Crashing Dream

Welcome to ‘My World’ (marketing strategies)

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By Drew020

 My World’ is eBay’s attempt to jump on the MySpace bandwagon. Notice any resemblance? MySpace. MyWorld. You can’t blame eBay for doing this, but they’re about 2 or 3 years late in Internet terms, which in the real business world probably equates to more like 5 years. Things happens very fast on the Internet.

This is one of the problems with companies that are so large. They get bogged down with their own bureaucracy. Compare eBay to a small, fast moving company like dig, fark, or friendster - when these companies make decisions that take a couple of days to implement, eBay goes through at least 3 months of planning to accomplish something similar.

It’s a disease that most large companies have. No one wants to put their butt on the line to accomplish something different, instead there’s a loooooong chain of command, protocols to be followed, and even once it gets approved the huge teams of programmers simply put the proposal in their queue’, to be acted on at their convenience, when they’ve ironed out the latest set of bugs.

The Opportunity

Looking at the positive, My World’ does offer an opportunity for the smart eBayer to promote their business (rather than themselves, which stupidly the majority of eBayers still do my dog’s called spot’ etc etc, you know the drill).

Each registered user has their own my world’ which consists of 6 modules: Favorites, Blog, Listings, Bio, Store, and Reviews & Guides. Favorites’ shows a list of your most recent searches, sellers and stores. Use this carefully because at any given time, your most recent searches will be available for all to see. Of course, you can turn the feature off if you like, but it makes sense to use it. My advice is to use an account for searching that’s separate from your selling account. That way, you can save

searches on your main account that will stay on there permanently, does that make sense? Obviously those searches will be for your own products, as an additional way of promoting them.

The blog module is fairly self explanatory. Set your blog entries to show long excerpts’ to maximize your keyword opportunities for SEO.

The listings module is also self explanatory, it displays your choice of current listings. Again, use the widest number available, or you might also want to feature a specific item, but be sure to update it.

The advice about keywords applies equally to your Bio. Ignore the predefined sections and fill them with keyword rich content.

If you have a store, it makes sense to promote it, and it’s super easy to do that in this module.

Finally, the reviews and guides module allows you to display up to 5 of each type, so use them all, and uncheck the boxes marked display the titles only’ for obvious reasons.

My World’ is free, so it makes sense to spend ten minutes to set it up and occasionally monitor it.

http://andrewlock.com/

http://myauctionacademy.com/

http://sendmyfreegift.com/

W.I.I.F.M.
By Drew020

 In case you were wondering, WIIFM stands for what’s in it for me’ and that’s the subject of the column this month.

To some readers the theory of what we’re about to discuss will be obvious to you, but I challenge you to examine your eBay listings to make sure you’re implementing what you already know you should be doing! For others of you, this’ll be a new lesson.

I happened to be driving along the other day behind another car that had an ad in its rear window. The ad read something like this:

Guitar Lessons

Become:

Intermediate in 5 months

Advanced in 11 months

GUARANTEED!

Call 123-456-7890

The ad stuck had something that the vast majority of ads don’t have: the what’s in it for me’ factor. In other words a compelling benefit.

I’ll explain further: Again, with this example of guitar lessons, most ads offering guitar lessons read something like this:

Guitar Lessons

NGI qualified instructor

Call 123-456-7890

The qualified instructor’ line elicits a so what’ response by the reader because it’s not a benefit. People don’t buy a product or service based on it’s features; they buy the BENEFIT that the product or service will bring them.

To illustrate: would you rather buy a stunning, black cocktail dress’ or a stunning black cocktail dress that will make you feel like a princess, turning everyone’s heads the next time you walk into a Broadway theater.’

Would you rather buy the latest 3 chip digital camcorder’ or the camcorder that automatically edits your shaky footage so well that your friends might actually accuse you of having gone to film school with Steven Spielberg.’

We choose a coffee maker based on how good a cup of coffee it brews. We buy an outfit based on how it looks to others. We buy a fiction book because it relaxes us or transports us to another place. No one buys a coffee maker just because it has six buttons instead of two, or an outfit just because it is their size, or a book just to perform the function of reading.

