These tactics will save your company time, money and frustration
Who knew I would find myself in a place of comfort when I decided to launch my business full-time early in 2018? Life threw me a bone (thank you, Libbie Miller!), so I started doing some freelance writing. Specifically, a lot of web content. As the portal to your company—including its image, its products and services, and its position as a thought leader—the website is a pretty big deal.
Nowadays people really (and I mean really) seem to need support with their websites. And not just writing. This has kept me busy in 2018.
Companies need help honestly honing in on:
What they mean to their clients
Who they are in their industry’s marketplace
The challenges their products and services solve
They also need help deciding the hierarchy of the site. As well, the intricate thought processes that goes along with each page and its calls to action, headlines, images, links and the rest.
Saving Money
Time and again, I find my clients trying to do some legwork themselves thinking it will save them money. When in reality, they are amazing at what they do for a living. But not at marketing, certainly not UX or SEO, absolutely not writing to appeal to a particular audience via web, nor back-end data analysis.
This means that instead of saving money, they are wasting time, facing frustration and losing sales by not inviting a professional to the table sooner.
Since your company’s website is what prospects reference first to see if they want to do business with you, you should do it right. Consequently, the following steps should precede the website revamp itself, and be taken seriously.
Getting Prepared
In advance of contacting a freelancer or full-service marketing agency, get your ducks in a row. In other words, discuss the following “must-dos” internally among a group of your peers. Above all, make this a series of brainstorming sessions in which no thought is a bad thought, and be sure to keep detailed notes. You’ll be surprised how much of these thoughts will lead to a metamorphosis of your brand and your new-and-much-improved website.
4 Must-Dos before Revamping Your Company’s Website:
Think like a prospect. Employees are company soldiers, marching to the beat of their own corporate lingo. And that’s great internally to relate with colleagues. But it doesn’t work in appealing to your prospects. And that matters. A lot. So get out of your corporate box and think like your prospects or clients. Assume they do not know or understand your acronyms, your product lines, or your mission.
Appeal to your clients. Talk to a handful of great clients who sing your praises. Ask them if you can develop a public case study on how your solution improved their business (be sure to incorporate numbers). Or, perhaps they can give your company a quotable testimonial. Don’t forget to ask them why they chose your company over your competitors, and what challenges your products have solved for them. This is truly important and leads directly into No. 3.
Define your differentiation in the marketplace. And please, please don’t only answer with “great customer service.” I am a huge cheerleader for my clients and believe in their people and solutions. That said, it’s a tough sell in any industry to differentiate on service alone—unless there truly is a remarkable difference. As in, miraculous. Let’s highlight your service, and offer some other truly tangible reasons you are better than your competitors. Add numbers. Do you cost more, but offer a technically better solution? Is your widget receiving social praise? Do you have near-perfect reviews from hundreds or even thousands of customers? Going back to No. 2 above, why did your clients choose your company over your competitors?
Get on the same page. As a team, you need to make sure you’re on the same page, from C-suite to the conduit working with your freelancer. This will save time and oodles of money when the rubber meets the road in web development. It costs untold dollars to toggle back and forth with content and web design when the decision makers and the doers have different ideas on execution.
Signing Off…
A new or revamped website should not be taken lightly. It is the No. 1 marketing piece that people will reference before doing business with you.
Well-crafted, it can dramatically change your sales funnel. With this in mind, contact me for support. I promise not to let you down.
About Jill Collins
Jill Collins at j.comm marketing is a marketing and data professional who specializes in breathing new life into brands, and finding money in nonprofit donor databases. She is a proven and trusted partner when it comes to understanding an organization and its culture. Her talent lies in marrying a client’s wants and needs with logistics. Give Jill a shot. She won’t let you down.