During recent casual browsing, I noticed the following magicJack ad (on the left):
Now can anyone tell what the heck the product is? (I happen to know, since I also remember a late night commercial that explains it.)*
Put yourself in the place of the site visitor who is seeing this for the first time. I mean, thanks for the Freebie and all, and congrats that PC Magazine seems to like it … but what is it?
A product? Perhaps magicJack is a flat tire fixer? Is it an apple-flavored children’s breakfast cereal with a magic toy inside?
From the picture, I might guess maybe it plugs into a phone jack and does…well… something phone-ish?
Or maybe it’s a service by a local magician? The possibilities are endless.
What isn’t endless is a prospective customer’s attention span, even when a Freebie is involved.The best way to sell something is for the customer to have a recognized need for that something. If I don’t know what you’re selling, it’s unlikely I can recognize that need on my part. It strikes me that an awful amount of marketing dollars are being spent to get a prospect to act on the freebie offer for something which remains indistinct.
Bryan, Jeffrey and I often talk about the three fundamental questions we knew were core to successful conversion and persuasion when we created persuasion architecture: “who are you talking to?”, “what action do you want them to take?”, and “what do they need to take that action?” Most of the time our posts touch on how easily companies flub the first two questions. However, this is an example of a company flubbing question #3: What I need to know to take action is “what the product is” !
In your own marketing efforts, do you ever forget what it is not to know about your wonderful company and its product or services? Are you forgetting to say the obvious?
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* For the curious, I’ll save you a google search and tell you that what MagicJack does is plug into your computer’s USB port, and then you plug your traditional landline phone into MagicJack and make phone calls through the internet. Easy enough to understand once you hear it. Now, look at the ad again and see if it makes more (or less) sense.