I think you have a problem with your website. It’s not a problem that you want to admit, but nevertheless, if you want to fix it, you better confront the issue.
What am I talking about? I’m talking about the fact that your website does nothing for your business. It probably doesn’t enhance your so-called ‘brand’. It likely doesn’t attract the right kind of customers and it almost certainly doesn’t generate any leads.
I’m mostly talking here about Business to Business websites, where there isn’t a product to sell online, but some of this might apply to e-commerce sites.
Let’s start with your brand, and I’m not talking about your fg logo. Sorry to be blunt but genuinely, your brand is not your logo. It’s everything else. Your brand is how you’re viewed by the marketplace, and the first thing you need to understand is that the marketplace doesn’t care one jot about you, your products, your latest hire or your most recent gong.
Part of the issue here is that most companies like to talk about themselves on their website so there’s a ton of stuff about your products and services. That’s one reason why you can’t attract customers. The other issue is that by talking about yourself all the time, paradoxically you can’t differentiate yourself, because you force customers to do all the work to find out who they should do business with.
This all sounds like you can’t win. In fact you can. Here’s how.
At a simple level all you do is use your website to deliver content (blogs) that will interest your customers. Keep producing content to find out what interests them. Once you find this out then keep your content going until your customers realise that you know what you’re talking about. Give your knowledge away, that way your brand will be enhanced and customers will trust you. Ultimately when they’re ready to buy, they’ll get in touch. The other benefit is that if you do it well customers will learn about your products and services.
Here’s some recent research that’s been done to show the effectiveness of this model of marketing.
- 70% of marketers are actively investing in content marketing (HubSpot Research)
- Over three-quarters of internet users say they read blogs regularly (Quoracreative)
- 92% of marketers report their company views content as a business asset (Content Marketing Institute)
- 56% of businesses want to increase their spend on content creation (Content Marketing Institute)
- 84% of people expect brands to produce content that entertains, provides solutions and produces experiences and events (Meaningful Brands)
- Content marketing gets three times more leads than paid search advertising (Content Marketing Institute)
- The top three most common content marketing metrics which marketers currently track include website traffic, social media engagement and engagement time (HubSpot February 2020 Survey)