This article was written by Murray Sye
Is your website giving you the cold shoulder? Not so impressed with the investment you’ve made so far? If this sounds all too familiar, it may be time to re-evaluate and refocus.
It seems that “re-focus” is the key word. David Williams – a frequent contributor to Forbes – recommends that for your business to prosper, “you must put your entire focus on helping your customers succeed. You must have customers who are willing to buy what you are creating before your business can move forward, no matter how great you believe your idea will be”.
While there are many pieces to the online puzzle, there is however one essential component that should be the foundation of virtually every online marketing plan. David Meermen Scott puts it this way: “It’s not about you, it’s about your customer.”
Show, don’t tell rule –
Instead of flogging your products and services that turn your visitors away, re-evaluate and “refocus” your attention to how you can help them solve their challenges with the solutions that you offer. Your online marketing content is meant to drive action, which requires a focus on describing answers to your customer’s most urgent problems. Too often marketing and communications materials simply describe what an organization or a product does. While this might be valuable to a subset of visitors, what people really want to see are the issues and problems they face, and then details on how yours is the best solution.
So what can product marketers do to turn things around?
#1: Your customers can show off your products
Create a library of customer stories or case studies where your visitors can learn up on how others have leveraged the use of your products.
#2: Demonstrate your product or service
Evaluate your current site and see if this applies. You showcase all your products with photos and a brief description of each product. This may be effective to some, but to resonate and to really make an impact why not show how your organization solves customer problems with your products. It’s far more effective than simply listing your product with a photo, a SKU number and a brief description.
#3: Create action driving content
Target what you want from your website. During this period of “refocus” determine what you want your website to accomplish. Successful websites have a clearly defined goal – to sell products, generate leads, secure contributions, or get people to join – and deploy a content strategy that directly contributes to reaching that goal.
#4: Lead the visitor to the goal
Your “refocused” content should draw the visitor into the sales-consideration funnel and channel them towards the place where action occurs. The action mechanism is not hidden nor is the organization's goal a secret. When content effectively drives action, the end of the sales funnel – an e-commerce company's “buy” button, the business-to-business corporation's “please contact us” form, or nonprofit's “donate” link – are found in logical places, based on content that leads people there.
