The Tribune

By D’Arcy Rahming

I fell in love with marketing, more precisely Internet marketing, a few years ago when I decided to get serious with telling the story of the Bahamas Judo Federation. This was a major brand building exercise. Just a few short years ago, everyone in the Bahamas talked about Karate. Now they come in and ask for Judo. I can proudly say that my marketing efforts made Judo into an almost household word. I did it giving information out in short, but concise, amounts over a long period of time.

Is there ever a time when you can give a client too much information? I think so. It largely relates to where the client is receiving the information. For example, if you are trying to get a potential client interested via social media or the Internet, long sales letters or presentations are unlikely to work. I have to essentially shut down the Internet when writing these articles, as invariably someone will attempt to start a conversation with me online. So a long presentation is not going to work well for me.

However, it does not change the fact that long sales letters do work when you have isolated media. Proof of this can be seen in infomercials or direct mail pieces. When someone decides to read their mail, they are less distracted than when they are working on a computer. Or, if a TV infomercial comes on that the person is interested in, they are likely to sit there and watch the whole thing. I am told that if you capture someone in the first eight seconds or so before they hit the remote, you have a good chance of really making a great impression.

Marketers have tried to take this concept to the Internet, and have often been disappointed in the results. I believe this is because the web is interactive, whereas a DVD is not. But selling on the Internet gives you so much quick access to so many people. How, then, do you take advantage of this?

The answer, I believe, lies in the sideways sales letter concept designed by Internet marketer, Jeff Walker. He recognised that a sales letter still needs certain things to be effective. Among them is a story, an acceptance of the authority of the seller, and a strong call to action. But to try and hit someone over the head with all of this information over the Internet will invariably lead to horrible results. So you feed information to the clients a little at a time, while using a story to connect the pieces. Videos of three to five minutes, and short e-mails, are all necessary to get the information across.

NB: D’Arcy Rahming holds a Masters of Management from the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University. A lecturer at the College of the Bahamas, Mr Rahming has clients in general insurance, retail, the health and medical fields, sports federations and financial services. To receive his marketing newsletter FREE go to http://darcyrahming.com