Brand consultants and selfish clients
One of the most shallow conversations you’ll ever hear will be between a brand consultant and a self obsessed client.
It is a thing of beauty.
By which of course, I don’t mean the conversation, or the participants. Rather, the most important thing to these people is how things look, and what’s more, the most beguiling thing to the self obsessed is a conversation about themselves.
Imagine how well suited they are.
The brand consultant, obsessive about the way things look, especially when there is a cheque involved. The client, only too happy to have endless conversations about the way they are perceived, how they look, and what other people think.
The really great thing for me is that they keep each other entertained, and I can excuse myself without offence.
From the client’s point of view, the positive,
The confidence gained might be worth the expense, and having someone listen, ask intelligent questions and appear interested is priceless. (Although I personally find a business coach to be much better value for money, the honesty is refreshing)
The resulting brand centred marketing might attract similarly self obessed people. There are people who might appreciate the sentiment, if they notice anything at all.
How can there possibly be a negative?
Of course, this thinking has consequences when planning a website.
Self centred marketing: The impression that website visitors care about the company means that self indulgence goes un-noticed until business has dried up. What is this ROI acronym anyway, why does that matter? I can almost hear.
Myopia:
The ability to ignore that people can instantly see how self centred you are is achieved only with the support of ‘brand conversations’.
Dissonance and lack of trust:
People do care if you’re a dog on the internet. They look for the slightest clue.
It is incredibly difficult to use language that fools people. They get you. Seriously. The only way around it is to be genuine, and hope you’re good enough anyway.
A brand is not how you look, it’s a bit about what you say, but mostly it’s made from what you do. Your behaviour will ‘out you’ quicker than any slogan you can dream up. Lack of substance speaks volumes.
And finally, an apology:
Most normal people will find this post unpleasant. The reason for that, I hope you realise dear reader, is that this post isn’t about you. And it should be.
Websites should be about the visitor, and what’s in it for them.
For my part, I sincerely hope you don’t have to go through this experience again.
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What happened to our Sales Process?
When given the choice, would you pick up the phone and talk to a sales person, or would you rather browse google.
The ‘Sales Process’ is changing into something called the ‘Buying Process’
You don’t get to steer any more.
The sheer volume of choice, and over capacity in every industry means a bewildering array of suitors. And there aren’t many of us that have more time than we used to, in order to talk to them all.
It’s easier, quicker and less stressful to use search engines for product and solution detail, than it is to call, wait for the right person to call back, and then get pushed into a sales pipeline. Especially if you don’t get the right answer first time.
So, these days, buyers won’t pick up the phone to find out if you’re an expert. Prove you’re an expert though, and then they might be more inclined.
At this point, there will be people who think their complex solution can’t be sold online, like some book or a camera from Amazon. But when we’re talking about process, it is clear that the point at which we get to speak to prospects is now later than earlier. It won’t get better.
Highly available and findable detail from the competition makes sure that these days we can’t just put a list of products on the website and hope it will be enough.
The competition is working hard too.
No sales person is hurt in the process.
If we don’t impress people with our knowledge, with our insights and customer stories, they’ll just click the back button. (that’s not a hint).
Within that context, the ability to educate themselves on the buying decision has put the buyer firmly into the driving seat. If we don’t provide quality information, people will find it elsewhere, in a heartbeat.
It is self service decision making, and sales are won and lost without anyone even being aware there was an opportunity.
Anecdotally from some customers recently, I hear that close rates are increasing.
It would seem that Customers are kissing less frogs and have ‘half made up their mind’ before they walk through the door. I firmly believe that once you’ve helped people understand what’s important, it’ll be your business to lose.
Marketing got longer and sales got shorter.
Turning Browser Caterpillars into Butterfly Leads
To compete effectively for prospect attention then, we need to share our hard won knowledge up front, on a website. It is counter intuitive, and all our instincts tell us to keep secrets, to worry about competitors, to worry that prospects ‘won’t understand’. Just make sure they do.
It’s going to be an uncomfortable ride for many.
The good news
Once it’s done, the lead generation process gets very efficient indeed. Frog kissing was always a let down, and very expensive.
Information is as cheap as cabbage leaves.
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What should you blog about?
After we’ve explained the reasons for using blog technlogy, far too numerous to mention again here, customers tend to call us with a blank sheet of paper after the first few coffees are long gone.
The best advice we can give is to go read something. Preferably something related to what you do of course, but for ideas there is nothing like ‘news’ to set people’s opinions going.
For the technical, they would use ‘Google Reader’ which is a fantastic tool for subscribing to relevant news from a google newsfeed.
You see, to generate your own personal news stream, head over to google news, search for something fundamental to your business, hunt for the RSS button and click. You’re done. Read once a week for instant idea juice.
So, why is this a good idea?
Blogs are publishing platforms, and one of the main reasons to publish is that you have some news. News is fresh, and Search Engines give this some credence by seemingly placing ‘news’ articles almost instantly into their index. Some higher than others of course.
