The Search Marketing Advisor Newsletter Article:
August 2006, Volume 5, Issue 8

Land the Big One: Treat Your Customer as a Potential Employer

by Jason Damas, Algorithmic Search Analyst, iProspect

I recently sat down with a friend to help him come up with a cover letter to accompany a job application. He was pretty excited about the job, and had a distinctive and eminently spinnable set of qualifications for the position. To get him started, I asked a simple and straightforward question: “Why do you want this job?”

He thought for a second and replied, “Because I want to make money.”

I give him credit for being honest. But if you were an employer and that was what he’d actually written in his cover letter, would you hire him?

What Have You Done For Me Lately?

Teams of marketing executives working on the websites for some of the largest companies in the world have failed to come up with a more compelling unique value proposition than the one my friend offered, only half-jokingly. All too often, e-commerce websites convey messaging like this: “Do business with us because we’re us.” How compelling is that statement to a consumer? It’s not. And many well-branded sites have to work even harder because customers expect more.

This quandary is especially pronounced on the Web because some of your brand’s legacy attributes, such as your brick-and-mortar stores or customer service, simply don’t translate. If your visitor is a cold lead coming to you via a non-branded search term, you’re really starting at ground zero. If your website looks like it was built from the same template as Amazon.com, then why would anyone shop at your site?

Convey Your True Value

There are multiple factors in the online conversion process. Along with the design/structure and messaging of the website, one of the most important components is your unique value proposition (UVP), the statement summing up who you are and why that prospect should choose to do business with you. This should be reflected in every element of your website, yet, strangely, it’s pretty rare to find a website that articulates its UVP effectively.

Here are a few tips:

Immediately greet visitors with a succinct statement that sums up the unique value of your business. What do you offer, and how will it benefit the visitor more than what someone else has to offer? This statement should be bold and definitive, but not a slogan.
Focus your language on your prospect. Don’t say, “We’re the best because we’re us.” Tell your customers specifically how your service makes their lives better, and make it specific enough that it’s hard for someone else to elbow into your territory. A DVD player may have a lot of fancy gizmos, but how do those translate into the user’s experience?
Benefits sell more than features. While prospects may care that your company is well-established, they care more about what you propose to do for them now. Talk about what they expect to gain, rather than details about your organization’s history.
Throw away the rulebook, and have a tough love huddle session with your marketing department. What has worked offline for years may not cut it online, and you may require a Web-specific UVP. Maybe you’re a market leader in brick-and-mortar electronics sales in southern Wisconsin, but what does that mean online when your audience is the entire world and you’re competing with a totally different set of companies?

Cute or Qualified?

Think back to the last time you were in my friend’s position, writing a cover letter for a job. Did the letter that got you the job focus on how fabulous you were, or did it outline your very specific skills and work experiences and target those towards what you would be able to contribute to the company? I would assume it’s the latter, and marketers should remember to treat customers like a potential employer. Give them that strong unique value proposition that speaks directly to the core attributes of your website as a place for them to do business.

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The Search Marketing Advisor Newsletter Article: August 2006, Volume 5, Issue 8

Land the Big One: Treat Your Customer as a Potential Employer

The Search Marketing Advisor Newsletter Article:
August 2006, Volume 5, Issue 8