Is Your Marketing Message Clear?
November 28, 2007
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Is your marketing message clear? Can people tell exactly what you’re selling by browsing through your brochure or website?
You may think they can but don’t just take it for granted. For example, I thought our Kwik Fix website was pretty straightforward and explained our services clearly. But, I realised I was very wrong when a company called, after finding us on the Internet and asked us to rent them a huge industrial drain clearance machine.
Now, we don’t rent out equipment and whilst we do clear domestic drains, we don’t do industrial ones. But, somewhere on our site, we must have given the impression that we do.
And we’re not the only company to make this mistake. Recently I was comparing cruise prices. And I came to the conclusion that Cunard were complete robbers, because their brochure prices were significantly higher than the prices available on Internet travel sites.
It almost put me off booking altogether. Because I figured if they were going to stiff me that much before I even got on the blooming boat, they’d really rip me off once I was a captive at sea.
What I didn’t realise was that the cruise price included flights. It did mention flights somewhere on the price page - but it didn’t actually say flights were included. And that made a huge difference, because they were actually providing something which was of greater value.
The point is, if people don’t know what you’re selling, then you’re not making it easy for them to buy from you. So you lose sales.
Don’t take it for granted, as I did, that your marketing materials are straightforward and even an idiot could understand what your business is about. Try looking at them through the eyes of a stranger. Or better still, get someone else to look at them to ensure that your marketing message is clear.
And get them to glance through your materials quickly rather than read the whole thing, to see what actually stands out. Not everyone has time to read every single word, and they’ll often just glance through first - just as I did with the Cunard brochure.
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2 Responses to “Is Your Marketing Message Clear?”
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I nearly fell on the floor laughing at the drainage machine rental. I bet you were tempted to say “Yes, just let me check availability” and quickly rang round to see if you could get a deal from someone who did!
It’s actually a great point.
I think I need to do that on some of the landing pages. We’re starting to get hits, but need to start getting conversions.
Need a second eye on what we’re doing! I’m probably too close to see it.
Hi Ian - it was very tempting to do that - use the rental companies discount and charge full price.
What put me off was the fact that the lady who called said that they needed a huge one, because the last one they hired got stuck in the mud and broke! Probably not the smartest thing to tell someone when you want to rent from them. It’s a bit like telling a car rental company that you totalled the last car you hired!
I will take a look at your landing pages with a critical eye. But sometimes it does take a little while to get work from your site, so it may be that you’re not doing anything wrong at all.