Align Web Marketing Content to a Single Focus Good web designers are cutting out visual clutter and streamlining layouts, but copy writers are still letting company web sites suffer from cluttered text.	Visited: 1901 5.0/5.0 (2 votes total) Rate: Select 1 - Terrible 2 - Poor 3 - Average 4 - Good 5 - Outstanding
by Bob Shawgo June 07, 2006

Bob Shawgo

Shawgo, a graduate of Brigham Young University, has spent the last 15 years in marketing and sales throughout North America. He is the founder and president of Blue Spur Marketing (see http://www.bluespur.net) and has created successful marketing initiatives in everything from grass-roots start-ups to Inc. 500 companies to publicly traded enterprises. He is a participating member of the American Marketing Association and the author of several methodologies on effective marketing and sales.

Bob Shawgo has written 2 articles for PromotionWorld.

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What are your web marketing goals and how is your web site content going to help achieve those goals? One of your first goals ought to be Search Engine Optimization (SEO), so the right people can find your site. After that, the web analytics experts will tell you that you need to create customer conversion, also known as sell through. Sell through may mean getting a customer to purchase from your web site or it could mean encouraging a customer to request more information.

Whatever sell through means to you, it definitely relies on good copy writing. If I could focus on one rule for web content, especially on a home page, it would be three simple words, a mere four syllables: Cut the clutter. Good web designers are cutting out visual clutter and streamlining layouts, but companies still suffer from cluttered text. They can't grasp the idea of less is more with their content. And I'm not even talking about the number of words. The number of words doesn't matter. What matters is the number of topics. I'll sit and read a webpage all day if the author stays on topic and takes me to ever-increasing depths of understanding.

What stands in the way of sell through and even SEO is trying to talk about all the things your versatile company does. Of course your company does lots of things. Every company does lots of things. Competent companies examine their resources and leverage them every which way they can. And if they are really smart, they pick the thing that is most marketable and put that forward.

Let's look quickly at a company that's leveraged its resources every which way: Rubbermaid. Did you know they make water troughs for livestock. I own two. They're great. But go to their web site. They don't even have a listing for livestock equipment. They put the collapsible kitchen bowl front and center. It makes sense because the market for collapsible kitchen bowls is a lot bigger than the market for water troughs. They also mention their garage organizer, but that only takes up about a tenth of the space. The kitchen bowl is a driver, and they use it.

Want another example? Makau (www.makaucorp.com). They leverage tons of resources from flash development to in-house studios to on-site training events. They've even been hired to make television commercials. But when you look at their web site, one theme carries through every panel - e-learning. They focus on it in every corner of their site. If you're telling yourself that this doesn't apply to you, that you're different, save it. Jack of all trades, master of none is not the place you want to be in today's market. The web has made it too easy to find a master in any trade you desire.

On a recent ad campaign I hired an agency in Salt Lake, a production house in Santa Monica, and a media buyer in New York. The agency was sure they could handle it all, but I didn't need them to. I chose masters in each discipline and got stunning results. Your web is the face that new customers see. It's where they go to find out who you are between seeing your ad and talking to your salesperson. They need to know what you're best at, what you're a master of. Focus your content on that and close the deal. “What about all the other stuff we do? What about all the leveraged assets?” Simple. Use it after the prospect is a client.

In fact, you should be leveraging in new and different ways in response to client needs. They will trust you to stretch into new areas for them after you've performed well in your main focus area. Once they are a client you'll have lots of opportunities to show them all you can do. I know this is easier said than done. You want the whole world to know how great you are at all those things. Your ego is telling you to shout them from the roof tops while waving your arms yelling, “Look at me. Look at me.” Leave your ego behind and focus on the one thing with the strongest market pull and hopefully the one you do best. “But what if they were looking for . . . and I didn't tell them I could do it?” What if you tell them you can do so many things that they don't believe you can do anything? It's an age-old strategy: Find a niche, build a beachhead, and then expand your market. Build all your web content around that one focus and drive that business until you are THE master of it.