How Talking About Yourself Backfires on Your Website Results

What if you were looking for a home builder and the websites that you landed on said this – “We have hammers. We have nails. We have lots of other building tools, too. We have people who know how to use these tools. Our people are really proud of what they can do with these tools. We are really excited to use these tools to build something for you. If you need great people who know how to use building tools you should go to our contact page and let us know.”

This is an obvious exaggeration but if all you are doing on your website is talking about what you do and the equipment you do it with, your website is a waste of internet real estate. The key to making your website an integral part of the way you attract and nurture new prospects is to make sure that it is focused on your prospective customers and the problems they need to solve, and not you. Anything else is going to backfire on your marketing results.

Here’s how to flip this situation:

Know Your Buyers

Depending on your business, you’re going to have one or more people who are playing a part in the decision-making process. For example, in an industrial buying process you might have the design engineer, the purchasing agent, the quality manager and other management involved.

​Developing a profile of each of these people will help you to hone in on their motives, and identify the content that will guide them to the next step that you want them to take. The best way to get this information is to interview them directly with a phone call or a survey, but brainstorming with the sales people who are interacting with prospects is a great place to start.

Paint a Picture of the Problems You Solve

Your website should give your visitors the feeling that you understand their struggles and you know how to help them. The “curse of knowledge” can work against you when you are trying to create the messaging that will do this. Where many websites fall down is in skipping to “how” and not stepping into their prospects shoes.

For example, let’s say an industrial designer wants to eliminate some steps in assembling a component. He might not know what manufacturing process that he’s looking for, so the content that will attract him is about his problem – combining two parts into one. When you create content about the problems you solve, you’re on your way to positioning your company as the preferred solution provider.

Flip Your Marketing

​When you turn the focus of your website on your prospects and their problems, you suddenly have the opportunity to help them visualize themselves and the solution they need. At Homestead Media, creating buyer profiles is the first thing we do with clients, and we use this work to guide every decision we make so that their marketing strategy is as targeted as possible.

Stop your website from backfiring on your marketing results. Contact me for a consultation.