Thinking In People Not Pageviews

By ShayneT  -  On 21 Oct, 2012 -  0 comments

For a long time Darren has been quite flattering about some of the things I’ve helped him with over the years. Then ultimately empowering me to share my story with many more. But as much as feel I’ve helped Darren, he’s returned the favour — and then some.

The biggest lesson he’s taught me, one that still influences me every day is …

Think in people, not pageviews

I remember clearly when Darren first nailed this home. It wasn’t in one of our meetings, IM chats or email back-and-forths, it was actually in the very first Problogger training day. Darren’s first session was all about finding readers for your blog and he shared the story of how in the early days he’d personally email someone who left a comment, thanking them for contributing.

I remember at the time thinking, wow, that’s a guy who really cares about the people who visit his blog.

But I’m a marketer, not a blogger, why does that matter to me?

Anyone who’s completed any formal marketing training will know about the “4 P’s” of marketing. Which has, in some circles, been extended to 5, 6, 7 – but that’s an whole different story. The 4 P’s represent the fundamentals of marketing (online or offline) and are:

    • Product
    • Price
    • Place
    • Promotion

When you think about the glue that holds all those things together, it’s not you as a marketer, it’s the people you serve, that make the 4P’s matter. We market on the web, not because the web is cool, but because that’s where all the people are, that’s where they respond to promotions, research products and ultimately buy.

So at the end of the day it’s all about the people.

There’s a uniqueness of the internet that makes you forget that.

Having been involved in just about every form of direct marketing, the beautiful thing about marketing online is it’s just so measurable. I can measure just about every action you conduct on my websites. I stare, analyse and crunch data in wonderful applications like Google Analytics and use the insight to drive test after test, plan after plan.

And then I think of Darren.

You can get so caught up in the numbers sometimes that you forget that there are real people behind them. This is even worse when your working on sites will millions of visitors a month. You draw up a perfect plan to move that conversion rate up just one little percent. You’re fixated. It becomes all about the number, less about the people.

I now dont think about the number, I think about what it means. All I need to do is encourage 1 extra person in a 100 to buy and the results will come. So let’s thinks about who that person is, then draw up some plans to delight them.

It’s created more meaningful approaches to growing the performance of pages. I’m now thinking about underlying motives, expectation, fears, desires rather than “let’s just throw a whole bunch of different stuff out there and see what works”.

… and my conversion rates have never looked better.