https://soundcloud.com/newfangled-agency-marketing-matters/episode-6-how-to-say-what-you-do-and-why-thats-so-hard?
Mark:
Hello, and welcome to the Newfangled podcast. This is a biweekly podcast that deals with digital marketing conflicts that are a particular interest to marketing agencies. We are Newfangled and we work with marketing agencies all throughout North America, and Europe to help them get the most out of their own digital marketing, for the purpose of generating the right kinds of leads for their firm. I’m Mark O’Brien, I’m the CEO of Newfangled.
Chris:
I’m Chris Butler, I’m the COO of Newfangled.
Mark:
What’s the topic, today?
Chris:
In the last one we talked a little bit about sort of the baseline objective of why it’s so difficult to get this done for yourself. You need to communicate your business. Why is that hard?
Mark:
Getting marketing done?
Chris:
Yeah. Why working with somebody else, or why getting some activity on that is so necessary? Something that you had mentioned in that is that the user, the visitor, the person who is coming into your site, your prospect, they want to get the information that you want them to have. They want to know who you are. They want to know what to do. They want to know what steps to take. The problem is that we don’t make it easy for them to do that. We had a couple patterns that we see, and solutions to those when it comes to designing sites, and one specifically has to do with messaging. Mark mentioned in our last episode that most agencies think that they are clearly articulating a positioning, right there on their homepage, but in reviewing the sites, it’s like nine out of ten times, they are not really.
The question is, what makes for the right way of articulating positioning on a website, and I think it comes down to a few things. Number one, it’s truly a positioning statement, meaning, it is clear about who you are, what you do, and who your audience is, for whom you do it.
Those things should be differentiated. It’s really difficult to fill out that mad lib without telling the truth. You know? If you cannot fill out the mad lib then you are going to end up much more general. That’s step one. Are you doing that in a way that’s clear on the homepage of your site? Are you doing that in a way that’s clear on every other page of your site.
Mark:
Just to jump on that, we were up in New England, yesterday, with a fantastic agency that we’ve known for a long time. They’ve got a wonderful reputation in the marketplace, they’re brilliant marketers, they really hang their hat on the brilliant side of it. They are incredibly smart people, and they are hired for their intelligence. We were there speaking with them about their own marketing, and I was struck, and shocked, and I didn’t believe it for the first few minutes, I thought I was missing something. They had really know idea who they were targeting. When we were talking about the marketing, they couldn’t really tell me who they wanted to have show up to their site.
These are just some of the greatest marketing minds in the country, without a doubt, but they weren’t able to use that intellectual comparable for their own purposes. Once we mentioned a few things, pointed a few things out, the guy goes, “Yeah. Of course we need to do that.” They didn’t arrive there on their own. Again, like the genie inside the bottle.
So much about marketing is just setting the right goals. What do you want to have happened? What do you expect to happen? When is it going to happen? Really just take some time, agencies like to rush into the marketing stuff and get into the fun, creative, everything else, which is entirely understandable, but it’s amazing how few of them, and seemingly almost none of them stopped and say, “Okay. What do we expect to get out of this? Who is going to show up on the site? What is the experience they are going to have? What do you want their next steps to be? Specifically.” When I say, “Who?” What’s their title? Where do they work? Where do they live? What are their responsibilities?” Thinking deeply about the who.
Chris:
We talked a lot about persona development, I think, in maybe our second or third episode. It’s a science, in a way, there is so much that goes into persona development, and organizing that properly, but on the other side of it, it’s completely not science. What do you want? Those two things have to come together. Mark was on a call with another agency a few months ago, and I remember. It was like a light bulb went off with them when he was pointing out, “Look. You’ve worked with a lot of different types of clients in the past, which experience has been best for you all?” If you can shine a light on that, then that helps make the science of persona development much more functionable.
What that ends up digesting to you is this statement, your positioning statement on the homepage, is it clear? Is it clear, and indexable, and available on every other page of the site, and that really needs to be the case. It cannot just be like in a logo in an image somewhere. It needs to be indexable, it needs to be something that someone can actually read, to a person and a bot, hopefully. It needs to be in the place of prominence, so that when someone comes in on a lower level page, which is going to be the majority of your visitors, they see right away what piece of the market you are claiming.
They are going to read your material and they are going to start by how brilliant it is, and they are going to be excited about it, and the first question that they are going to have is, “Who wrote this? Who created this? Who did this webinar? Who is this business? Where am I?” It needs to be there, because the usability data shows that the first thing that happens when somebody comes in on the lower level page, is they reorient. They click the logo, they go home, they do something. You need to get that information to them as quickly as possible.
Mark:
That’s step one? Messaging.
Chris:
Step one is messaging, and there’s so much a business considerations’ that go into that. Can you actually write a message like that? Then, step two is an articulation. Is it in the right places, in the right ways? Typically, what we also see is when an agency fails to articulate clearly on their homepage what their position is, who they are as a business. They also fail to direct that visitor in the proper way. Here’s something that I’ve seen all the time, a somewhat, weak sauce, positioning statement that links directly to a contact form.
