YOUR WEBSITE ISN’T EXACTLY YOUR BEST ADVERTISING « adtexadvertising.com Blog
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YOUR WEBSITE ISN’T EXACTLY YOUR BEST ADVERTISING As I prepare to exit what I call “Advertising for a Living”, I’m making what I hope are my last few cold calls. Many of these calls are to small and midsize businesses. As you can imagine, I’m getting quite a few “Dear Johns”. One noticeable trend observed during the rejection, is the tendency of many of the marketing decision-makers at these businesses to believe that their website and Social Media efforts are the only advertising they need! I get lots of “I’m ‘good’, man. We already have a website and a Facebook page.” I borrow a line from the film Field of Dreams, when I label this as “If We Build It, They Will Come” marketing. I guess with all the rage about “digital” advertising, some don’t realize that websites and Facebook pages, though relatively cost-effective, are PASSIVE ADVERTISING mediums. Customers must be driven to them, by some means. These means include search engine queries (now generically called “googling”), surprisingly strong YouTube searches, “direct” (email or even direct mail), mobile marketing, event marketing (trade shows, publicity events, etc.), press releases and old-school stand-bys like outdoor, R.O.P., catalogs, broadcast, word of mouth and even handbills. I believe this is the practice that gave birth to the buzzword “interactive”. All of these methods “interact” to boost your brand’s exposure. So many small-to-medium-size business websites are no more than “digital pamphlets”. They are gathering dust, stacked at the virtual receptionist’s desk but aren’t being “distributed”. With technology and unemployment spawning millions of new competitors in so many markets, it’s ever more imperative that marketers realize that Search Engine Optimization and Social Media Optimization are not the only effective tools to reach their target customer. Plus, even the highest-ranking sites and pages are ineffective without strong content. WHAT DOES CONTENT CONTAIN? Recently, we were providing our Social Media “3M” services for a local restaurateur. He has over 20 years of successful experience in the food and beverage business and like many others, fancies himself a capable do-it-yourself marketer. So, he DIYed the website for one of his establishments, a pizza joint. The site was what some in my circle call a “Hot Mess”, or more appropriately, a “HTML Mess”! It had one photo of a single dish and a jumbled mess of words on two or three ill-designed pages. The owner thought it was effective because it had what he felt was all the pertinent info, the Facebook and Twitter logos and plenty of bogus “Italian” lingo. After convincing him of the need for a pro-built, optimized site, the owner contracted another great agency, with which we’re now associated, to build one. He provided the developer with all he thought they needed, including the menu, the hours of operation, the location and other text-based information. When the developer asked him to provide some “content”, he had no idea of what she spoke. Instead of asking her, he asked me. I took the opportunity (which in hindsight, I should have invoiced him for) to tell him that “content” included the three types of critical elements for an engaging site; 1. Textual (which he had covered) 2. Visual (videos, photos and links to more of each) 3. Aural (sound) I told him this all is what used to be called “media” I likened his efforts to have only textual content to watching his favorite TV show with only words on the screen. Imagine, let’s say, Three and a Half Men, with only static text of Charlie, Alan and Jake’s witty banter on the screen — no video, live sound or music. Good, professionally-produced content is essential for engaging your audience in any medium. We’re calling on another local restaurant client. He is one of the founders of what might be the Southwest’s fastest growing regional food franchise. They are hot! The corporate Facebook “Like” page has tens of thousands of “Likers”. The “wall” is full of mostly positive posts from fans. There is no interaction from the page administrators. On the day I first chose to view their page, near the top of the wall was a disparaging post from a young man who was apparently unhappy with the fare. He crudely likened it to bodily waste. The post was generously peppered with language that would make Rod Blagojevich blush. The post had been there for ten days. There were several more such posts on the first page, including one in which the alleged customer mentions contracting food poisoning after a meal there. The page was loaded with several spam posts, too. I contacted the chain’s co-founder, pointed out the brand-damaging posts and offered our low-cost, “3M” services. I mentioned that although their wall posts are overwhelmingly positive, tens of thousands of other “Likers” shouldn’t have been exposed to that vulgar, negative post for nearly two weeks. But I figured the page is likely handled by one of the restaurant’s employees or executives. It’s probably a person with many other duties, that ‘does the Facebook thing on the side.” I also complimented the apparent strength of the restaurant’s brand and the robust “Liker” interaction on the page. We believe the most effective Facebook pages aren’t those on which the owner spends an inordinate amount of time telling the “Likers” about what’s for sale. The best pages are more of a “virtual hangout” for the portion of Facebook’s ever growing, half a billion users that are interested in your product or service. The longer the “Likers” “hang out” at your place, the more they’re exposed to your brand, The key to keeping them there longer is engaging content. The key to getting more people to see that content is interactivity. If you want more brand exposure, don’t just rely on a great website or a Facebook page, (just for the sake of being on Facebook) that’s just sitting out there, unattended and covered with graffiti, in cyberspace. Hire an experienced, professional marketing company to produce/update your content and implement cost-effective strategies to drive customers to your web and social media sites. I know of a real good one. This entry was posted on Tuesday, November 23rd, 2010 at 11:30 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
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