August 1, 2010

Do attractive women sell better online?

This is a warning some people may think the following as sexist, but really its all about marketing. I know a lot of people as they are selling online will use images of attractive females to hopefully entice a response and get a sell, but does this really work? The reason I ask is because there was just a story on Fox and Friends about a study done in Australia about this very subject.

According to the study women between the ages of 18 and 35 where less likely to purchase from a female salesperson who may have been considered more attractive than them. They even asked a profiler on the show about this and she agreed. As a marketer my ears immediately perked up when I heard this as it goes against what most people will tell you about images of people.

Well asking my wife who is a little out of the studied demographic about how she would feel. She said that in some instances this may not be true. She said if she was purchasing a beauty product then its likely she would purchase form an attractive person, but at the same time if the female started flirting and perhaps her husband( me) was present then she would probably change her mind.

So what is the point? As marketers we need to understand our audience. If you understand your audience then you are much more likely to create sales copy that speaks to that person. If you speak to the person and connect with them then you are much more likely to convert. After all conversions are what we are all after, correct? It does not matter how much traffic you drive to any offer, if its not converting then you may as well not have the traffic at all.

So test your market, understand who is visiting your website and your conversions will have to increase. This is just common sense, but many marketers miss this point. They write copy like they would like to read it, but that does not always work. Understand your target demographic and you will make more money. If that female picture needs to be something else, then understand that and change it. Don’t just follow the current trend. Break out on your own and as Seth Godin says, be a purple cow.

Modifying your ads based on visitor

One of the blogs I read regularly is ReadWriteWeb. I mainly read this blog because the authors are usually way ahead of the bell curve when it comes to issues around the web. They published a story today talking about the coming privacy issues and war that they predict will occur as result of those issues. Well doh, This has been coming for a long time. Its just made headline news with the recent busting of companies such as Facebook and Sears doing some fairly interesting items with user’s data. Perhaps this type of stuff has been done all along its just that now they are getting caught.

As long as there is money to be made on the web( which will be forever) then people will try to gain a competitive advantage through the use of data. Imagine an advertising system where a visitor was instantly identified when they visited a site and data was analyzed on their past purchasing history. Then the site layout was modified dynamically to similar layouts of sites where you have made purchases previously. Or certain ads where shown to you for products you where likely to purchase based on what you purchased before.

It does not take a brain surgeon to figure it if one could figure it out :-) that this would be some powerfully effective advertising and conversions would definitely increase.

Now we are not quite there yet, mainly because companies do not have enough data and the database apps are not efficient enough to find it quick enough for the billions and billions of records such a system would need to process to make correct decisions, but we may be before long.

With the advent of more high level programming languages for web applications such as Asp.Net and Web services, this type of application becomes more of a reality. How much would Advertiser’s pay to own such an application. Well its safe to say who ever builds it won’t have to work again nor will their children or their children’s children. Google, Microsoft, IBM, and definitely Facebook and Sears would be beating down your door begging for a meeting.

Well enough of my rambling, but this is some interesting food for thought. I may have to start working on picking up my programming skills a little more. Well a lot more because while I can envision such a system, I definitely am not qualified to write one. I would not even know how to start to develop the ERD for the database and I aced the database classes in college.