To give a great example, one of the best case studies I’ve ever seen for Search Engine Optimisation has to be the Brent Payne interview recently over at the Wordtracker website. Kudos and links go to them, congratulations.
You couldn’t get a better example of how keywords and news mix to give exposure to those who work them hard. It sets an example to us all, you included!
Another example: when Google chose a new ‘doodle’ today to honour the invention of the barcode, I ’searched’ for bar code, and between the first time I looked and 20 minutes later, the Daily Telegraph leapt to the top of the rankings for a new article on bar code….above Wikipedia.
The reason Google did that, it’s ‘news’. See the google news feed…. and look for the orange button at the bottom.
The reason the Telegraph did that – it knows what people are looking for (from Stats or a keyword tool), and then writes about it. Just as the case study of the Tribune above, writing about things that ‘we know people are interested in’ is easier than trying to make it on your own.
Just I write this, I’m absolutely gratified to see one of my clients, who know a think about data capture and barcodes, have written an article on this very subject…spotting opportunities is a ‘key’ phrase for today.
My work there is done 
, oh wait, I don’t mean that.
Website redesign: Don't forget about search engines
“Right, we’ve finished our web re-design, now we need one of those search engine people”
Cue disappointed look from ’search engine types’.
Getting Search Engine attention is at least as much about what is done on the website as it is about external factors. These are far better thought about during the re-building of a website rather than afterwards. Not only that, it’s always difficult to propose changes to people who have waited a long time for their new site, hence the downcast feeling.
What to think about when re-designing a website
First things first: get some analytic software running on the site, so that you know which pages are getting traffic. This will help planning.
Do think about the existing ‘URL’s – the page addresses.
These are often changed, without a thought, to match the new schema. Of course, by ‘changed’ what we really mean is deleted and completely new pages put in their stead. They didn’t move them, they knocked the house down and built it elsewhere.
Redirects are important. Whenever you change an address, tell the people who send you things because if not, it will be ‘return to sender’.
How much that matters – probably depends on the page, but if visitors matter, then lets send them to a page that looks like something they were expecting, instead of a home page, or black holes.
The next thing is to check for Page Titles and Descriptions. Relevance is important, and if you were receiving visitors it was because Search Engines thought your page was relevant for ’something in particular’. The ‘in particular’ is usually from the page title, content, and incoming links, but descriptions can help improve the number of visitors.
For the avoidance of doubt, here’s how Google uses page Titles, Descriptions and URL’s
All these things are inserted during the page construction, during the (re) building phase.
Yes, the external factors are important for SEO, but if the website isn’t properly organised, then it will never work as well as it could.
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Sell what people are looking for, it's easier
Lead generation on the web is as much about the visitor as the website.
If you had a sales meeting, and your prospect walked out half way through the conversation then you’d be doing some pretty deep soul searching.
Pitching the right thing to the right person is obvious isn’t it, when you think about it.
Yet, on your website, we come and go without offending anyone. In fact, most of us leave your website without doing anything. Are you thinking hard about that?
How can I help you?
For most companies, the website is a sales tool. And the place to start with any sales process is to ask “What are you looking for”?
And you can’t sell me anything unless you know what I’m interested in.
Business served up on a plate
What if Google told you what people are looking for….and offered to send them over? Would you then go ahead and build a page specifically addressing those needs?
That would be better wouldn’t it? That way, you’re only selling to people who are already interested, and you don’t need worry about covering a range of subjects, not yet.
Most people just guess when building a website. But you can find out what people are searching for with a very impressive service from Google – cunningly disguised as the Adwords keyword tool.
Before you put words on a website, use the tool to see what words people are using.
We’re always surprised at how many words people use to search for the same thing, and even more surprised at the variations within phrases.
Be Careful out there
The hidden catch, the one nearly everyone misses, is that the terms you look up on the tool, well, they’re like inside out russian dolls. The most important paragraph was that last one above – the one about variations of phrases.
One short phrase includes thousands of others. Intuitively, this is the wrong way round and we would expect that a long phrase includes plenty of short ones, but no, that’s not correct.
Upside Down Marketing
The term “shoes” gets 100 million searches. Only, it doesn’t, because although those searches include the word shoes, there are millions of variations – many of which will have absolutely no chance of converting into relevant business.
Why try and sell to them all?
This is upside down marketing. Get specific first and go for the low numbers.
As an aside, the numbers of people searching for ‘terms’ is amazingly consistent, and without being completely sure why, we think it’s something to do with the law of large numbers. Ironically.
So, although you’ll be pitching to low numbers of people this week. It does mean you’ll be doing that next week, and the week after that.
If you’re worried about the low numbers thing. We would recommend you sell to large quantities of small numbers.
At last, a proper website plan
Knowing that people are looking before you build your page, does motivate and give you great confidence that the effort you put in will be worthwhile. You’d be amazed how much difference this approach makes to everything you do on a website.
With search engines delivering over 90% of traffic to a website, it pays to know how to use them properly.
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