Everyday your customers are bombarded by countless offers from a wide variety of business.  And if those businesses are online, they may be selling lots of sizzle.  I have seen amazing and also garish campaigns, ads and other marketing tactics selling shiny, glossy, exciting, fabulous things where it was clear that the majority of the attention was put on the sizzle.

Sizzle may land you a customer once.  But if you don’t have the steak, those customers won’t return and they won’t tell anyone else to come back with them.  Or even worse, they will tell their network that you are all talk and no action.

You can have a fantastic conference will an exciting speaker line up, but if those speakers aren’t delivering content of direct value to the attendees, well that’s just a sizzle job;

If your product doesn’t perform as you promised, when then your customers leave hungry for something more.

Whatever product, service or experience you promise, you need to at least deliver that- and hopefully more- in the eyes of what’s important to your customer.

If you deliver the steak, your customers will come back over and over again.  And it’s much easier to sell more steak to customers who love your steak, than to someone who’s never tried your steak before (or perhaps is even a vegetarian).

Sizzle is important, but make sure you have the steak to back it up.