The real benefit of capitalism, as opposed to any other “ism”, is competition. Without competition in the marketplace blank DVD discs would be five bucks instead of five cents and you could, if you were lucky, afford to make maybe four calls a month on your cell phone.
Nowhere is the concept of free enterprise and economic competition illustrated more clearly than in e-commerce. The low cost of entry into the market — essentially under $100 to toss up a website — makes it possible for kitchen-table entrepreneurs to compete with Fortune 500 companies for the same customers. The playing field isn’t level of course, the rich teams have access to better web designers and promotional opportunities than the poor. But it is possible for a person of limited means to get into the same game as the bigger teams and make some money at it.
Compare that to the brick-and-mortar world, where the cost of getting and staying in business is high, and the beauty of the web is apparent. Thousands of independent vendors compete with WalMart in cyberspace. How many mom-and-pop variety stores still compete with WalMart on the ground? While there are, of course, exceptions — millions of them — the vast majority of the web’s 40 or 50 million commercial sites are non-exclusive. They sell exactly the same things as tens, dozens, hundreds, or thousands of other sites … usually for roughly the same prices.
Take real estate. Exclusive listings comprise less than ten percent of the average Realtor’s listings. In any given community, at least 90 percent of the homes for sale on every real estate site are the same MLS listings. Since you can’t buy a house using an online shopping cart, the question becomes who’s site generates the most telephone or email inquires about the properties. Almost always it’s the ones who know what to say and say it in the best way.
Consider something that can be, and usually is, purchased online: Music players. How many sites do you think offer iPods for sale? Don’t know? Neither do we. But there are a ton of them. Some probably sell thousands of units a month, others maybe a few hundred a year. What separates the winners from the losers? Their content, pure and simple. The words they use to entice consumers to buy. The same formula that enables one Ford dealer to sell four times more cars off his lot than the dealer across town, the quality of the sales pitch.
But wait, maybe that’s not true. The Ford dealers don’t have to contend with search engine returns, everyone in town knows who they are. OK. That’s a point. But remember this, search engine bots don’t look at pictures and graphics, they don’t know what color your logo is or whether you have the flashiest Flash on the block. All they do is read your words and check your links.
And what about the top five sites in searches for “Charleston, SC homes for sale” or “iPhone?” Does the site returned number one outsell number three and five? Not necessarily. Few people buy after visiting only one site. They’ll look at a number of sites on the first and second return pages and make a decision based on the quality of the sales message.
As with real estate and iPods, there are many websites offering to write your sales message for you. Unlike a house on Main Street or an iPod, words are not all the same, they’re only as good as the person writing them.
The winning Ford dealer doesn’t use the amateur copywriting services offered as a freebie by the radio and TV stations he advertises on, he hires a professional to craft his words. He doesn’t depend on his sales people to mumble whatever happens to come into their heads at customers. He drills them into learning the message he wants them to convey, he teaches them to recite specific, relevant points about each model on the lot.
Telemarketers who get rich work from professionally written scripts. Those who don’t use scripts hear only the lonely sound of hangups and are usually out of the business within a week.
So how are your site’s words? Are they equal to the task of competiting with those of your Fortune 500 competitors? If not, GetWebContent can help. At GWC. we specialize in Fortune 500 quality at small business prices.
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