Persuasive Momentum Dead End - some Marketing Stories

Most often it is marketing that owns the starting point for persuasive momentum. For this reason, momentum dead-end stories from marketing can be short. We offer a few here to prove the point.

Wrong message. Wrong time. Wrong method.

A software company had just launched a brand new product. Banner ads were purchased on sites where target users were expected. The banner ads read "New Product Now Available. Buy it Now."

The trouble was that no one knew exactly what was in the new product. This banner ad was its own dead end.

Incomplete information. Wrong audience. Nowhere to go.

The product group in a large company used a monthly email newsletter to talk about an upcoming release. The newsletter blurb linked to a landing page that discussed new product features. The newsletter was distributed to existing customers as well as prospects.

Ellen, a prospect, was enticed by one of the features. It was among her criteria for a purchase. She clicked on the newsletter link and was taken to the landing page. The landing page gave good details about brand new features in the product. But it totally ignored the foundational features of the product. The landing page contained no links to the product page or the company home page.

Ellen was left with nowhere to go.

Lead nurturing program lengthens the sale

While Peter was visiting a web site to research a product, he was enticed to register to receive a report of particular interest to him. The report was very interesting, but it didn't address the questions he wanted answered. Peter returned to the web site, but couldn't find the answers there either. He did see a nice price promotion, though. 20% off. If he could have easily found the answers, chances were high he would have made an impulse buy. Instead, other concerns diverted him from continuing his information gathering.

About 2 weeks later, Peter gets an email from the company promoting a white paper that discussed certain aspects of the product. Peter scanned the white paper to see whether it might answer the questions he had previously. He found the answer to one question, but not to his other questions.

One month later, Peter gets an email from the company promoting a webinar that sounded like it might answer the rest of his questions. Peter attends the webinar and in the question and answer session, gets the affirmative response he needs. He decides he would like to buy the product.

Peter returns to the web site to purchase the product. The 20% discount price promotion is long gone. He is not sure whether he really wants to pay full price for the product. He has waited 6 weeks. He decides to keep checking the web site hoping to hit a similar promotion.

Peter was a lead that needed answers to his questions. He didn't need to be nurtured. If the content Peter needed had been presented on the web site in the first place, the company would have had a fairly instantaneous purchase. Instead, 6 weeks later, the purchase was still delayed.