Think about your website in terms of a marketing exercise, not an IT exercise. It is, after all, a promotional/marketing/advertising tool. The technology doesn’t matter. If you were placing a newspaper ad, would you put it in the hands of a company that manufactures paper? Of course not!
A website is quite different from marketing via traditional media though.
- With TV, you’ve tuned in to watch a show – the ads interrupt that show
- With radio, you’ve listening to the music or talkback – ads interrupt what you’re actually listening to
- With newspapers and magazines, you buy them for articles/news/stories, and ads are placed around them hoping to catch your attention
If a client (or potential client) visits your website – it is their destination, not a something else that happens to be at their destination. Your website doesn’t suddenly appear whilst they’re doing their online banking or checking sport results. They have chosen to visit you. The same can’t be said for other forms of advertising.
Knowing that someone has chosen to visit your website, what are you going to offer them? The same old corporate “yada yada”? Is that what potential clients really want?
The most important thing you can do here is put yourself in their shoes. It’s also one of the hardest, as it’s easy to assume people know the same things about your industry that you know. This is usually not the case!
So how do you make a website a “destination”?
Each business is different, and every website is different, but in general terms you should think about the following:
- Provide news or articles that help people understand your products or services better.
- If you often get asked the same sort of questions, include answers to those questions on your website.
- If you’re selling a physical product, provide photos – good photos that show detail.
- If you’re selling something that has a strong emotional hook, offer something that the visitor can download and keep. Wallpapers or screensavers are good examples.
- Provide calculators or other online tools that make a visit to your site really useful.
- Ask for your visitor’s email address and send them a regular newsletter
- And give visitors an easy way to interact with the website!
These are just a few general examples – our challenge is to find something that your clients or prospects will find useful, and then tell their friends and colleagues about. But it’s fairly safe to say that the days of just having a “web presence” are virtually over.
Your competitors probably have “a presence”.
How are you going to stay in front?