People see through your marketing pitch pretty easily.  You spend a great deal of time carefully crafting every word, supporting it with the best colors and pictures.

But in the end, we’ve been well trained to be suspicious about all that.

Here’s an interesting example: Yesterday I ran across a video made by someone who’s trying to sell a new scheme for making money online.

Yeah, I know.  I got caught in a weak moment, by a comment that said it was an interesting new business idea.

It took me about five seconds to make the decision that I would never, ever want to participate in something like this.  I’d already decided at that point that it was classified as a “get-rich-quick scheme.”  But I watched it for about another 30 seconds, because it was interesting to look at their techniques, and the language used for pulling in suckers.

Is this uncommon?  I don’t think so.  I do the same thing with mailers and e-mails, often deciding much quicker than 5 seconds.

We’ve been trained.

Here’s the way out of this problem if you’re trying to sell something:  Be yourself.  If your product isn’t interesting to 95% of the population, don’t try to pretend that it is.  Instead, focus on reaching and serving that 5% really, really well.  Everything you are, and do, will help to develop those relationships.

When you do that, there’s no need for a façade.  Which is so much easier.

Advertisement