I work with advertising agencies and brand marketers every day. Through that work I encounter a huge number of smart and talented marketers. I say that not to kiss the ring of my customers (BTW, to all my customers thank you for your continued business) but to illustrate the biggest issue in online brand marketing today:
Bad Websites.
If you are in my business, you will know what I’m talking about. You meet with smart energized business people who will talk about the benefits of the product they sell, the attributes of their brand, the reasons they customers love (or should) the product passionately and convincingly. Then you go to their product’s web site and it doesn’t do half the job they just did. And they will tell you that.
“Our website doesn’t really tell the story the way we’d like it to.”
“I didn’t do the website _______ did and I feel they missed the point.”
If you have a website, you are a publisher. Your site can invite people to learn more, turn people off, convince them to buy a product, take an action, etc. This can’t be someone else’s job. If you are in charge of a brand, it is your job. You don’t have to do it, you have to make sure it gets done.
One last thought on this topic – bad websites hinder the performance of online advertising. Why are click through rates declining? Because people don’t expect the experience on the other side of the click to be worthwhile.
Continuous Beta by Pete Spande 