Bonus Tip: First Five Minutes Marketing Secret

The Consumer's First Five Minute Test of Whether to do Business with You

Would you buy a used car from this man

If you and I were to meet in a few minutes, I would generate a number of 1st impressions.  Your dress, eyes, and hair style are likely to be the first three things I notice.  After a few minutes talking with you, I'll gather information about your accent, your speaking style, whether you talk about yourself or ask about me.  In five minutes, I'll have you sized up based on thousand of cues in the details of your face (age, cosmetics, laugh lines), speaking style, body language, information you convey.

All of this is true for your business.  Whether my first knowledge of you is online, walking into your store, meeting you at a function, or seeing your add in the paper or on a bus bench.  Just as a five minute conversation with you might determine if I want to get to know you better, the first few moments of my relationship with your business will play a major role in determining my future with your enterprise. 

The last several secrets have been speaking to these types of cues:

•     The Niche Your Company Occupies
•     The Branding of Your Company
•     The Territory Your Company Seeks to Read
•     The Demographic of Your Client Base
•     The Expression of Your Personality as Project onto Your Company
•     Your Logo, Colors, and Slogan and the Impression They Make
•     The Street View of Your Business

Up to this point, the view is about that first 20 seconds or so of the impression.  Now we move to the rest of that first five minutes.  For companies that sell products, I would propose to you that the consumer will be concentrating on your brands and the perceived quality of those brands.  For service companies, it will be about the phone call.  And for both, the first five minutes will include the online personality.  So, numbers 18, 19, and 20 will discuss those three things.