We always buy products because of the benefit they’ll bring us, so you MUST emphasize the benefits of everything you sell on eBay.

Most people do not even consider this basic element of human psychology when they create a listing.

Tell customers what the end result will be, and the benefit(s) they’ll obtain.

The key to doing this effectively is to try and get inside the mind of the potential buyer. If you were them, what end result would you want from buying this item?

Even with the most mundane products or services, it is never just a case of buying an item for the sake of it, there’s always some kind of pain’ behind the purchase, an issue that needs to be resolved. Lock that point in your brain, it’s vitally important to selling successfully on eBay.

Even someone looking for something as simple as a spare part for a printer is looking for an end result, a bigger benefit for example, that their printer will work again! So reassure them that that will be the case when they install the part. Emphasize the benefit, in this case a very important solution.

Of course, features of an item or service are still important to note in any listing, but they are always less important than benefits. Many times you can translate features into benefits by using the helpful linking phrase this means that’, or which means to you that’.

Try it.

You will see the difference in a greater number of bids, higher final prices, and an increasing number of loyal customers, because you managed to get inside their head and remind them of the BENEFITS, the what’s in it for me’. They’ll feel like you really understand them!

So always remember WIIFM’. If you honestly evaluate every new listing and it elicits the response so what?’ then you need to go back and give more attention to the benefits.

Features tell, benefits sell.

http://andrewlock.com/

http://myauctionacademy.com/

http://sendmyfreegift.com/

A Tale of Two Taxis
By Drew020

 Actually I cheated. It’s a tale of lots of taxis, but that didn’t look nearly as good as a headline so I took the liberty of artistic license, forgive me. But you’ll really like this story, I promise.

So here’s what happened. A few days ago I was at eBay Live’, the annual event for eBay sellers, which was held this year in Boston.

On the first day of the event, a Thursday, apparently no one had notified the taxi companies that there would be 8,764 people exiting the conference center simultaneously at 9pm after the keynote speech, and that most of them would need a taxi back to their ridiculously overpriced hotels (that’s another story I paid $350 a night and considered myself lucky to get that rate!).

So imagine the scene, literally thousands of people standing in line for taxis that were nowhere to be seen - just an occasional passing blip on the horizon, far away. Taxis were as rare as a Nintendo Wii in a retail store.

As you know, I think differently to most people, and I avoid the lemmings mentality at all costs. There was no way I was going to stand in line for hours waiting for a taxi that may or may not eventually appear.

What did I do? I’ll tell you exactly what I did. I went around the corner of the convention center to the Westin Hotel and discovered a line of taxis with drivers that apparently had been sitting there for several hours, desperately hoping that someone, anyone, would require their service.

Yes, I know - how ironic is that?

In I jumped, and immediately asked the driver to take us past the front of the convention center building to allow me to wave at the ever increasing line of people waiting for a taxi.

I’m not a mean person, I just couldn’t help myself.

Actually, I wanted to see if many others would think to do what I had done. Guess? Nope. I counted just three people who strayed from the official’ taxi line. And that’s where the lesson lies in this story. The situation I encountered is a perfect analogy to describe how eBay is being used today.

You’ve probably heard me say before that some 95% of sellers follow the crowd and blindly stick together, all sharing the same antiquated, ineffective and costly methods for using eBay. They’re standing in line for a taxi that might never come, and somehow they’ve convinced themselves that that’s the best option. Come to think of it, they probably believe it’s the ONLY option.

By contrast, there’s a much easier way, a fast track to profits, and that’s the taxi round the corner, just waiting to whiz you to your destination if you’ll only seek it out. That’s the key, right there: to benefit from it, you have to step outside your comfort zone, be willing to reject the familiarity and apparent safety of being with the crowd, and be unconventional, a renegade.

http://andrewlock.com/

http://myauctionacademy.com/

http://sendmyfreegift.com/

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