Traditional web marketing has consisted of text and banner ads, email campaigns and flash animations. Although there are large amounts of money to be made with these delivery mechanisms, they often risk sacrificing the integrity of a company's brand in the eyes of the consumer. All of these are shotgun, one-way, push advertising methods - and consumers know it.
A few weeks ago we talked about how a suite of cheap blog publishing tools has made it easier than ever to hire and incentivise paid blog writing. Well, its also created an opportunity for in-house marketing people to write about their companies. While the tools themselves don't necessitate a conversational, two-way marketing approach; they do facilitate just that sort of thing quite well.
Why Iterate Your Web Marketing?
Regardless of whether your company is ready to enter into the conversational market, there are still benefits to publishing with a blog tool: search engine traffic, broader reach and iterating your marketing message on the web. Web users are looking for only the bit of your message that is important to them, they don't care about the other 9/10ths of it; if they can't find it (usually from a search engine) they move on just as quickly as they came.
Learn to Listen
The same web market you are trying to reach can be a valuable source of information about how they use your product, what they like and dislike about it, why they return to your business. You can even find the same about your competitors. The easiest way to start is to setup PubSub subscriptions for your business, products and trademarks.
Now you can respond to their criticisms, thank them for their compliments and link to their honest, unsolicited testimonials (the best kind) from your site. Welcome to the world's biggest, real time focus group.
Chunk The Message
Break your message up into palatable, meaningful chunks. Those 3 reasons why you offer more value than your competitors? Those would make 3 great posts. The 5 features that make your product more powerful? Do the math. Instead of giving bullet points, why not elaborate (just a few paragraphs will do) and really show why each one matters? If you want to really drive the point home, revisit each time you have a new example or perspective.
It breaks your message up into manageable chunks for readers to consume, it provides the opportunity for you to explain in greater (but not too much) detail, it creates single pages with just the content that they want. When those consumers have blogs, they can link to exactly what it is about your product that gets their attention.
Informalize Your Voice
If you expect people to keep coming back, you better communicate like they're an old friend. Marketers must resist the temptation to sound too polished on the web, because the audience can be unforgiving. Read the Cluetrain manifesto to understand the expectations of the web community, and the tone of response you can likely expect if find yourself substituting too much steak for sizzle. Try just being yourself, it usually works pretty well.
If you're not familiar with the web, this sort of thing may sound dangerous. On the surface it may seem risky to sound like a real person, but on the web its what works best. In a medium that so easily allows anonymity, people value honesty most. It says as much about your company's values as the value of your products.