There is no magic answer to where to invest your marketing dollar for maximum effect in 2010. Lead nurturing programs would certainly rank high on my list if you don’t have an effective one in place. Aligning your sales and marketing team could also be of primary importance. Fortunately, this is often not so much a question of dollars as much as it’s a question of aligning your processes.
There is one area that I see holding technology marketers back that one could argue should be the first thing fixed – the website.
The problems vary from company to company, but take a look at almost any technology website and you’ll see common issues. Here are just a few, as told from the perspective of the visitor:
Self-centered verbiage. An incredible amount of “me, me, me” with most of the language focused on how great the organization is.
Very poorly written value prop statements. It’s darn hard to tell what value some of you add.
No clear indication of what types of companies you serve and what you do for them. I can see on your website that you “help global organizations succeed in today’s tough competitive world…” but what exactly is it that you do?
No evidence of any expertise. You tell me you can solve all my problems, but you don’t give me any evidence that you can. Where are your white papers and webinars that will give me the confidence that you know what you are talking about?
No calls to action. I would give you my contact information so you could follow up if you gave me something worthwhile to download.
No value in your downloads. I see I can download a brochure but that’s hardly worth parting with my email address.
Asking for too much information. You do have a couple pieces of information that I might be interested in, but it’s kind of hard to tell what’s really in them. I’m certainly not going to give you my physical address so you can send me junk mail. (Plus I suspect you might sell my personal information since I don’t see anywhere that you say you won’t.)
Poorly placed calls to action. I didn’t see that call to action because I had to scroll down past all of your self-centered self-talk about how great you are to actually see it. I never got that far.
While the website isn’t the Holy Grail of marketing any more than any other program is, it is a central hub for your marketing programs. Very likely your outbound marketing campaigns are pointing your prospects to a website for more information. Certainly inbound relies heavily on your website (or micro-sites) to convert visitors into prospects.
For many of your potential customers the website is the first (and sometimes the last) look they get at your company and what you do. Make sure you put your best foot forward in 2010 and spend at least some of your effort working on your site, testing it, and then reworking it again.
All the best!
Melissa
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