or give how-to tips. With social media marketing involved, a blog starts a conversation and attracts potential prospects.
Keep in mind that because readers are busy and fed up with lots of low-quality content, they tend to skim. A good way to make your texts easier to digest is by using visuals. The 2019 study from Venngage shows that original graphics, like illustrations and infographics, worked best for most content marketers, so experiment and see what your audience prefers.
3. Develop a Keep-in-Touch Strategy
People talk. They discuss numerous things and your company, too. If they talk about your company, they might as well start a dialogue with it. Monitor what’s being said about your brand and product and engage in the conversation. Here’s what you can do to set a relationship with your audience:
- Repost their relevant content and thank them.
- Offer something sweet (a discount, freebie, sample) every now and then.
- Help them with a valuable tip on something they have trouble with.
- Respond to complaints.
A good way is to ask open-ended questions that lead to a discussion. After all, if your prospects do the talking, you have no chance of seeming salesy or pushy. Look how Glocier finds what’s on its audience’s mind and handles a follower’s inquiry on Instagram:
4. Prioritize Your Customers’ Security
There’s just one thing that all customers want from all businesses: They want a guarantee that they will benefit from the purchase. If there is the slightest sign that they may regret having bought from you, they won’t do it, leaving you with no sales. That means you have to prove to your audience that they will enjoy using your product. Here are the basic guarantees every reliable provider has on his or her website:
- Money-back policy
- Return policy
- Safe payment systems
- Security badges
In addition, the statistics by GetVoIP shows that more than half of customers believe that automated systems can harm their personal data safety. So, make sure you have balanced out the issues of comfort for your customer service agents and your clients’ security needs.
5. Revise Your Email List
Building an email list takes time and effort. Make sure you only have those members in your list that gave their permission to receive your marketing emails. If you haven’t sent anything for a while, chances are your list has gone stale. So you’ll want to try to reactivate sleeping contacts and get those inactive clients back before you market anything to them.
Next, take time to get to know your audience and create catchy initial emails to send to prospects that don’t sound salesy. Especially in those first emails, make sure that subject lines hint to your readers about what’s inside rather than push them to open the email.
Using a conversational approach to copywriting is a good way to make your copy sound less salesy and remove distrust.
6. Let Them Try Your Product for Free
This tip is not for every business. However, letting consumers get a sneak peek into what your product or service can do for them is a surefire way to not sound salesy while increasing awareness. If your product or service is eligible for free sampling, you may
- Send a sample to a limited number of people and ask them for a review that will later go on your website.
- Offer your samples to an influencer to spread awareness and bring prospects to your page.
- Use events to distribute free samples to spur interest and make prospects search for you.
Keep in mind that customers tend to trust their own research rather than a salesperson’s. So, your task is to provide them with enough information by creating a strong social selling strategy.
7. Go Steady
Prepare your audience for purchase using a step-by-step launch strategy. By portioning out the information, you reduce the level of salesy, but do not let your customers forget about you. Here is the basic sequence to build awareness about your product or company:
- Educate your target audience about issues, popular solutions, and effective methods. Mention your product and how helpful it is in each described issue.
- Announce the most widespread pains and discreetly indicate how your product can alleviate them.
- Tease your product with an appealing visual and strong message.
- You are ready to launch.
While your product is already on the market, remember to continue educating your audience about it, explore your clients’ pain points, and adjust your sales pitches.
There you have it. In order to succeed, you need to tweak your perception of yourself from a provider to a consultant. Consumers don’t need things anymore, they need solutions. This approach will take time, but it will gain trust from your prospects, which proves to be much more effective in the long run.
By Lidia Bondarenko