I am beginning to think the personality is being sucked out of business. Why? Because everywhere I turn online, I’m stumbling across businesses that are nothing more than clones of each other. People are following the ‘How to market your business online’ advice to the letter and all coming up with……pretty much the same thing.
The squeeze page, the thousand calls to action, the million testimonials, the great long page of You MUST do this and Sign Up NOW, the extensive lists of features and benefits, the fear of loss, all the reasons why you MUSTN’T miss this once in a lifetime, never to be repeated, early bird offer [I’m getting RSI in my finger as I scroll down and down and down this never-ending page]. And then FINALLY, right at the end, once I’ve been blinded by facts and figures and ‘the science bit’ – the PRICE. Then there are the e-books and webinars, e-courses and tele-seminars (jeez, this is turning into a poem!). Am I the only person that finds this all a bit, well, monotonous? Does anyone ever get to the end of one of these pages and actually BUY what’s on offer? I never have.
Now for many of you reading this, I too am just some mysterious online person. For all you know I may really be a balding man called Barry. But for quite a lot of others (I hope) I am also a living, breathing, actual real person. And if you do know me, you’ll know that I don’t really like towing the party line and I can be a bit – um, mischievous.
And I really, really hope that some of that personality comes across in this website, my tweets and when you meet me at networking meetings or conferences. But I also worry that, because I steer away from these tried and tested methods of promotion, I might never make my fortune after all.
How important do you think ‘personality’ is in business? Does your brand have personality? Do you need it to succeed or is it just the icing on the entrepreneurial cake?
Ooh nice post. Especially as I have succumbed to the lure of buying stuff at the end of a very long sales page. There’s really a fine line between hype and genuinely getting the message across that your product will help, and then loading on a few bonuses which will really add value to the person reading the sales page. But a lot of Brits (including me) have been tarred with the ‘Trotter’ brush which means that sales has an extremely bad rap and ‘trust’ in the solution non-existent. Nevertheless a lot of people hesitate to put their personality out there (even if it’s just a brand personality) because putting it out there means possible rejection…
Thanks for the post 🙂 For me, I only buy from people I know, eg know their expertise, so I don’t tend to buy without having spent some time following them on twitter, facebook etc, reading their blog… So for me, that’s the starting point for my own marketing – ensuring that a sales page is not the only way people meet me online 🙂