PitchPersuasion

This week my main post is slightly delayed so I’ve added a small ‘tapas’ feature to help out people who are launching new sites and campaigns online. If you are really sensible you might even build it into a pitch and bill the time you spend doing it!

Essential Hit List

1. To even vaguely give the world a chance at finding your site, bookmark your page (and every page/post your create) using Del.icio.us (1min) or even better using Social Marker (30min+ if you do all the social bookmarking sites).

2. Get a twitter account (30secs) and email all your clients & prospects with the details (30secs) and use it as a news ticker of what you do each day including links to your site (1min a day).

3. Add a listing on DMOZ, it’s regarded as one of the most important directories for sites to be listed. (2mins)

4. Post a constructive comment each day on a blog that you read regularly including a link back to your site. (30sec)

5. Create news, move from: ‘We started work on a new project today’ to ‘x agency/company started work for x company today’ and syndicate it using NowPublic and email it to the right people at places like Brand Republic & Mad.co.uk. (30sec)

In reality to get started it may take you a bit more than 5 minutes to start doing everything here but if you get into a rhythm it should really help build up your audience.

Historically when creating websites people have followed a very classic method of trying to create a carbon copy of what they believe their organisation looks like into a website.

While this approach does cover off the basic needs of an online presence it does not help educate the buyer, nor does it entice them back to the site in the future. Companies need to start to realise that they need to look at what the people visiting their site might need/want to know.

As most of us now make a decision to purchase before speaking to a sales rep it’s important that the essential information can be easily found and is laid out in a way which is digestible by the various audiences.

Key Points:
- Think about who needs information from your site, e.g. Buyers, Existing, Clients, Press, Investors..;
- Look at the ‘Personas’ of the people visiting your site and ensure that their needs are catered for;
- Work together as an organisation so that Marketing, Sales, Web developers & Agencies are a co-ordinated machine.

Good Example of a client centric site:
Webex - http://www.webex.com

Links/References:
The New Rules of Marketing & PR, David Meerman Scott