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Like a dog show, beautiful but stupid
How often do you look at a company’s website and say to yourself ‘I get what you do, I just don’t care’?
That’s probably because the company is just one of many that offers the same products and services.
Finding and expressing your own point of difference is hard enough, but, once found, you have to consider that everyone else has already caught up so it can become a zero sum game.
And yet, you have to keep pace.
The content that passes for ‘good enough’ on most websites looks like it was written 10 or more years ago, and in fact it probably was. So it’s not hard just to get up to date. The challenge is how to stand out, so that all the money you invest in driving people to your site in the first place actually delivers a return.
It’s my contention that most companies have spent all their pennies optimising the journey and neglected the destination. It may look pretty but it can come across as just that: pretty, but empty-headed. Like a show dog, beautiful but stupid.
The trick is to tell me what you do, but also why I should care. Global brands get it, as Kantar said this week.
These brands are in the disruption business – telling us that the status quo is wrong or is not working, and how they are on a mission to make life better. Why not? It’s not as though the Church, Government or other institutions are showing the way ahead. I don’t entirely like the idea of businesses showing me the way, but it certainly gets my attention.
So think on that. How are you making life better for your customers and employees? If you can express that, you’ll get people’s attention, and they’ll talk about you when you’re not in the room. Achieving this is absolutely the route to sales.
