Is Your First Touch Selfish?
Jul 14th, 2010 by David Svet
This is a simple, straightforward question. Is your first touch selfish? Is the first contact that you have with your prospects about you or about them? It’s surprising how many businesses only realize this is important when they are asked. Even then, some folks never get it.
In 1999, Seth Godin published Permission Marketing: turning strangers into friends, and friends into customers. If you haven’t read it, you should. It is the marketing world’s primer on permission marketing — the process of getting someone’s permission to talk to him or her about their needs because they have determined that your product or service could help them. It shines a white-hot spotlight on the fact that old school, interruption based marketing is largely dead.
These days people are most likely to receive your first touch from your website and/or blog. They see you at arms length on their own terms and are gone before you know they were there. How do you treat them? Are you selfish with their time and interest? Do you shower them with features and benefits? Do you show them your remarkable pricing? Or do you show them how you solve issues just like the one have? Do you clearly demonstrate why you exist as a company showing them your mission in the world? Do you offer any real help?
If not, your first touch with your prospects may be seen as kind of selfish. I suppose you could ignore it and continue to party like it’s 1999. Actually, no you can’t. We knew better back then too. Change is good. Give it a try.
Photo by Matt Day (Licensed under Creative Commons)
