How to Get Customers to Your Site: Part 5 of 7

Tuesday, September 13, 2011 By Matt Maddox 1 Comment

This next step, if you’re able to manage it correctly, is a great one. Unfortunately a lot of people biff it when trying to use humor. Doing this well is really the highest level of marketing, as seen by the hilarious Super-Bowl commercials. YouTube, as an online phenomenon, is probably the greatest beneficiary of this technique. How many times have you sat around alone or with buddies sharing and looking for funny videos or commercials on YouTube? There are scores of hilarious things to find online and marketers love when they get a humorous video to go viral.

As you might expect, however, being funny is much harder to do online than it is in person. Think about it, when you are telling a joke to a friend, she will gives you all sorts of cues and other bits of feedback for you to pick up on. (So why is it so much harder when dating?) It makes it much easier to change your humor to fit the situation. But when you‘re online, you don’t have that luxury because it is one-sided. Even with that obstacle, a vast majority of the commercials online, in print, on TV, or on the radio try to use humor and it hardly ever comes off well. (Most of the time things just come off being awkward or creepy).

You might wonder why the marketers who try to use humor keep trying. The answer is simple, the potential rewards from using humor are huge. When humor works well, the ad garners positive attention, good will, and stimulates buying decisions. When it doesn’t work well…enough said.

On your internet business site, the most surefire way to get it right is to use images, rather than words. If you know a cartoonist or a graphic designer, and can pay them, you have found yourself a great asset and you can put yourself ahead of the game. One thing you might want to do is to create a little character who appears on your website as a recurring motive. You probably won’t want to make the character as developed as the Geico Gecko, that would take up way too much time, money, and effort, but a character who can show people around the website and make it more friendly would be a wise decision.

Another way to bring subtle humor to your website is to develop a mildly self-deprecating tone in your website copy. (Just a side note for the few who may not know what I mean when I use the word, “copy” in this context, copy refers to your written content in publications). You shouldn’t put yourself down, but you should also show that you don’t take yourself too seriously. This way you can have a positive website feel and introduce humorous elements, without risking actual humor and the pitfalls that brings. Now, if you are competing against a website that does use humor well, your site will always be on the loosing end, so it would be worth it to make a longer term investment into humor. That way you can test things and make sure that what you are using is actually funny. That way you can have a successful online business and get customers to your website!

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