Marketers are generally under pressure to perform miracles with limited budgets. Often, the 'value of marketing' is questioned. Often, a mildly resentful question, at that, heavily influenced by past campaigns or other activities that were rushed, and thus not well planned, executed or measured due to a lack of suitable technologies that track ROI through a company's buying cycle.
We could get into significant detail about this, but there's a core element to marketing success that seems to have fallen by the wayside in recent years.
It's a recurring theme we see when dealing with brands and companies (of a fairly significant size) and it all points back to underwhelming website performance.
Covid hangovers? Maybe, but we get the impression that a lot of companies believe their websites are 'good enough' when, in reality, they are pretty average (at best) and poor (in general) across four categories.
Websites, like any other communications channel and piece, should have a clear purpose – a reason for existence.
What is the point and why should a website visitor care. . . or care enough to take a desired action e.g. make an enquiry, make a purchase or provide their details to view content behind a sign-up wall?
Your company website is your 'house'. It remains the core of all marketing activity, regardless of trade event, paid media campaign, golf day or other activity. If that activity is executed well, some of the targeted audience will make their way to your website and then it's the site's job to take the baton and guide the visitor towards conversion.
Basics, right?
Increasingly, this logic seems to be missing from marketing's understanding. Companies and brands are looking at all kinds of technologies and trends to help them 'market better' but they are investing in innovation to attract interest without first making sure the 'house' is in order.
It's a simple analogy but it rings true.
First get the house in order – then invite the guests.
Basic points to consider when reviewing your website's efficacy in supporting marketing activity:
Content hierarchy informs the strategic arrangement of information on a website. Where you place key messages, and how you guide a user through the information that matters most (always with some kind of goal or desired action in mind), is where content meets user experience (UX) design.
Everything is not of equal importance, but often we see websites where a lot of content is shouting at the same volume or where the content is open-ended, not answering the website user's question of 'what's next?' or 'what do you want me to do now?'.
Content should be tiered to allow for different types of user navigation and engagement. Some people will just scan through sections and need to get a very clear idea of what you offer from that scan.
Depending on your product or service, others will want to dive deeper into your content. That type of research-driven personality should also be catered for.
A lack of clarity in content hierarchy, lack of sufficient lead-capture or conversion points and/or a cluttered design frustrates users and, basically, wastes the marketing budget used in the first place to bring them there.
The desktop and mobi versions of your website must be equals in terms of usability, and equals in terms of well-placed calls to action, driving users to a conversion or a next step in a clear, concise fashion.
Your users are pressed for time and attention, but marketing has successfully engaged them into hopping to your website to learn more. . . and now a clunky, disjointed experience undoes the good work, also providing a false read on the efficacy of the chosen marketing action (and resulting ROI from that spend).
Yes, there is a lot of debate about the role 'speed' plays in SEO but, certainly, a website that loads slowly (due to many reasons) does not make for a great user experience, is likely to annoy the average visitor and, in turn, waste marketing budget.
SEO itself is an unavoidable exercise that should form part of any solid marketing plan.
It's often a bit of a misunderstood, grudge-type purchase because it's not as visible as paid media campaigns, for example. However, the effects of going without are clear.
View this piece on SEMrush.com for a detailed breakdown of the value of SEO. In short, a well-executed SEO strategy ensures:
As said, we accept that the above points are well-known, but then knowing and doing are two very different things.
It remains our opinion that, by taking our eyes off this ball, we are setting marketing up for failure.
It is something we at Vetro have discussed at length and, in the coming months, we will be working with our dev, design, strategy and content teams to update our website to reflect more accurately:
We don't believe our current website does that job for us.
It's very likely that your website doesn't, either.
