People that discover your marketing expect it to communicate two things:
- What your company offers
- If it’s right for them
Imagine you are a screenwriter that gets his or her lucky break to pitch a film idea. You have rehearsed hundreds of times because you know you’ll only get one shot at this. Of course, that initial hurdle is just the beginning of the process.
The film Back To The Future, one of the most lucrative of its time, took five years to go from concept to production because the studio liked the idea but wasn’t sure how to make it work.
It seems uncomplicated. A young man goes back in time and meets his parents. While there he decides to fix a few things to make his life and theirs better in the present.
We get it, but how exactly will that work? That’s the question Hollywood studios are asking before they invest. So are your prospective buyers.
That’s not readily apparent with some of the landscaping industry websites that I’ve reviewed.
When your website is clicked, it’s showtime! Specific information must be delivered to kick off new relationships.
Most important is the core marketing message. It opens up a conversation that prospective buyers are already having with themselves.
That conversation starts with a problem.
Speak directly to the better life customers want
Most marketing spends too much time talking about what the company does. These are the table stakes. Communicate that as quickly as possible and move on.
Buyers are looking for points of distinction, and focusing on their problem is a surefire way of doing that.
Problems drive buying behavior. The company that identifies with the right problems identifies with the right buyers. It signals that it understands them and that makes it interesting and likeable.
This is why the words you use must be natural and conversational. It’s also why Google is using its intelligence to sniff out this type of language and using it as a ranking factor.
The core message encapsulates the experience of working with your company. It sells the promise that the product or service delivers. If people don’t get that, if they aren’t feeling it, then it’s unlikely your product will get to the production stage.
Here’s a guide for setting this up:
- The core problem your company solves
- How people feel when that happens
- The experience of acquiring it
- Useful outcomes or results customers enjoy
The core message is a sentence at most, and embedded within those few words is a vision, a story with conflict resolution, and living a better life.
Use your website to own a problem
If you have a modern website with a continuous scroll home page, here’s what it should look like from top to bottom.
- What we offer (the problems we solve)
- How this makes your life better (how it feels)
- What you need to do to get it (first step, second and third)
Limit your process to three steps because most people will forget anything more than that.
If you only take one thing from this it’s that you want to own a problem.
Talk about it in your marketing and sales conversations. Use the same language over and over so that it becomes memorable and people identify it with your business.
As with any kind of marketing, talk to your customers to get feedback. Is the message connecting with them? Are the words you use the ones they are using?
You are telling a story but it’s more like pitching a script.
One more time in a few words, here’s how to map this out on your website and why.
- Here’s what we do
- It matters because nobody else does it like us
- That’s a problem because people want something better
- And we give it to them
