Internet Marketing - Matt Bailey [78]
Figure 7-2: Fisher-Price website—more about parenting than toys
Similarly, a searcher for a vacation may come across the Colonial Williamsburg website (Figure 7-3). However, this is not just a site about a historical village; it offers educational research, teachers resources, essays, and articles about colonial life in early America.
Figure 7-3: Colonial Williamsburg website—more about history than vacationing
Connect to the Need
As the Fisher-Price example demonstrates, a company does not always have to focus on the primary economic activity to make sales. As with many companies, educating the consumer is what produces more and better results than an outright sale. An educated consumer is a better consumer, because they are more likely to purchase more, more frequently, and to be loyal.
The Fisher-Price content goes deep into providing information about raising children and the developmental needs of infants and toddlers. By providing significant amounts of information by growth and development stage, Fisher-Price can then recommend specific activities rather than toys (they just happen to sell the toy that’s tied to the activity).
The site goes into great detail helping parents who desire to help their baby. By speaking to the emotional nurturing aspect, recommended toys are positioned as the key to building that growth needed by the baby (Figure 7-4).
Figure 7-4: Fisher-Price positioning toys by development stage
After the introduction of the recommended toys is a content area showing the products available from Fisher-Price, with links to the products (Figure 7-5). The products are not able to be purchased from this page—that isn’t the primary objective. The primary objective is still to educate and reinforce the need to be a good parent. Fisher-Price goes on to provide guides for how to play with the recommended toys. For instance, the site provides methods that caregivers can use instead of just giving the baby the blocks, which will provide care, nurturing, and better development skills.
Figure 7-5: Fisher-Price product recommendation and play advice
Connecting to your customers’ needs doesn’t always have to be educational or emotional. Finding a different way to position your product against the thousands of other alternatives can connect to a need in a compelling way as well. U.K.-based site Paramount Zone does this very well with its product descriptions (Figure 7-6).
Figure 7-6: Paramount Zone’s humorous take on products descriptions
As you can see, the content does not focus on the typical voltage and size features but develops an emotional connection with the reader. It does so by finding a common theme (rapport) upon which to build a specific need. Rather than simply showing the product, using a two- or three-line description direct from the manufacturer’s website, and listing the specs, Paramount Zone creates content that is designed to connect with the searcher. Reading the product description creates nods of agreement; people identify with getting a cup of coffee in the morning, getting distracted, and returning to their desk and to a cold cup of coffee. Once that mental imagery is in the reader’s mind, they have created the emotional connection and the need. It just so happens that the answer to this need also has a spare USB hub.
Create Additional Need
Using humor, the parenting drive, the desire to save the earth, or the urge to be a better citizen are all methods of creating a need beyond the original need. However, sometimes it just needs to be refined into a simpler message, such as making life