Websites are a marketing opportunity, not a technology problem
A lot of the manufacturers I work with used to put website and internet techniques under the technology classification. They asked their technology experts to be marketing experts.
Please stop asking IT people to do marketing
They are already overworked and under-appreciated. Why try to get work done outside their expertise? Shouldn’t marketing & communication be the focus of your website?
A former client hired a new IT person who is a wizard at technology but does not know the most basic marketing concepts associated with a website. He was asked to update the website with new content, but he decided to totally recreate the website. Our past work allowed us to be ranked well in Google, be highly visible in local searches with good detail, and we even had site links appear in search results. Sales leads were rolling in!
Now? Now the company looks like it’s out of business because the new IT person has the site offline. He’s working on a new domain and has burned all the credibility they built over 3 years. Shocking! Marketing malpractice! Their manager later called and asked for help on getting the site back up because their IT person was busy on technology projects. I was not surprised – this was not the first time this has happened.
I am shocked by how many IT professionals treat the company website and other internet properties like technology problems. They’re not, they are marketing opportunities. A consistent failure of marketing that occurs in manufacturing is that executives pass their most important marketing tool to technology specialists who are already overwhelmed with work.
Hand-coded websites with static pages usually have these problems:
- The page content describes the technical features of products rather than the benefits that cause customers to buy.
- The site can only be edited by the technical pros…and they are always busy with something else.
- Every change requires radical restructuring and technological gyrations instead of a simple change.
- Adding a page or product takes weeks instead of a few minutes.
- There is not a single call to action or information designed to sell a product.
- WORST: An automatic streaming video of your CEO telling visitors about the company’s vision statement in excruciating detail.
Marketing-based designed for the benefit of customers, here’s what is done right:
- It communicates product benefits & may even have a unique selling proposition (USP)
- Pages are easy to edit, often taking less than an hour to write & publish.
- You inform, educate, or entertain the customer.
- The site has multiple calls to action.
- BEST: Customers are asking for quotes or buying your products from the website.
Marketing efforts require dedicated marketing professionals. Give the IT folks a break and make a commitment to your customers by improving your marketing.