Is your value proposition interesting?
When a visitor visits a page on your company's website what is your message? What is the message you want the visitor to understand in the first few seconds of their visit? Seconds are all the time you have. It isn't just the impatience we have adapted to in the digital world. Marketers for decades have realized they have only seconds to get a prospect's attention.
Is it a billboard along a busy street, a TV advertisement, an endcap in a grocery store, or any other display of a company's product or service.? The casual passerby or visitor decides what information is important in milliseconds. This nuance of human behavior has been studied from every possible angle to determine the best possible way to break through the millions of input stimuli each of us experiences during a typical day.
Cognitive decision-making advocates will explain that the decision to engage the message is something intuitively completed before our conscious mind even begins to evaluate the input of stimulus. It is part of our basic survival mechanism.
Fancy words aren't found during a Google Search.
Many of our organizations decide that more complexity of our message differentiates us from competitors. If we use big words we must be smarter and know more about the subject. Even better if we use all of the industry technical jargon to explain our products and services.
Recently I was assisting an international organization that was focused on recruiting ex-pat executives. An ex-pat executive is someone that has worked overseas in a foreign country in a senior leadership role. The organization felt this was a valuable asset and nucleus for a group of like-minded people. Absolutely correct but with one major issue.
In crafting their message for the organization's website they focused on the keyword ex-pat. A quick search on Google, Google Trends, Moz, or other keyword tools found there were no searches involving the keyword ex-pat.
Feel Good Terms Sound Good in Marketing but Don't Produce Results.
"We are baffled when people aren't the primary focus of any transformation". "Were Boutique. Cookie cutter solutions don't make the cut with us.." Very noble statements for the headlines of the firm's home page.
This is a well-established and recognized firm in the government contracting space. http://www.dai-solutions.com/ The website is very well done in appearance. Easy to navigate. Good content and explanations of services. They are emphasizing what they feel differentiates them from competitors.
The challenge is no one is searching for differentiating characteristics of your products or services. At least not at the beginning of their search. No one searches for people being the primary focus of transformation or non-cookie cutter solutions.
The organization is a management consulting firm focused on government contracts. Their home page title tag contains the name of their company and the management consulting services. Since the name of the firm is in the URL they don't need to emphasize it in their title tags. Someone searching for the name will find the website. More important is what they do. Why not use a government contract management consulting firm?
Why use these terms? It is what describes the firm. Someone searching for a government contract management consulting firm will not be searching for a company that is baffled when people aren't included in the transformation. Look what results I get when I search those terms:
Even though this firm doesn't utilize any basic SEO technics it came out in the number one spot when searching for these more likely terms.
A search for The terms focused on the original firm's website shows they came out on in the top ranking but who would think to search for the terms?
Tech Speak is bad for your Marketing Message Except for other Techs.
Technical jargon is worse. "We create data transformations in the cloud." I made this one up but you get the idea. I recently attended a huge technical conference on healthcare technologies.
Walking through the aisles of the show I found it difficult to determine what services many of the exhibitors actually offered. Even when I stopped and asked the person in the booth often all I got was more jargon. I got the feeling I wasn't worthy of their attention if I didn't understand the buzzwords being used! Unless I am looking for a definition of a technical buzzword I probably won't start my search for one.
Let's dumb this down a little. I'm looking for a more secure way to connect all my current internet devices in my home because I've seen stories about my provider's Wi-Fi might not being that secure. I don't start my search with IoT, internet of things security. I probably start my search for the phrase more secure home internet.
And searching for secure home internet:
If I were a company selling secure WIFI routers I much rather show up in this second search. Chances are the visitor will be someone looking to purchase a secure router.
Back to the healthcare technology show.
I'm hesitant to provide bad examples of messaging from the conference although there were many. Just think about it at the next conference you attend and see what messaging explains what the company does in a few milliseconds without explanation.
Here is an example of simple messaging where I assisted. This firm offers a multitude of services in multiple industries but this was a healthcare conference. There was only one primary message that would resonate with attendees interested in this firm's services.
For those not in the healthcare space, HIPAA compliance is a big deal and only by the use of the two primary keywords, HIPAA and Compliance was the firm going to get any prospect's attention. Cybersecurity or IT compliance services wouldn't have the same impact. In this case, there is no doubt what the primary service is for Healthcare visitors: HIPAA Security Risk Assessments. The same is true for their website. www.loricca.com.
How do you want to be searched? What is realistic?
The examples were just to get you thinking about what your firm's message should be. What is it you do? Not in your industry terms or technical jargon. What terms would your most likely prospect use when searching for services or products of your firm?
The last example is an executive recruiter. At least that is what I called him. In order to differentiate himself from the herd. In his defense, he is different but not in terms of search terms. You have to get potential customers to your store before you can impress them with how you are different. There aren't a lot of searches for an executive recruiter that isn't really an executive recruiter or sometimes a consultant. The search is for an executive recruiter.
Get found first, Get the visitor to your store. Get them engaged in wanting to know more. Then and only then attempt to dazzle them with how you are different.