Many of my clients for consultancy services have been asking me the same questions.
Why aren’t architects downloading our information?
Why aren’t people visiting our website?
Why aren’t they coming to our events?
There are two main reasons why this might be.
Firstly because they don’t know about you/it/them;
Secondly because they aren’t interested.
Just because you build it, doesn’t mean they’ll come
In the past when there were fewer adverts in our lives, one could rely on being the thing, the company, the service that people knew about. Your flyer might be the one they remembered.
Today there is too much noise and people quite naturally shut it out. Ads on the tv, unsolicited emails and phone calls, unwanted promotional material. Today shouting louder than the next person isn’t going to be enough; in fact it can be counterproductive.
Instead we need to ask ourselves
Who are we trying to attact?
What are they concerned about?
What do they need?
Then focus on providing that in the simplest way possible, and measure if it works. It might not be what you’ve been trying to sell them, but it will make selling it a hell of a lot easier.
Image: Not like the others by Derek Gavey (Creative Commons)
Hi Su, me again. *waves*
Most of the time, when we first meet new clients they often ask the same questions. The problem we find after conducting our extensive website, SEO and competitor audit is that existing agencies have not set up their website & analytics correctly in the first place in order to measure downloads & other various interactions which are important to know. They may have had millions of downloads but they just don’t know it and the agency can’t answer the questions the clients wants to know.
One question you should be able to answer is “I’ve spent £X on SEO, what’s it got me?” Most Execs don’t care about pageviews or time on site….it doesn’t mean anything to them, but when you are able to tell them that “Visitors who spent more than 2 mins on the site and viewed more than 3 pages (generated from organic SEO activity) accounted for 80% of leads generated this month of which 50% are now at the Quotation stage with an opportunity value of £XXXXXXX. Let’s create more sticky content and grow visitors from organic search”.
Another reason why people don’t download info is because its probably hidden behind a registration form. You could have a website with lots of traffic but nobody signs up to access the downloads section. The marketer wants the data so that they can say “Wooo hooo, we’ve had 50 data captures this month that we’re now going to do nothing with!” and on the flip side the Architect doesn’t want to give their details to a company because of the dreaded, annoying, sales pushing follow up phone call. Who wins? Probably the company who makes their info easy to access. I think there’s a balance between free to download and something behind a registration form but it carries much more value.
Why aren’t people visiting our website? A) Nobody can find it and B) your marketing is boring and it’s broken so why should I? And finally C) Too many companies are guilty ‘Random Acts of Marketing’ – http://www.pauleycreative.co.uk/2010/09/random-acts-of-marketing/
How many companies launch a new site and then fail to invest into it with ongoing SEO so that it can be found in search engines and ongoing testing to improve lead generation and content development?
It’s time to think more strategically, set achievable objectives that matter and then create measurable KPI’s.
My 2 pence worth added.
Pritesh
Hi Pritesh,
Thanks for your 2p!
I agree at with the importance of measuring, yes, and my experience thus far would confirm that measurements aren’t being done properly.
However the point I’m making is more to do with the value of what you’re doing for your target audience – what they are getting out of it.
If you’re making square widgets and your audience want round widgets then all the shouting about them you do won’t amount to much. Measuring whether they click your links is essential, but if they don’t want your widgets they won’t click your links .
If you get my drift…
You say: “If you’re making square widgets and your audience want round widgets then all the shouting about them you do won’t amount to much.”
Me: “If you’re making square widgets and your audience want round widgets then market to them in a way that changes their perception they have of square widgets and make them buy round widgets.”
I could quote Mr Blandings Builds His Dream House to you, but I think I’ll let it pass…
Haha …. #namethatfilm