Websites are Sales, not Marketing
Take This “Internet Sales” Test For Your Site
Take a look at your website, now pretend that each word on the homepage is being said to one of your prospective customers after they said “I might want to buy from you”. Would what was being said to them be relevant?
When was the last time you thought that spending money on Internet Marketing such as Pay-per-Click or SEO was going to increase sales? It will if the people are sold, but getting them to a bad website that is not relevant to their needs (think of a sales guy babbling on while you want him off the phone so you can work again, thats a bad website.)
A great sales person has an elevator pitch, knows how to summarize his solutions, he listens to peoples needs, he handles objections and helps people (even if they are not ready to buy at that moment). A company website needs to be a great sales guy, not a great marketing guy (he did his job already by getting people to the site).
Kill the Brochure Site
I cut my “Internet Business” teeth in an “old school” manufacturing company. It was an $8 Billion company and at 1st did not look to the Internet to do anything more than have brochure materials online. As the person in charge of the company’s Internet strategies and initiatives, I knew I had to lead the company in the paradigm shift that was happening in driving B2B lead generation (people were going online 74% of the time to source a new supplier etc), and I knew this meant speaking the “old school language”. A website had to be more than the digital equivalent of a brochure holder. It had to be a digital sales person.
Emulate the Sales Group Online
My internal clients at this big old company were in “Marketing”. I soon realized that the information I was missing the most was from Sales. Each division of the company had a “Sales & Marketing” group, however I was only ever speaking to 1/2 of my client. Each of 300 or so sales people for the company knew how to present the company’s value to a prospect in less than 1 minute, they had the relevant materials with them to present and knew when someone was a qualified buyer.
In the end, I created a B2B website that acted like a Sales person, qualifying a person as a lead before closing it (the sales people still closed the sale, and made me feel like a hero every time I met them).
The company had a very strong brand in its industry, and the website got some decent traffic, but proportionately few leads were driven from it. Marketing people spent lots of time with excellent interactive marketing agencies running Internet marketing campaigns that drove online leads, however the company’s website was left largely untouched by Marketing as a lead generation tool. That was till I spoke to Sales.
Websites are Internet Sales, not Internet Marketing.
Websites perform the same job as a sales person. Think about it. Marketing is generating traffic to sales, and sales is converting that traffic.
The Internet is so new that people have not realized the two functions are still there, its just the medium that has changed. Companies today need to step back to traditional marketing and ask if something is a Sales or Marketing function, then approach it as such. Here are some typical “Internet Marketing” mainstays. Lets look at them and classify them as they really are.
- PPC – Marketing
- SEO – Marketing
- Websites – Sales
- Social Networks- Both
- eMail Campaign- Marketing
You can see that I’m calling Websites “Sales” and not Marketing. I firmly believe this and there is a company with $350K/month in additional sales to prove it. A website recieves traffic to to from Marketing which generates it online or off. It is now the websites job to receive people looking for information and answers and convert them into buying customers. Sounds like sales to me.
Lets Talk Resources
I love marketing people, but they are not normally sales people. I have also seen sales people come back to “corporate” and fail in marketing. The reason is the two functions are separate and involve separate strengths and talents. The Internet is new, so if ou have not figured it out yet, let me be clear. It is the same online as offline. When you have someone great at producing traffic for your website, don’t put them in charge of converting leads or online purchases. If you have someone great at increasing conversion rates on your site/s, don’t assume that they can manage Google Adwords or Banner Ad campaigns. Some people can do both, just don’t assume.
Another factor is specialization. There is a lot to profiting online. No one person can be at the top of their game in both Sales & Marketing skills and techniques. PPC is a full time specialty now, as is SEO, as is web design etc and so forth.
Social Media in Sales & Marketing
I’m not saying that there is not some cross-over. Social media is a place where a company can both drive r. Social media is a place where a company can both drive traffic and build relationships that “Sell”. I’m just pointing out there is a distinction and the sooner a company stops expecting a sales tool or person to do marketing and a marketing tool or person to so sales, the better we are.
Excellent article. I really like the clarity with which you described the distinction between sales and marketing. A website is definitely the equivalent of a virtual salesperson. This is also evident in how users have quickly learned to frown upon “marketese,” the marketing-pitch style language often used on websites trying to make a sale. The reason is that people don’t want to feel like they’re being pitched when they’re reading a website. They just need to be sold on the website’s offerings.
Glad you liked it. It was something I felt I had to get out. Site owners need help in how to consider their site. I encountered this issue today where I was pitched to death without a Call to Action anywhere to be seen!
Excellent article. I really like the clarity with which you described the distinction between sales and marketin
People surf the web looking for information. They are not searching for you or your product, they may not even know you exist. People surf for serious, responsible, interesting and informative content. If you can deliver and overdeliver that, then you are considered a reputable provider and people may monetize.
I agree, the days of the ‘brochure site’ are long behind us and anyone outside of a hotel or theme park still selling that way are really missing the big picture. Now that I think about it, even hotels and theme parks should orient their websites toward sales. Long gone are the days when simply posting basic facts and catchy slogans were acceptable as an online presence.
Great article Mat, I really liked the way you explained how websites are meant for sale purposes and not marketing.