Mark:
Right.
Chris:
A somewhat weak sauce positioning statement that’s overwhelmed by a case study that links to a gallery of images, and what I point out there is, “You are not speaking for yourself anymore. Someone else’s brand is now speaking for you. You made that case study, front and center.”
Mark:
Or in other cases where the homepage positioning is actually amazing. It’s spot on, but when you leave the homepage you don’t see it. The majority of their prime prospects are going to come in through organic non-branded search, hopefully at least forty percent of the total traffic will just be that one category of organic operating search. Those people are not landing on the homepage, they are landing on a sub page.
Chris:
Right.
Mark:
That’s your point earlier about the messaging needs to be filtered throughout the entire site, so no matter where you are within five seconds, you’ll understand who this firm is, and what they do. We were working with an agency recently in the Southwest, we try to keep some things so much specific, and so much general. An example, they have great positioning, they are really focused, but when you went to their sub page, like say, blog details page, their logo was a symbol, and it wasn’t even a symbol, it kind of looked like a an A, even though the A was not part of their name. It was just a symbol, and there is no mention of the agency name, or the positioning or anything. All you saw was a symbol.
Chris:
Right.
Mark:
Again, great marketers nail the impossibly hard work of getting the positioning right, but just didn’t think to put it everywhere.
Chris:
I had the exact same experience with another agency, where the symbol was all that was there, and I said, “You know what, guys? I think your symbol is amazing. Someday, when you’re the Nike of what you do, you can do this. You are not the Nike of what you do today, so I don’t know what that symbol is.”
Mark:
Yeah.
Chris:
There needs to be words there. Put words there. The other thing is in regard to this reorientation process, is that if someone comes in on a lower level page, case study, a webinar, a blog article, whatever it is, every usability study that I’ve seen shows that they inevitably do one of two things, they either read more of that content, because there is related content there for them to see, or they subscribe to it, or….and/or…they go home. They go home on the site to see who this is, and if they go home this is now your opportunity to get them into a marketing focused experience on this site. They’ve just done research work, you now have the meeting with them. This is your virtual meeting.
You have your positioning statement, that’s the sort of smallest amount of information that you can give them there, and now you need to guide them through and experience of getting more informed. That positioning statement needs to point them to a landing page that’s focused on your capabilities. What you do, and call it “what you do” if you want, but it needs to be there, and that page has a specific set of functions that bare minimum needs to have. It needs to have 250 to 500 words of content, probably no more than that. It needs to have some social proof, a testimonial from a customer, and it needs to have an easily scannable list of services that you offer. Maybe their engagement types or specific services.
You don’t want to get down to a la carte, like a Cheesecake Factory menu, but a list of services, and a buyer-focused CTA. Okay. Let’s get in touch about meeting. Let’s talk about your project. That way at every step along the process, because that’s step two, you are getting somebody who is ready to go an opportunity, but you are also giving somebody who needs more information an opportunity to get that. They click one of those services, they get into another landing page focused on the service.
Again, 250 to 500 words of content. A scannable list of related case studies. Case studies that are outcomes of that service. Social proof of a testimonial, and a buyer-focused CTA, for the people who are ready. When they get to the case study, again, simple set of things that must be there. 250-500 words of content. Images of the work. Social proof. Testimonial from the client. A easily scannable list of services, at this point, and then the CTA, to get in touch.
The key thing at this point is – what I see over, and over again, is someone gets to a case study, and the related list is more case studies. Sure. You probably do want them to see more than one case study. If they have all the time in the world. The thing is they don’t have all the time in the world, so it’s more important that you place these case studies in a business context, it’s not just an outcome and you don’t want them to get caught in a content cul-de-sac of more outcomes. You want them to understand how this fits into what you are offering into the marketplace, so send them back to services, and then they have a fluent up, down approach, no matter where they are on the site, and you are in control.
Mark:
Yeah. Interlinking the site, is so critical. The idea that Chris mentioned of the contact cul-de-sac, when I first heard him say that, I just loved it, it’s such a great idea. It happens all over the place with sites for all sorts of firms. You want to make sure that when they land on that blog page, they see related individuals inside the firm. The case studies, or related services, related content. When you are on any of those other pages, again, relate it, seeing what’s related to this thing. The fact that the individual is on this page is as much proof as we are going to get that they are interested in this topic. We want to, again, make it easy on the user, and make it so when they are on, any given page, when serving up to them a really clear, obvious way, the next things that they might want to click through, based on what their interest is.
Chris:
Yeah. We are going to wrap with that. Mark, actually has to go talk to another agency about these very things. We have a short window. There’s more information about all of these matters at newfangled.com. We’ve got articles about this very topic. We’ve got white papers and webinars, and blogs. You can find us there at newfangled.com. You can find Mark on Twitter at @newfangledmark and you can find me on Twitter @chrbutler, but we really urge you to come visit us at Newfangled.
Next time, we’ll talk a little bit more about these kinds of things, and we hope to see you then.