The world is changing.
The way business is done is changing.
The way companies market their products is changing. At some point in time every company who wants to succeed will need to embrace the change.
Marketing your product or service has traditionally been a process of getting your message out to potential customers using a variety of media. Now it's becoming more important to attract prospects to your company website and convert them into customers.
Each year a growing number of consumers find products and choose companies to do business with by searching, comparing and analyzing them on the Internet. Want to buy a camcorder? Start your search online—comparing brands by price and feature. Read some unbiased owner reviews. Tap your friends on Facebook. Want to find a real estate lawyer? It's not really that different of a process.
To better understand the scope of change we are experiencing, go back about a century.
The first Sears catalog was published in 1888.
Before the Sears catalog, farmers and rural communities bought supplies from local general stores often at very high and inconsistent prices. Richard Warren Sears took advantage of this by publishing and mailing his catalog with clearly stated prices and convenient ordering. The catalog business grew quickly. By 1894, the Sears catalog had grown to 322 pages, featuring sewing machines, bicycles, sporting goods, automobiles and a host of other items—even a house!
Over the next 100 years, the industry we now know as direct mail flourished. However, as our mailboxes overflowed, response rates plummeted. In today's saturated marketplace any direct mailing is lucky to result in a 2.61% response and the time between mailbox and trash can gets shorter every year.
Apply the same thinking to the Internet.
The medium has changed from paper and ink to the information superhighway. Instead of 100 years it took less than 20 years for saturation to occur—at the end of 2009 there were 234 million web sites on the Internet and 252 million users in North America. And the time between the method of delivery and its rejection is now less than a millisecond. Click!
So how can you make your website succeed?
Think about the last time you actually responded to a piece of direct mail or at least didn't trash it immediately. This is because it offered you some immediate value relevant to a current need and it appealed to your senses in a positive way. These two things working together, however fleetingly, begin a relationship between you and the company.
The heart makes decisions. The intellect rationalizes the decision. And every now and then, like in the case of the sushi coupon I just received from Market Street, the stomach closes the deal.
If a visitor to your web site has a positive intellectual and emotional reaction to your web site it has succeeded.
Increase your brain power rather than your media buying power.
The cost of customer acquisition through traditional marketing increases as media alternatives increase. Where do you put your money? Direct mail response rates are at about 1.2% and falling. Satellite TV now offers 130 channels in HD. Satellite radio has no commercials. And consumers are finding better ways to block interruptive sales messages with spam filters, caller ID and Tivo. It's time to explore the alternative.
Take the leap—one step at a time.
How much would it cost to write a white paper about your industry? Or shoot a video explaining how you've improved a manufacturing process? How long would it take to tweet every morning? Or have a different employee write a blog every week? But why? How could any of it affect my business? For example how can a blog help? Okay...
Top Eight Reasons to Blog:
- A blog about a customer case history can dramatically and effectively spotlight your areas of expertise
- A blog about trends in your industry makes you and your company appear to be leaders in your field
- Each blog is like a new page on your website which is good for search engine rankings
- A blog is fresh content which is good for search engine rankings
- A blog is fresh content which is good for attracting back visitors
- A blog allows visitors to comment so you can begin a relationship with a whole new world of prospects
- These days a blog is expected—you may lose visitors if there isn't one
- Writing a blog can actually make you improve and update your knowledge in a field