Mark Schaefer, the noted marketing writer, blogger {Grow}, podcast host and all wonderful human being, often says that if you aren’t sharing your content, it probably won’t help you achieve your goals. Mark’s point is so helpful for marketing professionals to consider. (check out Mark’s book The Content Code and my review)
A west coast client of my marketing services reached out to me last month and asked why their website wasn’t working. They wanted me to audit their site and offering suggestions to help them drive traffic and leads.
Billboard in the Desert
As I learned about their business, read through their website and took a cursory look at their analytics, it became apparent to me that they had put up a billboard in the desert, waiting for visitors. They had no plans for inboard traffic to drive their audience to see their digital brochure (aka website).
We went through a simple exercise with a few of their team leaders:
- Who is this content relevant to?
- Where do they work?
- What are the titles of these individuals?
- Do you have their email addresses or contacts in your CRM?
- What do you know about the media they consume?
- Are competitors successful at creating magnets pulling in customers toward them?
- Who are the industry thought-leaders?
- Who are the journalists that write about the topics of interest?
- What social media/YouTube minor celebrities talk about these issues?
After our conversation, it became apparent that the company needed a way to attract attention and to communicate their key messages. But, we found that the website, as configured wasn’t the best place to tell these stories.
They needed to understand that they are in the publishing business and can’t keep sharing yesterday’s newspaper.
Without giving away too much and protecting their confidentiality, there was a recognition that a static website was like yesterday’s newspaper. If you aren’t updating your current and staying relevant, you are only going to have customers read it once.
The Big Takeaway
So the big takeaway was that my client needed a means to tell new and fresh stories regularly. They started to see marketing through the lens of a newspaper, not a static billboard or brochure. We are working together to solve this problem, but the lesson is a great reminder that your marketing needs to be dynamic, ever evolving and fresh.
You can get pretty thirsty reading billboards in the desert.
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Do you feel like your marketing is parched and dry? The Marketing Sage can help you build awareness. Connect with me here.
Photo credit: By Peeweejd – Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=17238481
