Fill the gap

This one came up in a handful of conversations today.

There are a few shortsighted theories on how to improve your marketing that you may have heard before.

One is:

Make a super-irresistible offer so scrumptiously delicious they couldn’t even entertain the very possibility of doing anything other than exactly what you tell them.

The problem is, that’s not how people work is it. How often do you click on a page, then feel a magic marketing force rip your credit card out of your pocket against your will, as you feverishly spend thousands of dollars on a service without any of the senses nor faculties you’ve used both your entire life prior to now?

Exactly. You might catch some folks who haven’t heard it all before but that’s not it, is it.

Here’s another one:

Meticulously A/B test every aspect of the page to make the leap happen, like a hunter carefully aiming his weapon at unsuspecting wildlife, to make sure he paints the meadow with the maximum amount of brains.

The problem here is, that’s both a little bit gross, and it puts a lot of pressure on your materials to compress what could have been a really enjoyable user experience into a desperate pitch-fest graded by analytics rather than whether or not your target market actually likes it.

The solution is simple:

Fill the gaps with what they want, how they want to receive it, and do so with un-ignorably good materials.

Easier to say than to do.

But these are the fundamentals that make all the difference.

Don’t lose sight of them in pursuit of fancy marketing tactics.