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Website Content and Content Marketing Tips

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At the end of August I made a presentation to care providers in Plymouth aimed at helping them market themselves more effectively on-line. The presentation focused in website content and on-line marketing. Thanks to the excellent folks at Venus Training for arranging the seminar.

Website content: get found, engage, convert

The internet is a large and expanding entity. How will you get found?

Creative Commons License makelessnoise via Compfight

Following the presentation I put together 10 tips for more effective website content and a few reasons why ‘just having a website’ is not enough. Here they are:

10 Tips for Better Website Content

  1. Write about the things that interest your customers, not about the things that interest you.
  2. Make sure each page on your website has a clear purpose. Who is it aimed at? What do you need to tell them? What do you want them to do next?
  3. Always find the most positive way of expressing your ideas – people respond to positive language.
  4. Break up your website content, use sub-headings and bullet points to make it easy for people to find what they want.
  5. Treat your home page like your shop window – give people some good reasons to come in!
  6. Update your content regularly. This makes sure it evolves with your business and keeps Google happy.
  7. Understand what motivates your customers and build your content around that.
  8. Use simple, straightforward language and keep your sentences short.
  9. Think about the tone and writing style that are most appropriate for your business and which will engage your target customers.
  10. ‘You’ is one of the most engaging words in the English language. Make sure your content talks more about ‘you’ (your customers) and not ‘we’.

Why Just Having a Website is not enough

  1. Having a great looking website and filling it with mediocre or unfocused content represents a wasted investment and a missed opportunity.
  2. The internet is a huge and expanding universe.  How will you get found?
  3. Google search rankings are increasingly determined by the quality of your content: how often it is accessed, bookmarked and shared.
  4. A content strategy based on publishing regular, useful and well produced content, together with effective use of social media will have more impact than relying on traditional ways of optimising websites for search engines.
  5. ‘Content’ can be blog articles, videos, photos, infographics, or anything that your audience will find interesting.
  6. A robust content strategy will help you reach new customers, engage them in your conversation, build trust, and win their business.

Get Found, Engage, Convert!

If you’d like help to get more from your internet presence give me a call on 01823 674167 or use the contact tab on the left.

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PPC Advertising: ‘Reports of my death are premature’.

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I found the following article on Social Media Today: The Death of Pay Per Click Advertising.

It’s well worth a read.  The most striking statistic was that only 18% of SMEs using Google Adwords actually recoup their expenditure.  No figures for larger businesses but presumably these are higher and not so newsworthy.

The article has lots of useful suggestions on how to make PPC work, which I won’t repeat here. I’m going to concentrate on more basic issues.

PPC advertising is about quality, not quantity

Of the 82% of SMEs not getting a return from PPC advertising, I wonder how many are doing it themselves rather than using a professional marketer or copywriter. Writing Adwords is superficially simple, writing ones that work is a skilled business, further complicated by the rules on characters. It’s like a modern version of Haiku.

I wonder how many of these SMEs have created an image of the shopper who is likely to become a purchaser, and then written an ad that appeals directly to that person; one that  excludes the merely curious. An attention-grabbing ad is valuable only if it grabs the attention of the right people. Getting clicks from people who are not likely to purchase just eats up your budget.

PPC – nobody knows everybody

How many of the unsuccessful SMEs did small-scale pilots using several versions of the ads to see which ones appeal to the right kind of customer? PPC is not an exact science; we know the words most likely to appeal, but none of us knows enough people to predict with absolute certainty how the mass of the population will respond. Test different versions and record what works best for future reference. And remember: it’s conversions, not clicks, that count.

The road to nowhere

Not just the title of an excellent song but, I suspect, also a description of some links from Adwords. I did a recent post on landing pages which gives advice on making these more effective  These need to be as scientific as the PPC ads. Is there a natural link to the ad, or will people think they’ve been misdirected to some mysterious place? Does the landing page pick up the sales process where the ad leaves off and lead to a natural call to action? Is it well written, using positive language and without spelling or obvious grammar errors? Finally, has it been tested before committing the whole PPC budget?

PPC is not dead and it can work very effectively. The key for SMEs is to think and act like  big companies (or their advertisingPPC Advertising agencies) in the way that you plan and write PPC campaigns. If any SMEs out there want help with this I would be delighted to hear from you. Just fill out the contact form on my blog.

I’d love to hear from anyone with anything to add to this discussion. Any common pitfalls or, better still, examples of SMEs doing this well would be great to share.

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Does your marketing copy show whose side you’re on?

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More years ago than I care to remember I was working for a training services company. The Marketing Director decided to target financial services companies with a direct mail campaign headed ‘Let’s Face it – You Need Us!’. Something about this approach troubled me.

Her idea was to appeal to corporate anxiety around compliance and keeping the FSA happy – no doubt there had been a recent financial scandal. What I didn’t appreciate (or couldn’t articulate at the time) was that appealing to anxiety is usually not a good marketing approach.

When you think about it, it’s not hard to understand. To respond positively to a message like that a customer is going to have to overtly own up to some inadequacy or vulnerability on their part. The statement is almost a challenge to respond ‘Actually, I don’t need you’, or possibly something stronger. Customers want to know that you are on their side.

At a basic level people need to have gaps in what they have or what they are able to do in order for trade to take place – but there are much subtler ways to get them to that realisation. Ways that don’t alienate them.

Positive Marketing

As with so much in marketing, positivity is crucial. Claude Hopkins realised early in the 20th century that you don’t sell face-cream with a picture of a wrinkled face. Sell the vision of how things are going to be rather than dwelling on current problems.

The headline above failed in another crucial area – not speaking the customer’s language. If I were writing that headline now I would certainly want to get the word ‘compliance’ in there somewhere. At the time it was a word that would have registered with people in the finance industry (and probably still would).

Words are important

Customers want to be reassured that you are on their side. Use the right words and you will convince them that you understand their challenges and aspirations, and can make their lives better. A misplaced word or badly thought-out headline could totally undermine this message. Good copywriting makes a massive difference.

Be Nice

The final difficulty was that the approach was blatantly opportunistic. Profiting from the misfortune of others is not an appealing trait. People will need to be very desperate to respond to that sort of offer. Much better to use words that build a positive rapport by showing customers that you are motivated by wanting to help them.

If I had to write that headline today I would probably go with something like ‘Compliance is a State of Mind’. This would lead naturally into a description of how training is critical in changing behaviour and would hopefully be sufficiently intriguing for somebody grappling with the compliance issue.

Can anyone suggest a better headline? Or do you have any examples of marketing messages that did a great or terrible job of getting customers onside that you’d like to share?

marketing copywriting

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