“No man is an island,” wrote the poet John Donne in 1624. Donne’s famous meditation suggests that all of humanity is connected, and that individuals do not thrive if they regard themselves as entirely separate from one another. It works the same way with websites.
To build a successful website (with success defined in Chapter 1 simply as a site that draws either broad or specific targeted traffic), you need to get other sites to link to your site. Chapter 3 discusses many of the tactics needed to generate these in-bound links. In addition, you need an overall strategy for increasing the visibility of your site.
This strategy likely involves optimization of your content for search engine ranking and tactical advertising, as I explain later in this chapter (the nuts of bolts of optimization are explained in Chapter 4, and advertising with AdWords is the subject of Part III). But these techniques should not be regarded as “islands.” They are necessary, but not sufficient in and of themselves.
Creating a successful website requires an effective campaign plan that blends the tactical techniques at your disposal. To some degree, this is Marketing 101.
Any good campaign plan must communicate a compelling story about your site and brand. The plan should also provide a roadmap, so that you know the steps you need to take, and provide a framework with which to benchmark your efforts. Finally, the plan should consider which marketing tools and techniques are most likely to help you achieve your campaign goals.
At its simplest, marketing means telling a story. This story should be reducible to the well-known elevator pitch: a story that is succinct enough to be told, usually in a single sentence, between the stops of an elevator ride.
Why is it smart to be able to convey your marketing idea as a (very) short story? As far as the issue of brevity goes, nobody has much time these days, particularly on the Web. Therefore, you only have a brief moment to get the attention of your target audience.
Narrative, another word for a story, is simply more compelling to most people than “just plain facts.” Think about it. On your time off, which are you more likely to read: an exciting story or a technical brief? Assume that both are about a small company creating an innovative product and beating the gigantic competition. Most people, hardcore propeller heads aside, will pick the story every time.
Almost without exception, any business story that works contains one or more of the following narrative elements. These elements are identified and described by Guy Kawasaki in his blog story “The Nine Best Story Lines for Marketing” and Lois Kelly in her book Beyond Buzz: The Next Generation of Word-of-Mouth Marketing (Amacom):
One of the prime directives of the scripts of the original Star Trek series was that the Starship Enterprise needed to be in danger in each episode. Even viewers who found the show kitschy (or maybe especially viewers who found the show kitschy) were hooked by the narrative tension of wondering if (or, more accurately, how) the Starship Enterprise would survive.
The “Enterprise in danger” narrative works best as a business-to-business story. Here’s how it goes: your business is in danger and will be shot out of the sky by space aliens unless you buy our tools, which will (a) stop the aliens in their tracks, or (b) rescue you from prison on the alien planet if all else fails.
A great example of a successful (and perfectly legitimate) “Enterprise in danger” pitch is the anti-computer virus story told by McAfee, Norton, and others.
We all like to hear heroic marketing stories. Since biblical times, it has thrilled us to learn how David beat Goliath. One reason for this fascination with the little guy prevailing against all odds is we identify with small players. If this “David” could do it, then so could we.
A classic example of a heroic marketing campaign is that waged for years by ice cream vendor Ben & Jerry’s against corporate behemoths like Pillsbury and General Foods. Note that this story still plays through Ben & Jerry’s packaging and marketing collateral even though Ben & Jerry’s has been swallowed by one of their former large competitors.
A marketing story that goes against common assumptions and prejudices gets attention. It makes us say “Huh!?!” and pay attention to the remainder of the pitch. But be warned: this approach is potentially dangerous and can backfire. You need to be very sure that your full story counteracts the counterintuitive aspects of the “against the grain” pitch. If it doesn’t, you risk losing your audience.
Closely related to the “Enterprise in danger” narrative, anxiety tends to play best with social embarrassment issues. For example, many (if not most) deodorant ads are intended to evoke, and then allay, these kinds of personal concerns. In other words, the Enterprise may not be in danger, but there’s an unpleasant condition making it not quite ship-shape, and you wouldn’t want another Star Captain seeing the vessel right now. In the business-to-business context, anxiety story lines tend to play to business rivalries that are not life-and-death issues. But not all anxiety pitches are as trivial as underarm wetness. You’ll recognize many anxiety stories in the advertising of financial services and insurance companies. For example, “Will you have enough money to retire?”
Obviously, Christmas or other gift-giving holidays make a good marketing story, as do other seasonal or event tie-ins such as trade shows, business mergers, and movie openings. The right kind of event can be an opportunity to add glamour to a marketing story, as well as provide a practical motivation and call to action.
Everyone wants to be associated with glamour, which is why there is widespread interest in movie stars. Marketing stories that manage to associate a product or service with glamour tend to get attention. Obviously, our society’s fascination with glamour explains the ubiquity of celebrity endorsements as part of marketing stories.
Aspirational stories appeal to the desire most people have for a strong emotional and intellectual connection with community and the businesses they care about. A story that pitches the convergence of a variety of emerging digital media is aspirational, as is one that involves helping to alleviate global warming or pollution. Hope is aspirational.
How-to stories are one of the most basic, straightforward, and ubiquitous story lines. What can the product or service do for me? Some how-to pitches are closely related to the “Enterprise in danger” story, while others help people achieve aspirational or personal goals. For example, social networking sites on the Web help consumers achieve their personal goals of meeting like-minded souls (for example, Facebook) or business contacts (for example, LinkedIn). The marketing story for these services largely focuses on the practical aspects of how they help people achieve their goals, although the marketing story will also include aspirational aspects of helping to build community.
There’s no better way to illustrate a point than to tell a personal story. This accounts for the raft of personal testimonial advertising, as well as the propensity for inspirational speakers at sales events to charge up the audiences with anecdotes from their careers or youth. When the personal combines with the aspirational, the result is often a compelling marketing story.
You should be able to summarize your story in a sentence or two (this is sometimes called an elevator pitch). For example:
Digital photography resources, techniques, software, equipment reviews, and photo galleries.
is a story that will probably attract people interested in digital photography. On the other hand:
Ramblings of a grouchy, cranky person who, well, rambles about everything.
is not a targeted story likely to interest anyone for long.
Once you’ve come up with the gist of your story, you can combine the narrative elements in the story with the fundamental concepts of marketing to create your marketing plan.
While you are thinking about the essentials of your story to create your elevator pitch, you should also come up with a list of the words that are most relevant. These important words are referred to as keywords. A good set of keywords is very valuable. They can be used and reused in marketing (for example, in press releases), in website construction (for example, as meta tags), and as targets to acquire for online advertising programs such as Google AdWords.
Use your plan and story to create a summary of your site, a list of keywords related to your site content, and one or more press releases (as I explain in Chapter 3, in The Power of the Press Release). The site summary and keyword list also can be used to create meta information for your site, as I explain in Chapter 4.