Do You Like Being Called “Traffic?” Enter the Contest!
ByRecently I heard a major hard sell Internet marketer say:
“Traffic equals money. “
Traffic = $
That’s true of course. Without traffic (virtual or physical) no business can survive.
That means you are traffic. I am traffic. We all are traffic.
But here’s the question —
Do you like being perceived as walking money . . .
The wallet end of the transaction?
Granted, money is central to a business transaction.
But wouldn’t you rather be perceived as a human being with a need or a desire . . .
As someone whose needs are recognized and valued and treated respectfully?
“Traffic” is a shorthand term and makes thinking about potential customers easier.
But it also makes thinking about potential customers as one undifferentiated mass — kind of a commercial blob — an impersonal money hole.
Even when someone does a lot of market research and has all the numbers — demographics, psychographics, whatever-graphics — and they feel like the KNOW their customers . . . do they really?
No one person, no business can get to know it’s customers one-on-one. That’s silly to even consider.
But to lump them into the blob called ”traffic” dehumanizes them to the point of abstraction . . . i.e. reducing living human beings to a concept — and one-concepts-fits-all.
So what’s another word for “traffic?”
For example, we prefer “specific audience” to “target market.” Specific audience suggests agroup of people, and a group that would prefer not being targets.
We prefer “open the relationship” rather than “close the sale.”
What word or phrase can you come up with to replace “traffic?”
Just enter it into the comment box. We’ll choose what we think are the best three and we’ll have everybody vote.
To the person whose word or phrase is chosen we’ll send:
** MP3 audios and PDF transcripts of a two hour discussion on the basics of keyword I enjoyed with Matt Aaron, a Google Pay Per Click Pro.
So what’s your word or phrase?
Because It’s all in the Connection,
Jim
PS – I’m asking you to register for the RSS feed on the previous page where it says “Subscribe in a Reader.” That way you’ll get our blog posts whenever we post them, which will be more and more frequent now.
PSS – We’d appreciate your comments because we’d like to open this conversation as broadly as we can. Thanks.
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I want to applaud the question. It is an example of thinking in terms of what I call alchemical business. I also want to applaud the many great answers. So many good ideas. The first thing that came to mind for me was guests as I see it was for many others. Their is a grace and simplicity to that choice. However, for the sake of offering a unique choice for the contest I pondered more.
I came up with Beneficiaries because I only want people who will benefit from what I have to offer to use their precious commodity of time at my websites.
I like the word participant.
There are the energies of the website and the energies of those who respond to the website.
Those energies combined have the potential to create something beyond what already exists.
So they are participating in the possibility of co- creating something better.
Sandra,
Yes, it’s all about co-creation. The seller and the buyer co-create the sale. It’s an improvisation between them. And when they respect each other, even if they don’t know each other, the collaboration leaves them whole with a sense of secure competence.
Jim
Very nice post, I share the same position about this.
[...] you like to be called traffic?” ask Judith and Jim of Bridging Heart And Marketing and they’ve even created a contest for a [...]