This is my series of 30 brief interactive marketing tips. I’m posting each business day at 8:30 a.m. EST. Catch them all by subscribing to my blog or bookmarking the site. All of the posts will be tagged “30 interactive marketing tips” and listed on this page.
#6 – Remember That A Website is Not A Piece of Paper
Repeat after me: my website does not have to be a brochure. It should reflect my brand, but it does not have to match print ads exactly. The things that work in my offline ads won’t necessarily work online. There, don’t you feel better?
Too many companies treat their website like another glossy extension of their TV or print campaigns: giant images, little content and almost no thought to information architecture or user experience. Digital players don’t get a place at the planning table.
Brand consistency is key, but you still need to make sure your site does more than just look pretty. Consider some of the basic tenets:
- You know more about where your visitors are coming from and looking for online. Start by bucketing large segments of your audience and creating experiences to match them.
- It doesn’t have to be hit-and-run marketing. If you’re good enough, valuable enough, cool enough, then someone just might want to keep hearing from you. How are you continuing the conversation?
- The web is faster and broader. You can fail faster, which means you can learn faster. It’s an ideal testing ground for new idea which, amazingly, can actually stimulate good ideas for offline channels. Not sure which features users like? Test them online first. You’ll have your answer in 1 month or less, which is probably how long it would have taken you to have all the meetings in your office.
What is tying your hands from making the most of your site?
