The Importance of First Impressions

When it comes to marketing, there are many ways to catch the eye of your customer. Traditional advertisements on billboards, TV, newspapers, magazines etc. are always an option. Plus, there’s outbound marketing on the internet which involves email marketing, advertising on websites etc. And there’s inbound marketing where you make sure you’re prepared in case your customer reaches out to you. This usually involves having a website, a blog and social media pages. So when it comes to marketing strategies, your options are limitless. If you use a bit of ingenuity, you can even come up with more ways to spread the word about your business. Here are a couple of things you should keep in mind when developing a marketing strategy.

First Impressions

If you read Malcolm Gladwell’s book Blink, you’ll realize the importance of first impressions. The entire idea behind this book is that you may be able to get away from first impressions for a while but you always end up returning to them. It seems that people make up their minds about other people and things in the first few seconds of perceiving them. Despite the popularity of the book, some people consider this idea controversial because we all know that you shouldn’t judge a book by its cover. However, it seems like we just can’t help it. And, often, our first impressions may be correct.

When you’re coming up with a marketing strategy, you may want to keep in mind that you’re just going to have just a few seconds to make an impression on your customer-to-be. Make sure that you use those seconds wisely. Convey the exact impression that you want to convey. If you want to be known as a serious finance guru, use sober colors and don’t make false promises. If you want to be known as the “in” place for young people, make sure you know what’s “in” and incorporate that into your marketing efforts.

Update Your Image

Every product, service or business has a certain image that they want to maintain. However, as time goes by, you may find that your image has become outdated and simply isn’t appealing to customers anymore. So you need to sit down, preferably before this happens, and make sure that you’re keeping up with the trends.

Keep in mind that every product or service is also saying something about the customer. For example, a person who buys high heels is someone who’s fashionable, confident and polished. You need to make sure that your customer sees how your product is going to help them be all these things. Update your image so that they can imagine themselves investing in you.

Please share on social media if you found this post helpful. If you have a comment or question I would be happy to discuss. Read more on my blog rhettpower.blogspot.com.