How to Engage Online Visitors without Being Pushy

So, why are you inundating your visitors with messages on your website? Remember every time a pop-up hindered your website navigation experience, every hovering banner you felt like disabling, every recurrent Facebook ad you wanted to throw away and all that annoying AdWords that kept creeping up the page you were browsing. That’s pushy. That’s what you don’t want to be. Engaging with your online visitors without being annoying requires a balancing act. You need to find the perfect ratio between sending enough information to make prospects curious and not overwhelming them with content. So, what can you do to advertise your brand without being an annoyance? Here are five helpful tips.

How to Get Online Visitors

1. Organise Your Customers’ Needs

Customers are your business’ most valuable asset. You can have the most creative Google advertising campaign or invest heavily in your social media marketing. If your message doesn’t cater to your customers’ needs, then all your efforts are in vain. This guideline is especially true when trying to engage your audience. Consumers have a sixth sense for BS and can tell if you’re genuine or just interested in their wallets. When your focus is solely on selling your products, without taking your audience’s desires and motivations into consideration, you start sounding like a despicable sales person. That’s the moment when prospects respond by shunning you and moving over to the competition.

2. Follow-up with Relevant Information

Have you noticed how every time you purchase something from your local mall, the sales rep always tries to upsell you? Have you also noticed how the products they recommend are always complementing your purchase? For instance, if you bought a pair of leather dress shoes, they will recommend a foot spray or maybe a pair of cotton socks. They’re not trying to present to you the latest trench coats collection. You should do the same on your site. Look at your data and analyse your customers’ current needs. Then, follow up with timely, relevant information. For example, if you notice that some of the customers that purchased mint chocolate also bought salted caramel, you can send a post-purchase message with a promotion for salted caramel toffees. Will they find it irritating? No, because your message is in line with their current needs.

3. Don’t Provide Too Much Information

Your prospects need help understanding your products and unique value proposition. However, don’t just throw a bucketful of data over their heads. If they just landed on your site and are welcomed by articles and sales offers as long as a Balzac novel, they might second guess their decision. “How long will it take me to read this?” “Is it worth my time?” “Will I end up buying anything?” These are some of the first questions prospects ask themselves when visiting your site for the first time. To address them, you need to consider your customers’ time and help them get to what they want as soon as possible. In other words, you need to design clean landing pages and make sure that your content is clear and concise. You could also use incentives, such as eBooks, discounts, or special offers to make your proposition more appealing. And, of course, make sure that your Google advertising strategy is relevant to their searches.

4. Customise Your Messages

Standardisation is good for rules and procedures, not for your marketing messages. You can’t put all your potential customers in the same basket and expect the same reaction from them. At the same time, you can’t expect a different answer if you keep sending the same message. Most marketers abide by the rule of seven, which says you need to send the same information at least seven times to get to a sale. However, rehashing a similar message, again and again, isn’t valuable. Your customers will start perceiving it as noise or, worse, as a nuisance.

5. Don’t be Misleading

Sometimes, advertisers misunderstand the notion of surprise. Here’s the thing: not telling shoppers about hidden fees until check out doesn’t qualify as a surprise. Best case scenario, your customers will abandon their shopping carts without completing the transaction. Worst case scenario, you can get hit by a misrepresentation lawsuit. Come to think of it, both cases are awful since they can affect your business’ reputation and trustworthiness. Find out if any unwanted surprises disrupt your visitors’ experience and address them as quickly as possible.

Conclusion

Customers are annoyed by pushy behavior and react by tuning your message out and opting for your competitor’s products. Make sure that your content caters to your audience’s needs, provides accurate, relevant information, and always avoid inconvenient surprises.