‘What is the purpose of your website?’ It’s the first question we cover during a A Brand Less Ordinary Session. The immediate response from business owners & marketers is either:
- To generate enquiries
- To generate sales
We then discuss how we build the traffic that leads to our objective:
- advertising on Google
- creating blog posts that promote our services
- sending email newsletters to our existing clients
- updating Linkedin profiles with news of our latest business awards
- offering free consultations
- offering free delivery when our customers spend a certain amount
The marketing techniques just roll out. We’re spending budget, building landing pages, offering deals, everything we should be doing to ensure our website has purpose – building business opportunities.
One Sweeping Assumption…
Let’s revisit my first question. What is the objective of your website?
Here’s the crux – in business, our own purpose is irrelevant if we’re not fulfilling the needs of our audience. So, to answer a question regarding purpose, the fulfilling role is that of our consumer, not of our business.
9 times out of 10 the primary reaction is to answer from the perspective of the business, your business. That’s the perspective we’re comfortable with. That’s the perspective we’re used to. When we flip the question and look to understand the purpose from your audience’s perspective, the bullet-points begin to dry up rapidly. Yes, we’re comfortable identifying the needs of our audience. We struggle, however, to identify how we meet those needs.
- We need to generate more leads. We create an ebook.
- We need to create more awareness. We spend more on Adwords.
- We need to convert more business. We reduce our prices.
- We need to increase inbound calls. We increase the font of our telephone number.
All conventions that meet our short-term goals. All conventions driven by our own needs rather than those of our audience.
When you switch vision from ‘business’ to ‘consumer’ mode you’ll be surprised by the needs you’re either fulfilling for your own ambition, or ignoring completely. The narrowing association between sales and marketing can separate us from the core business of satisfying our consumer’s needs.
When we’re trying to cram as much information on our homepage to grab attention or creating landing pages that self-serve (benefits/features rather than reasons) consumer needs become secondary.
Jump into consumer mode and revisit your website. How many common consumer questions is your website answering? How many problems are you solving? How many problems are you demonstrating your ability to solve?
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