The New Rules of Marketing & PR: How to Use Social Media, Online Video, Mobile Applications, Blogs, News Releases, and Viral Marketing to Reach Buyers Directly by David Meerman Scott

Author:David Meerman Scott [Scott, David Meerman]
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Publisher: Wiley
Published: 2013-06-18T14:00:00+00:00

14

How Web Content Influences the Buying Process

Today when people want to buy something, the web is almost always the first stop on their shopping trip. In any market category, potential customers head online to do initial research. The moment of truth is when they reach your site: Will you draw them into your sales process or let them click away?

When buyers use search engines to reach your site, link to it through another site, find it via social networking, or respond to a marketing campaign, you have an opportunity to deliver targeted information at the precise moment when they are looking for what you have to offer. Yet marketers often fail to realize the potential of their websites, which must hook buyers in from the start and hang on to them until the sale is complete. Individuals don't go to the web looking for advertising; they are on a quest for content. By providing information when they need it, you can begin a long and profitable relationship with them. Editors and publishers obsess over readership, and so should you.

In this chapter, we're going to build on some of the ideas and concepts that I've already introduced in the book. In Chapter 3, we talked about reaching buyers directly with your organization's online content, and Chapter 11 was when we put together a detailed plan to identify buyer personas and target each one with an individualized approach. Remember, great web content is about your buyers, not about you. Now I'll provide some ideas for how you can make a website that takes buyers through their consideration process and moves them toward the point where they are ready to buy (or donate, join, subscribe), which, of course, is the goal of all web content.

While it is important for your website to have an attractive design and for all of the technical aspects (HTML and so on) to work properly, these aspects are beyond the scope of this book. There are many excellent texts on how to write HTML, XML, ASP, JavaScript, and other web languages. And there are also great resources for getting the design aspects right—things like colors, fonts, logo placement, and whatnot. While these elements are critical to an overall site, I want to focus on how content drives action on websites, because the content aspect is often overlooked.

To best leverage the power of content, you first need to help your site's visitors find what they need on your site. When someone visits a site for the first time, the site communicates messages to the buyer: Does this organization care about me? Does it focus on the problems I face? Or does the site only include information describing what the company has to offer from its own narrow perspective? You need to start with a site navigation that is designed and organized with your buyers in mind. Don't simply mimic the way your company or group is organized (e.g., by product, geography, or governmental structure), because the way your audience uses websites rarely coincides with your company's internal priorities.

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