Amazon Marketing Secrets – The Buy Now Button And How It Can Help You To Market Your Business
I am always on the lookout to learn from the big boys when it comes to the internet. I spend an awful lot of time looking at clients’ websites, competitors’ websites (largely to see how not to do it in their case), but also from the big brand websites too.
Despite the fact that I own and operate a service business just like you, learning from online retailers is a really sensible thing to do. If their website does not convert visitors into paying customers they will quickly go out of business. Whereas you or I might not need to make 100 or 1,000 sales per day, they absolutely must do this to feed their enormous overheads of staff, premises and logistics. So it makes sense to spend a little time looking at retailers’ websites to see if you can learn something from them. And online retailers come no bigger than Amazon.
The purpose of this email is to give you the biggest website marketing tip that I have learned from Amazon and other online retailers, and to ask you if you are using it for your own business. What is it?
It is the “Buy Now” button. In fact, more than that it is the location of the “Buy Now” button on Amazon.
When you are looking at products on Amazon, you will notice that the “Buy Now” or “Add To Basket” button is in the top right hand side position on the website. Look at the book for sale below on Amazon (my top rated business book for all service business owners as there are more mistakes made than you can shake a stick at. However, Ratner has now created another hugely successful business – an online jeweller this time).
You can click the image to see the book on Amazon in real time (and buy it if you have not already).
The question for your business is do you have a “Buy Now” button in the right place? Look to the right of the page you are on on my website now, and you will see that my “Buy Now” button is asking you to sign up for my marketing tips and advice. This is the action I want you to take from this and pretty much every page on my website, because if you are a service business I know that I can help you, and the first step is to receive my free guide. If you sign up for that, I know that if you like what you read, you may well in future take further action, perhaps signing up for my Marketing4Services ToolKit or ask me to help you with my consultancy services.
For your business, it could also be asking your website visitors to download a free guide that proves your expertise in your subject matter (and allows you to keep in touch with them), or an online enquiry form allowing someone to find out more about your services (backed up with a free telephone number preferably). Each method will work well for you. I have used both the lead generation method (i.e. free report) and the instant request for help form for accountants, lawyers, coaches and consultants and they both work equally well. I choose to offer the softly, softly approach of selling my services by giving away a free report as generally I have more consultancy requests than I can handle.
As with any good marketing, the crucial point is to test this for your business and find out which works the best for you. If you do not yet have a “Buy Now” button in the top right position of your website on each and every page of your website, I assure you that you are currently missing opportunities and urge you to correct this as quickly as possible.