The key to making your internet marketing effective is to understand the different goals and mind sets of your target audience and to publish a balance of information that responds to them.
Fact-finding and inspiration-seeking mindsets
From observing and analysing online visitor behaviour over the last 10 years, I find it helpful to make a simple distinction between fact-finding and inspiration-seeking mind sets. It’s a good rule of thumb to apply when planning online publishing for any organisation, whether marketing a service or a line of products.
Say a person goes online to buy a specific book. They know exactly what they are looking for and their goal is to find factual information on which seller stocks the book at the lowest price. Compare this with someone else who is looking for a book to buy as a gift and is seeking inspiration about which title will be most suitable.
Now it gets a bit more complicated, because in a typical session on the web, a person switches back and forth between the two mindsets without realising it. They may for example start out looking for a particular book and then get influenced by reader reviews of other titles.
Let’s look at a different scenario related to a service business. A potential customer is looking for web designers in their area. They search in Google and click first on the listing that appears most relevant. On landing on the website they start by finding answers to factual information such as who are they and where are they based. If the About us and Contact us pages tick these boxes, the first hurdle has been passed and the potential customer switches subconsciously to seeking inspirational information. This may include testimonials and case studies showing how the web designer has helped other companies, a web video, and a portfolio of previous web designs.
What does this mean for internet marketing?
Well, your website needs to integrate both factual and inspirational content if you are to convert visitors into potential customers. The navigation and page design needs to facilitate the behaviour of lateral browsing described above.
Thinking beyond your website, you should apply the same principle to all forms of internet communication that you publish, from emails to Google marketing and using Twitter.
Remember to maintain a balance between your factual and inspirational information streams and your internet marketing will pay off.
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