FULL TRANSCRIPT BELOW:

Mick Torbay: I’m Mick Torbay from Wizard of Ads Toronto, and this series is about identifying mistakes your competitors are making, and I assure you they are, and then using that to take unfair advantage of them and steal their customers away. Yes, I said steal. This is business. It’s not pretty. Wear a cup.

Mick Torbay: Here’s something your competitor is doing and you can spot it right now. Go to their website. What pops up on the screen? Want to live chat with an annoying salesperson? Another pop-up. Want to sign up for our newsletter? Oops. Another pop-up. Fill out our online ballot for a chance to win a trip to Armenia. Whoops, there’s another pop-up. Stop that. Stop it.

Mick Torbay: Have you ever seen a pop-up and thought, “Wow, that’s exactly what I was looking for. I wanted to join their stupid email database. I can’t wait to give these guys my contact information so that they can bombard me with sales pitches every three days.”

Mick Torbay: No, you just want all that crap the hell off your screen. You are so good at closing pop up windows, aren’t you? Like a Ninja? Kapow. Close. Close. Close. Your competitors are creating all these popups because they believe that obstructing the consumer’s chosen path will result in more sales, get in their way, ask for their email address. Their digital guy sold them on this idea and they keep doing it every time they come up with a new way of hijacking the customers chosen search intent. It’s stupid. It’s annoying. And it creates a pattern that you do not want.

Mick Torbay: Pop up. Want to read my blog? No. Live chat with a salesperson? No. Sign up for our newsletter? No. Click here for an online contact form. No. No. No. No. No.

Mick Torbay: Their first major experience with you and you’re setting yourself up with a pattern of, no, no, no, no.

Mick Torbay: Is that what you want? Do you want them to get used to constantly telling you no? Don’t you want them to be thinking, yes, yes, yes.

Mick Torbay: Stop forcing your stuff on them and deliver what they actually want and only that. Give them options but not obnoxious crap they didn’t ask for. Remember from the last video, what my genius partner Tom Waynick says, “Make it easy.”

Mick Torbay: Well, spontaneously launching windows I didn’t want is not making it easy for me. You’re changing my whole mindset from, “Let’s see what these people are all about,” to, “Go away. Leave me alone. Stop bothering me.”

Mick Torbay: Check out your competitor’s website and see what they’re doing. Are they filling their websites with dynamic visuals that follow you as you scroll or pop up in your face and harass you with offers like some kind of street hustler in Times Square? Good. Let them do that. For goodness sake, don’t tell them to stop. Let their website turn off everyone who visits.

Mick Torbay: Now, what do you do with your website to make it different? I’ll tell you. I’m Mick Torbay from Wizard of Ads Toronto, making the world a better place one commercial at a time.