You need your Web site to attract prospects, generate qualified leads and promote your brand. That means you must constantly tune your Web site to make sure it’s hitting all the right notes with customers and prospects. Here’s a quick checklist of five things you should have on your Web site, and five to avoid.

 What to Include on your Web Site

1.  Detailed Product & Service Information - Your customers and prospects want to see up-to-date and comprehensive products and services information. That’s why they are visiting your site: to find out if you can meet their needs.
2. Offers and Landing Pages - Your Web site visitors crave information that will help them do their jobs. Therefore, your job is to offer white papers, articles, Webinar invitations and other valuable content. Sprinkle offers on relevant pages throughout your Web site and send prospects to specific landing pages that describe the offer in more detail and capture prospect information so you can create a lead for your sales team.
3. Basic Search Engine Optimization - Almost every site can benefit from basic SEO techniques to help drive more qualified traffic from search engines for specific keyword searches. Make use of page titles, description meta tags, keywords in page copy, site maps and simple HTML pages to make your Web pages more search engine friendly.
4. Consistent Page Design - Keep your visitors on track and avoid confusion by adhering to a consistent page design. Navigation menus should appear in the same place on every page, usually across the top or down the side, or both if your site has multiple levels of hierarchy. A popular and user friendly design is to use a wider column for the main content and a narrower column for secondary or related content. Make sure your headings, font size and typeface are consistent too.
5. Contact Features - Because one of the primary goals of your Web site is to capture lead information, you must make it easy for prospects to contact you. A good idea is to have a phone number and email address on every page, plus a link in the navigation menu to a Contact Us page. Landing pages should include forms as well as phone numbers and e-mail addresses to give users multiple options for contacting you. 

What to Avoid on your Web Site

1. Flash Intro Pages - Most companies have realized that a Flash intro page is at odds with goals of your Web site, but if you haven’t gotten the memo yet, here it is: don’t use a Flash Intro page to your Web site. Visitors find them annoying, even if you have a ‘skip intro’ button, and will often abandon your site. Search engines ignore them, so intro pages don’t help your SEO efforts. When visitors land on your home page, they want to find a clear path to useful content. Give it to them straight.
2. JavaScript Navigation - Search engines have trouble following navigation programmed in JavaScript. It’s better to have straight HTML navigation links. If you do have JavaScript navigation and can’t devote the time and resources to rebuilding it, repeat your navigation as HTML links in the footer or on the side so that search engines can find and index your pages more easily.
3. Lengthy Registration Forms - It’s important to have forms on your landing pages to capture prospect contact information, but long forms with many required fields will lead to high drop off rates and fewer leads. Ask only for the minimal amount of information on a form that will enable you to contact a prospect again and begin a sales dialog. Often it’s enough to capture name, company, e-mail and phone number. You can flesh out the prospect’s record as you begin to communicate back and forth.
4. Out of Date Content - Companies that include old content or have not freshened up content can damage their reputation and raise doubts among their customers and prospects. Make sure product pages are current. If you post press releases, be sure to have some up-to-date news. Your most recent e-newsletter shouldn’t be a year old. You need to keep producing content and news to give the impression that your company is vibrant and growing and help with your search engine rankings.
5. Bad Writing - Confusing, dense and error-prone writing can completely turn off customers and prospects. Think about your audience’s point of view. Write in a way that shows “what’s in it for them.” Avoid using jargon. Be straightforward and conversational. If possible, use professional writers or editors to write or review copy to make sure it flows well, is understandable, and is free of grammar and usage mistakes.

A client recently asked for help developing a marketing strategy to help grow their business to the next level. I started by asking my client to articulate their business strategy. By business strategy, I mean a broader, directional view of business goals and how to achieve them. These may include:

• A definition of what business you are in
• What products and services you offer, and to whom, and what new ones you plan to offer over the next 1-3 years, and to whom
• Revenue, profitability and market share goals for your business overall and for specific product/service lines
• Means of growth: organic, partnership, merger/acquisition

My client quickly realized that what his company needed was not a marketing strategy — at least not yet — but a business strategy.

Only with a business strategy in place can you create a marketing strategy. Your marketing strategy is a summary of what products and services you offer to what target customer segments. It also positions your company and products in relation to competitors and the overall market, by articulating what differentiates you in the market and makes customers want to do business with you. Your differentiator could be product functionality or breadth, price, support and service, market coverage, or other attribute.

I am an ambivalent owner of a GM vehicle, a SAAB. That made me eligible to receive a letter from GM that contained this sentence:

“As you may know, GM is using an expedited, court-supervised process to accelerate the reinvention of our company.”

No, I didn’t know that. I only knew what the entire world knew: GM was working its way through bankruptcy proceedings in hopes of surviving. I can’t blame GM for avoiding the ‘B’ word in customer communications. Trying to gain and maintain the trust of customers during bankruptcy is the public relations and marketing equivalent of trying to turn water into wine.

But I can’t stand the corporate-speak that is such an obvious mask. What would be the downside of communicating in a straightforward, clear manner?

