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TrailFire: Social Media Marketing Tool For Your Sales Page

By dan | February 21, 2007

While it is appropriate to ask whether we need another bookmarking service, I think TrailFire provides a unique value to online marketers. Yes, you can bookmark and share individual sites with del.icio.us, and that serves a very useful function. But TrailFire allows you to not only group bookmarks together, but actually create an ordered path for visiting the sites. Below I outline how TrailFire can be used to create powerful credibility for your product or service at the actual point of online purchase.

TrailFire could be extremely lucrative for online marketers.

Why? Often, an online sale is lost simply because the marketer could not demonstrate enough credibility to gain a potential purchaser’s trust.

TrailFire is a social media marketing tool that can lessen visitors’ resistance and buying hesitation in most online purchasing situations.

How?
What if the potential buyer happened to stumble onto information on reputable independent sites that:

I don’t know, but that sounds like a online marketer’s dream. The goal is to build credibility, and it’s the same reason why bloggers linkbait. Marketers usually avoid sending visitors from their sales page to independent websites, because the results are too unpredictable. Once a visitor exits your site, you lose the ability to influence him or her. The first site you send your visit to might link to another site that displays information that will ruin your sale.

But TrailFire puts all of this under the marketer’s editorial control.

How does TrailFire enable a marketer to do this?
As, a marketer, TrailFire allows you to:

  1. Hand-pick a select group of independent reputable webpages that support the sales information on your site.
  2. Order them as a sequential path so visitor are led through a specific path to reach your desired conclusion about your product.
  3. Explain the significance of the information mentioned on each website.
  4. Then end the TrailFire trail by returning the visitor to your sales page to make the purchase.

TrailFire allows the Internet marketer to select independent webpages that create a clear path of sales logic for your visitors to follow. With TrailFire you can safely benefit from the credibility of reputable independent sites, but maintain total control over which sites your visitors are sent to.

Now any Internet marketer can draw upon the dataset of the entire Internet to demonstrate to visitors why they urgently need to buy their product or service. Keep in mind that a TrailFire trail can include webpages from any source. This includes authoritative .gov & .edu pages.

Next to your TrailFire link on your sales page, you can even mention that this trail includes webpages from extremely reputable government sources, university sources, etc. It doesn’t hurt to frame the trail, does it? Why not give your visitor expectations that increase the likelihood of you making a sale?

What are your thoughts about TrailFire’s potential as a sales & marketing tool?

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Topics: Social Media, linking, Sales, TrailFire, Credibility |

2 Responses to “TrailFire: Social Media Marketing Tool For Your Sales Page”

  1. Alex Says:
    February 22nd, 2007 at 4:03 pm

    I don’t see this working …. The trails people create are collections of comments and a navigation path that exists in conjunction with a series of web sites. Trails are created from the perspective of the buyer (consumer) and not the seller (web site owner). If you create a “buy my product” trail and are not already part of the Trailfire community it will look like it. For people to be interested in what you have to say you need credibility. Credibility in a community is something that takes time to create and the investment necessary to build it may be more then most people are willing to give.

    But if you want to educate people about an issue and a product that solves it, trailfire could work. I can see a trail being a great way to tell a story and provide all the facts to support it that exist out on the web.

    I’m a big fan of Trailfire and have found it to be a valuable way to communicate.

  2. dan Says:
    February 22nd, 2007 at 5:52 pm

    Alex -

    Thanks for contributing. Your views & experiences are always welcome here.

    I think I understand what you’re saying, and perhaps I didn’t clearly articulate what I meant.

    Here is the situation I believe TrailFire can support a product or service sale.

    Let’s say a potential buyer has already found you, and is at your sales page. He/she is interested in your product but isn’t quite convinced enough to purchase.

    In this circumstance, the sales page could link to a TrailFire trail of independent websites that present information to support the sale.

    This trail is not intended to be explored by others originating from the TrailFire community. The trail is meant to be found on your website. The trail only exists so hesitant buyers at your sales page can swing through and see a little extra evidence about why your product makes sense.

    For max effectiveness, it should be a short trail, no more than 3 - 5 separate webpages long.

    To avoid losing the buyer, I suggested adding your sales page (the page where the buyer began the trail) as the final trail mark. That way the buyer won’t have to mess with the browser’s back button to find you again.

    I believe this is inline with what you are saying about educating people. Essentially, the purpose of this type of trail is to further educate the buyer with information from independent websites, and then bring the buyer back to your sales page to make the purchase.

    I hope this explanation was clearer. Let me know what you think.

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