This conversation has come up a few times now, and it was funny because originally, we were going to write some amazing blog post about it and it was going to be all this research driven, research based idea on this main question.
What is the difference between eCommerce and direct response marketing? I remember hearing that conversation as we were walking by an existing discussion that was happening, and my heart kind of leapt and it sunk into my stomach, because inherently, that's really a flawed question, if you think about it. Have you ever thought about that?
What is the difference between eCommerce and direct response marketing?
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Is there a difference? Are they apples to apples or is it more apples to oranges? The concept that I came up with on this is it's actually comparing a saddle to a horse. They're essentially really part of the same family. Ecommerce is an overarching category. It's how people sell and transact with products and money online. It's electronic commerce. That makes sense.
Direct response is actually a tactic within eCommerce. It's a way that you can leverage the buying habits, the psychology and the motivations of your buyers when they come to your page.
Let me break it down in this way. Ecommerce has become this really kind of a buzzword in the industry right now where it's if you want to make money online, you got to get in eCommerce. What does that actually look like? For most people, it's let me get three or four shirts with a cat on it and maybe a coffee mug with a cat and you've probably seen these and you put it up on your store, whatever platform you want to use and you see little boxes, the different products that are on there with the different prices and you just hope you get customers.
Now, Clickbank is not necessarily an eCommerce store like that. You're not going to set up a store with multiple SKUs so you can see and click and buy. Clickbank, the power of what we do is we force you to create a funnel, and if you're not familiar with what a funnel is, a funnel is really just a step by step process where you bring a customer through making a decision, then making another decision and making another decision and you're controlling that environment of their decision making. Does that make sense?
You have your let's say, we'll use the cat thing. You have a cat t-shirt that you want to sell. Now you're just going to promote the one cat t-shirt, get your cat t-shirt, and with direct response, you're going to put some kind of an offer around it. This is where at Clickbank, we empower you to create an offer, and those are the types of things online that convert today. They do super well and this is how people scale businesses is with offers.
What I really want to step back and say is just because you have a product and you put it on a store does not mean you have an offer but with direct response, it's a tactic of taking a product, wrapping an offer around it. You've probably seen those As Seen on TV, Get the Sham wow, and wait, if you buy now we're going to include two more free for just two payments of $9.95. That's an offer. Right? It's not just here's a great product, here's how much it costs. They're wrapping something in to make you think whoa, that's a good deal and I feel like I have won in this process.
When you're setting up a product to put on Clickbank, bringing it back to direct response versus eCommerce, you're using a direct response tactic to wrap up an offer around your product so you're not just selling a cat t-shirt. You might be selling a cat t-shirt, plus, as a bonus you get X. Maybe it's five tips on how to train your cat to walk on a leash would be kind of a fun product. I think we should do it.
That's your offer right? Cat t-shirt plus something free. Now they're like, oh, I got to jump on this. Usually an offer is financially incentivized, maybe there's a time limit on it, maybe there's a limited number, a limited supply, something around there that encourages psychologically your visitor, your viewer, your customer to want to make a buying decision.
In essence, direct response is directly empowering your viewer to make a decision on your page right then. It's not like a grocery store where there's just aisles of products and you go in and at will, you're just kind of buying what you want. You're sending somebody to a page to an offering, where you are leading their mindset, you're framing their mind and how they're viewing things to make a decision, the decision that you want.
Now just to add in a little bit of a bonus on to this whole eCommerce versus direct response. Direct response has gotten a bad rap in the past where it's just slamming offers down somebody's throat in a way of making claims, take two of these pills a day and you're going to lose 10 pounds every day. That was like the traditional direct response style marketing. Today, the industry has shifted in such a way where it is really encouraging, the overall market is encouraging people as product owners to create offers that are really value first, they're value forward.
It's not thinking, okay, I have this cat t-shirt, how am I going to sell these cat t-shirts? It's how am I going to provide value to my customer so that we build trust because I don't want to sell them one t-shirt. I want to sell them a whole litter of t-shirts, right? I want to sell them a whole bunch of products.
That's the mindset you really need to take. You can take the tactics of moving somebody into a decision or making them, framing their mind to make a buying decision. That's a part of direct response marketing but really do it again with value in mind and that's how you can build a long term sustainable business in this industry.
Again, just to recap, eCommerce is having products and putting them on a website and allowing people to make purchases from any of those products. That's just an overarching category. Direct response is taking a tactic, taking one of those products out, creating an offer around it that forces your buyer into a decision and running that as a funnel sequence or as, again, a direct response offer.
It's really a tactic within eCommerce. It's not really one versus the other. Direct response is more of the mindset of how do I get psychologically in the head of my client and the head of my customer, write language that they understand and they relate to and then encourage them down a buying decision.
I hope that helps you and again at Clickbank, that's what we do. We empower you as a merchant processor and as a technology company to create offers that are compliant, that convert well and that we can pay you out and your affiliates out on. Go check us out. Thank you again for watching this. If you have questions, please post them below. Please share this video. I think it could help a lot of your friends and the people who might be looking to get into business right now online. Thanks for watching and we'll see you again soon.