“As you may know, GM has declared bankruptcy. This is a temporary situation that will help us restructure our debt. We are continuing to sell and service GM vehicles and are changing our company to be more successful.”

I suppose people might see the ‘B’ word and panic because they don’t understand what it means and believe the company is closing its doors and abandoning them. Or maybe my suggested edit is not “profound” enough. But as a GM customer, I prefer straight talk.

Here’s another passage from the letter:

“Propelled by the spirit and commitment of our people, we will become the New GM, a company that makes Americans proud, and one that can compete successfully with anyone in the world.”

Never mind the dramatic language. Or the capital ‘N’ in New — is this an official name change? The problem I have with this sentence is that it raises the question: Are we talking about the same “spirit and commitment of our people” that just propelled the company to bankruptcy? If so, please roll out v2.0 of spirit and commitment.

This sentence from the letter is strong and clear. It can help ease some anxiety customers may be feeling about the future of their GM vehicle:

“The bottom line is service for your vehicle will always be available through authorized GM retail and service facilities by GM-trained Goodwrench experts, with Genuine GM Parts on hand.”

I have empathy for GM. I want them to do well. I also want them to write better.

On or around June 6 every year, I honor the soldiers who lost their lives and the veterans who survived the D-Day invasion of Normanday, which marked the turning point of World War II. My tribute takes the form of learning more about what soldiers went through, and with every new fact I learn I am more in awe of what they did.

What struck me this year is the power that a single word can have on the psyche and morale of individuals. On D-Day and during the months that followed, the Allies suffered many more casualties than they had expected. Replacements had to be quickly trained and rushed into action. And here’s where the power of one word struck me.

New draftees were gathered and trained at Replacement Troop Centers, and the troops themselves were referred to as “replacements.” But when the replacement soldiers realized they were replacements specifically because they were replacing soldiers killed or badly wounded, they started getting scared; they realized that they too could easily be killed once inserted into infantry divisions.

Commanders soon realized that ”replacements” was the wrong word, and the army made an effort to change “replacements” to “reinforcements” — a classic exercise in repositioning. “Reinforcements” has a much more positive connotation: you are adding strength to an existing force to make it more powerful, as opposed replacing people no longer alive. 

The word change didn’t work. Knowledge had already spread far and wide about replacements, why they were called up, and what they were in line for.

While my point is to honor World War II soldiers, you can also see the implications for those of us in the more pedestrian profession of marketing and communication: the right word always matters. Choose carefully. 

Photo of landing on Omaha Beach from US National Archives.

Google started as a noun and became a verb. That’s what I call brand strength. Can Bing do the same? Bing is Microsoft’s name for its new search service, as noted in the New York Times’ article “Microsoft’s Search for a Name Ends with a Bing.” Microsoft CEO Steven Ballmer was quoted as saying he liked Bing’s potential to “verb up.” That’s a phrase I can do without.

According to Microsoft, Bing isn’t a search engine, it’s a “decision engine.” That’s clever, and so is the name Bing. It’s like that bell that goes off when you’re a winner. And it’s a much better name than Live Search, which Bing is replacing, which in turn replaced MSN Search.

Can Microsoft  make a sizable dent in Google’s dominance of the search market? It will come down to two things: ease of use and results. But even if Microsoft delivers on both and creates a better search experience for users, they won’t overtake Google, which is so far ahead that competitors can’t even see their dust, let alone eat it. Remember Immutable Law of Marketing #1 from Al Ries and Jack Trout: “It’s better to be first than it is to be better.”

Good luck Microsoft. I can’t wait to Bing.

I see companies work hard and spend money to generate qualified leads, move prospects through the sales cycle and finally reach the proposal stage. Then they deliver a convoluted proposal that’s poorly organized, packed with jargon, wandering off point, and riddled with grammar, spelling and usage errors.

A potential customer reviews the proposal and shakes their head in confusion, dismay and doubt. A poorly conceived and written proposal can ruin months of hard work and cost you a deal you thought was in your pocket.

Marketers: get involved in proposal writing at your company. Sales people are good at selling; they may not be very good at writing a compelling and persuasive proposal. Integrate some of these practices into your company’s proposal writing process:

• Create a library of approved content your sales team can insert into proposals when answering standard questions about your company, products and services. This will ensure consistency and clarity.
• Work with individual sales people to dissect the requirements of an RFP and design a response that fulfills all requirements and answers all of a customer’s questions.
• Get away from the distant corporate-speak and jargon and address the customer directly, using words like “you” and “yours” and incorporating language that is relevant to your customer’s business.
• Develop a style book and format for RFP responses. Use consistent headings, fonts, line spacing and colors to give the proposal a professional look and feel.
• Proofread and edit as if the deal depended on it, because sometimes it does. Mistakes in your proposal can make a customer think your company is careless or lazy. Who wants to do business with a company like that?

Why is it that marketing is sometimes considered a secondary or discretionary discipline in some companies? It’s the first departmental budget to get cut when times get tough. Everyone has an opinion, often critical, about the latest creative for a marketing campaign.

