It’s time for your brand to start spreading the joy

I see a lot of brands out there that are all business. Go to their website and you’ll see an opening statement that says something like, “We are a widget manufacturer that produces next-gen widgets”.

I find myself thinking, “You must be very proud” — as I exit their site.

Beware the self-proclaimed gurus

I’ve seen self-proclaimed marketing gurus tell us that the first thing your website must do is tell people who you are and what you do. It has to be that basic. Honestly, I think this is lousy advice.

First of all, people are not coming to your site without some intent. In other words, there is a very slim chance that an ideal prospect just stumbled upon your site. They most likely did a search, looking for a solution category (widgets) or options (widget manufacturers). And in doing a search, they saw the snippet of text in the search result that gave them an idea of who you are.

Why would you use the valuable real estate at the top of your home page to tell them what they already know?

Second of all, people don’t care about your brand. Because you haven’t given them a reason to care. And when you lead with who you are and what you do, you’re just delaying things. Not to mention making them work too hard to…