Your brand’s website should let potential customers get a feel for what your brand is all about and, believe it or not, if it doesn’t drive customers away, then it’s not working hard enough, writes Mark Breen.
Your company website should whisper gently to visitors “this is us and this is how we do things. We may not be for you and that’s fine. Good luck on your journey.” No less in business than in life, we cannot be all things to all people and we shouldn’t try to be.
In focus groups and brainstorms the world over, B2C marketing professionals dedicate untold resources to understanding Mary or Jane or Timmy – their ideal customer. Once Mary, Jane or Timmy have been described, debated and designed, they inform all subsequent marketing decisions.
In doing so, they are looking to understand that shopper that will buy them, buy into them and love them forever to become a most loyal brand advocate. That said, shouldn’t all businesses have as deep an understanding and appreciation of their ideal customer as possible?
B2B selling should be driven by a similar understanding of the ideal customer too. Be honest – you have clients / customers that are your favourite and others that are not so much your favourite. That being the case, you already know what your ideal customer looks like. You know your Mary, Jane or Timmy, but the question is are you using your website effectively to woo them?
In wooing, both professionally and personally, we first need to know ourselves. We need to be confident in what we have to offer the other party and then seek to impress upon them that we are a worthy supplier. Once we know ourselves, we find it much easier to attract and retain that customer or partner. Once comfortable in our own skin and personality, the wooing becomes much easier and ultimately more fulfilling.
“In wooing, both professionally and personally, we first need to know ourselves. We need to be confident in what we have to offer the other party and then seek to impress upon them that we are a worthy supplier.”
Given that our website is likely a potential customer’s first interaction or experience with us, shouldn’t we be imbuing our website with our personality? Shouldn’t we be giving them an immediate sense of who we are, what we do and how we do it?
Yes, we should.
For example, we’ve worked with our web agency to develop two award-winning websites for our two brands over the last five years. In winning an eir Spider for our Cuckoo Events website, the judges specifically commented that the site ‘oozes their business personality.’. That’s exactly what we want both of our websites to do.
In every business, time is money. The less time we waste, the more time we have available to make money. Making money pays the bills, the wages and allows us to grow and develop. So, we should be aiming to waste as little of our precious time as possible. Our websites help us do just that.
I pay no attention to bounce rates on our websites. I don’t care how long someone stays on there. I only care that enough people get a good vibe off our sites, like how we do things, and pick up the phone or send an email. ‘Enough’ is not a metric SEO companies tend to measure. They shouldn’t either.
In marketing terms, those moved to get in touch with us are highly qualified leads. They ‘get us’ much more than they otherwise would have, because our website is us. They are far more likely to become clients.
Those that don’t get in touch are as important to our business growth and development as those who call us and become long-term clients. Had our website not driven them away, then they’d have occupied some of that precious time we spoke about earlier. We’d have spent time emailing or conference-calling or whatever until they got a sense of us and how we do what we do and decided we weren’t for them. That would have been a waste of their time as well as our time.
So, by leveraging our websites to ensure visitors get a proper sense of our (business) personality, we save everyone time. Time that is money. So, if your website isn’t driving people away from your business, then it’s not working hard enough for you.
Mark Breen is director of Cuckoo Events
First published in Irish Marketing Journal (IMJ January 2018)© to order back issues please call 016611660
