From Quantity to Trust the New Paradigm for Internet Marketers

Let's take some steps back from the connected world of today and look at an older and well used form of marketing, the letter drop. To have a successful campaign via dropping leaflets into peoples letterboxes you had to a.) Get their attention b.) Hold their attention c.) Get an action, and also deliver it to the right people. That last point is important.

It would be quite easy to go to the national post service and order a nationwide leaflet distribution. How could it not be successful, millions of people will have your offer, so you man the phones and order the production team up to full speed. Days pass and sure, orders came in, but there was no flood. What went wrong, you ask. The postal service must have failed, but after enquiries this is not the case.

Distraught with the fact of no orders and a big postal bill, you wonder, why, why did it not work? Instead of being succumbed by this failure you march on, now on a quest to seek the knowledge as to why your great plan failed. And you seek out the best of the best, asking questions and you even walk the streets talking to whoever will listen, presenting your leaflet and asking 'what do you think of my offer?'.

Some of the people you talk to are polite but not that interested, although, many others are excited to hear about what you have, and some are not interested but know many who very much would be and offer to pass on your leaflet.

Oddly, after just days of pounding the streets on this fact finding mission, new orders start arriving. That's when it dawns on you, 'LEAFLETS CAN'T TALK', you scream! Leaflets don't have a personality, leaflets can't make eye contact and leaflets don't carry trust. Only people can offer these things. You start to consider all the things you have purchased recently, and you conclude, after deep thought, that at the root of every purchase made was a human to human connection.

Whether it was via the recommendation of a friend, the referral of a professional, perhaps guided by the literature of a scholar, the views of an expert, or via the trust in a brand name that consumers willingly recommend, this played the major role in your purchases.

Hang on, wasn't this article about online marketing? Ok, let's translate all that. Simply, there isn't a lot of difference between the leaflet drop and some of the marketing practices of today. It's quite popular to mass market via various means over the internet and it's just as wasteful and just as useless.

It truly is simple. You need to get your message into the hands that are going to talk about your offer or service. People buy from people.

Fortunately the internet is an extraordinary place, replicating human existence whilst adding speed, scale and momentum. The human to human connection is very much alive on the internet. That connection can be found in people you know or trust at social sites like facebook or myspace, it can be found via a friends blog, review sites, expert sites, niche topical sites, online communities, forums and many other means.

The human connection also acts on a collective scale to forge trusted names and destinations, for example wikepedia, now when people think encyclopedia they think wikipedia thanks to the trust allocated by many thousands of people using the site, talking about the site and referring to the site.

Moving forward in online marketing is about keeping a clear focus on the goal of building on the human to human connections and forging trust. Don't be another unknown site, be known as the site for your product or offer.

Rod Charles has assisted with the development of various niche marketing campaigns and along with working on projects at ICDnet which offers niche site listing opportunities.