Part of this is the fault of marketer’s themselves. If they want their business function to be considered as essential as accounting, then marketers need to provide measurements showing ROI on marketing dollars spent. If they want to be as essential as sales, then they must demonstrate that recent sales originated with qualified leads that marketing generated for the sales team.

Marketing can only be taken more seriously if marketers take a disciplined, systematic approach to their function. That means articulating a marketing strategy that aligns with business strategy, developing and executing a marketing plan in support of the marketing strategy, measuring the results of each campaign and making adjustments to improve performance.

Marketing can’t just be creatively oriented; it also must be numbers oriented. Think in terms of measurement. In that regard, to be as essential as accounting, marketing may have to be more like accounting.

I found yet another interesting article at Harvard Business Publishing, this one called, “In a Recession, Put Everyone in Marketing,” by Rosabeth Moss Kanter.

Her argument is that once you’ve cut everything you can, from budgets to people, everyone remaining should work in marketing.

“Motivated employees contribute to creative thinking that can help retain current customers and identify new ones.”

People throughout the ranks should be contacting customers. Executives should be personal ambassadors to important customers. New markets should be researched. All ideas are welcome, from all sources-with rewards attached for good ideas.

Kanter wanders off her point when she writes about investing in employee morale, but it’s good to see the importance of marketing elevated throughout an organization. And I completely agree that more people in a company should have customer contact.

What bothers me is the assumption that everyone in the company knows how to be a marketer. I mean, if I worked for a software company I wouldn’t want to be recruited to write code when it was time to launch a new version, or told to be the customer support rep handling the calls that come when a customer tries to use the software containing the code I wrote.

Dear Dave:

An executive at our company came into my office and dropped a magazine on my desk and said, “I want you to place an ad in here,” then turned and walked out the door. The magazine covers our industry and target market, but will running a single ad in a single issue of a magazine be an effective marketing tactic?

Signed,

Under Pressure from the Top 

Dear Under Pressure:

The short answer is “No, it will not be an effective marketing tactic” unless the executive will fire you, in which case the answer is “Yes, it will be an effective survival tactic.”

Any isolated marketing tactic, such as one ad in a magazine, is doomed to fail, alone and unnoticed, even if it does address your target market. Here’s why:

As hard as it may be to believe, your customers and prospects are not sitting around hoping your ad reaches them. Instead, they are doing their jobs, and when they have a need that your company can fulfill for them, they might think of you - if you have maintained frequency and consistency in your marketing so you stay in their minds. Frequency and consistency means you establish and maintain a presence on the Web sites, e-newsletters, search engines, print journals and other media your target customers and prospects use to obtain work-related information. And also by reaching out to them through events, direct marketing, phone calling and other tactics. 

The only thing a single ad in a single issue of a print magazine will do is waste money that could have been put to better use as part of an integrated marketing program. Not only that, print readership is trending down, down, down. Which is another reason why a single print ad won’t get the job done. Today, everyone is on the Web searching for information, products and vendors. You need to have your print ad, and be listed on the publisher’s Web site, and sponsor their e-newsletter. Assuming of course that this publisher’s readers are your target customers and prospects.

That assumption brings up another question for you, Under Pressure: Do you have a marketing strategy that’s married to your company’s business strategy-and has your marketing plan been communicated to and fully embraced by your company’s executive team, including the executive who walked into your office demanding a new ad?

Your marketing plan, if it’s working, can be used to defend a decision not to place an ad in the magazine your executive likes. You can also bring up frequency and consistency in marketing argument. But maybe this executive uncovered an opportunity you didn’t know about when developing your marketing plan. It does happen. I recommend you do additional research to determine if it’s worth re-allocating marketing budget to a new program.

 For Klein Marketing, I’m Dave

This isn’t about politics or marketing. It’s about the consequences of language choices. The media recently reported that the Obama administration has stopped using the phrase “global war on terror” — which has its roots in the Bush administration — and has substituted “overseas contingency operations.” Here’s the story from the Washington Post.

“War on terror” as a positioning phrase does its job: it conjures up military action against people who intend to violently terrorize our country. The phrase evokes a visceral and visual reaction, exactly its intention. Never mind that ‘terror’ is a tactic and not an enemy. Never mind that ‘war’ carries a sense of executive powers that may not be a good idea. The language serves its purpose effectively.

On the other hand, what does “overseas contingency operations” conjure up? It’s an empty phrase, a three-noun string of jargon. Beauracratic. I’d expect to hear it from a corporation. It could mean a thousands things, and so it means nothing.

‘Contingency’ is the puzzling word here. The intended meaning is ”a possibility that must be prepared for.” You have to take into account that terrorist attacks are possible and therefore you must do something to prevent them. That makes sense. But how do you derive “overseas contingency operations” from that? And what happens when operations are required that aren’t overseas? ‘Provincial contingency operations’?

Here’s a language choice with clear meaning: President Obama, quoted recently in the New York Times, speaking about membership into NATO:

“The door to membership will remain open for other countries that meet NATO’s standards and can make a meaningful contribution to allied security,” Mr. Obama said.

The word ”standards” and the phrase “meaningful contribution” are open to interpretation and negotiation, but the quote basically sums up what the President believes membership in NATO is all about.