Web Content as a Marketing Function
Author: James Campbell

Marketing appears to be a slave to jargon. Ask most people about marketing and they'll haul out the clichés about customer satisfaction and building a strong brand. You may even get a mini lecture on the famous Four P's -- product, price, place and promotion. We all know the right answers, but putting them into practice tends to be more problematic, particularly on the Internet.

Perhaps this is because we've forgotten a simple truth: that marketing is based on conversation and interaction. In short, communication is the fuel that runs marketing. And a failure to communicate effectively can mean the death knell for any Web site. But often communication on Web sites doesn't go beyond a simple, and usually clumsy, application of the AIDA (get attention, maintain interest, arouse desire and generate action) principle. And in doing so one of the great online marketing tools can be neglected -- Web content.

Unlike conversing face-to-face, Web content is a relatively static medium. In conversation, especially for the purposes of marketing, one has the advantage of being able to gauge the other person's interest levels, knowledge of the subject, perception of the goods or services being sold and the number of other factors that could come into play, and then adjust the amount and delivery of information offered accordingly. Unfortunately your Web site doesn't have that ability, so everyone gets to view the same content.

As Gerry McGovern recently said, "They say content is king, but the Internet has very often treated content as a pauper." Indeed, the Internet's development seems to have the wrong emphasis. Design gets more and more advanced, with the multiple results of scaring people who are new to the Internet, slowing download times and generally making finding information more and more difficult. At the same time, the majority of content out there remains irrelevant, invalidated and user-unfriendly. In an age when the average white-collar worker receives upwards of 40 e-mails per day, the importance of concise, relevant and easy-to-find content should not be underestimated. I'd hazard a guess and say that the power of Web content can be effectively harnessed by focussing on it's potential to do two things: attract and sell.

The Power to Attract

Ever notice how everything sounds the same on the Internet? Sure, Web design is anything but standardized, and sites can be written in a myriad of fonts, but what they're saying is all remarkably similar. Content is expensive to produce, and plagiarism abounds on the Internet, so it's not uncommon to come across entire sites that simply rattle off average information about whatever they're trying to sell. However, it neglects one simple fact of the Internet -- it's pointless bringing people to your site unless you have something worthwhile to say to them. A key to attracting traffic is to have something of quality to say (in at least one section of your site) and use it to target people.

Take my company's Web site. It's hard to sell web design services in an interesting, fresh and accurate way. Truth be told, there's nothing sexy about HTML, and a minimal number of people are going to find it interesting. But we recently started publishing my articles for a number of reasons: quite a few people seem to like them, they give a unique insight into our company ethos and so on. Over time I've built up a network of Web sites, e-zines and newsletters that also occasionally publish my writing. Those tactics have helped our Web site traffic triple in the first six months of this year. No fancy search engine tricks involved, just people intrigued by my ideas and, in turn, interested in what the company can do for them. And all because one of my colleagues suggested that my passionate discourse on all things Internet-related was better suited to articles than staff meetings.

Very simply, that demonstrates the principle that if you gain a share of the market's mind, you gain a share of the market. Entice people by telling them something useful and unique.

The Power to Sell

Persuading someone to buy something from you is, in effect, persuading him or her to enter into a buyer-seller relationship with you. And, much the same as any relationship, if it's going to be beneficial and long lasting it has to be based on trust. So why is it that most sites come off as trustworthy as a stereotypical used car salesperson?

When developed with the buyer-seller interaction in mind, Web content can become a potent tool to set the stage for a long lasting relationship. What's needed is to simply figure out what the people visiting your site are looking for, and then to communicate it to them in an accurate, concise, timely and credible way, through every stage of your site from explaining product features and benefits to explaining the buying process.

Ultimately, what all this brings us to is the importance of knowing who you're developing content for. All too often, by trying to be everything to everybody, Web sites end up offering everybody information that has diluted effectiveness. Once you know who you're writing content for, you have the opportunity to give them what they need and achieve the vital goal of harnessing the power of Web content.