Ever clicked on a site and been shown a page that says “welcome to our website”?

What about a page that tells you all about the business and how they started?

The Internet used to be full with that sort of stuff.

The bar has been raised and will continue to be raised.

Read through the remainder of this short article to get the simple facts in logical steps.

Do not give up before the end.

Who Is Your Customer?

Marketing ROIHave you profiled your ideal customer as yet?

What is their age?

Are they male or female?

What is their demographic?

What is their psychographic?

How do you close for business?

Are you communicating with a decision maker? Are you communicating with a chief recommender?

Are you communicating with both?

What do they want?

What do they need?

Be as specific as you can be. You should be able to name these people. You should see them in many of your existing customers.

An Customer Profile Example

Our customer is predominantly male. They are aged 35 to 55. They are a business owner.

What problem / opportunity that they have does your product or service solve / enhance?

In the opening couple of sentences I gave you an example of what not to say.

Those hackneyed lines are about “you” and “your business”.

It is great to give the customer some comfort you are experienced and / or you are going to be around if they need you but, in themselves, they will sell nothing.

You must frame your offering in terms of what is “in it” for your customer.

To do that you must understand their problem. Their opportunity.

A Problem / Opportunity Example

Our customer knows the numbers in their business. They know they must market their business to grow their business. Opportunity.

They allocate a significant budget to marketing in relation to the size of their business and take it very seriously indeed. Opportunity.

They have often used marketing companies in the past that have failed to be accountable for the results and the service levels. Problem.

Our customer wants to engage with their marketing partner. They want information, explanations and results so they can grow their business. Opportunity.

Why would they buy from you and your business?

What is your USP. Your Unique Selling Proposition?

What differentiates you from your competition?

Why would I buy from you as opposed to your competitors?

I have access to the Internet. I can do research before I buy – and I do it at night in front of the TV on my iPad.

I do it at work during the day on my desktop computer.

I do it at lunch or whilst waiting for my next appointment in the car on my iPhone.

A Unique Selling Proposition Example

Our unique selling proposition is that we use data and analysis to drive the strategies that improve your marketing ROI.

We measure everything and then we funnel all of that into any action we take with your marketing.

We also provide a unique level of service for a business in our industry at our level.

Business owners talk to business owners. Because as business owners we understand many of the issues facing our ideal customer.

The Payoff – Now Put All Of This Into 2 Short Sentences

Sounds simple right?

First sentence – Tell me (I am your ideal customer now) how your product or service will solve my problem or enhance my opportunity.

Of course, to do that you must understand who I am and what my problem or opportunity is.

Do this in less that 10 words.

Second sentence – “Sell” me your Unique Selling Proposition.

Why should I buy from you as opposed to your competition?

Do this in less than 20 words.

Getting these 2 short sentences correct is the hardest thing you will do on your website.

What Do I Do With This Once I Have It?

Place the above at the top of your landing page directly under the heading where you place your logo and your phone number.

A landing page is a page that gets organic search traffic, paid traffic (from Google Adwords or Bing or other sources), direct traffic, referral traffic etc.

The key factor is that it gets traffic.

It may be a home page, may be an internal page, may be a product page or it may be a “custom” landing page that is not even on your main website.

Add a very simple call to action – phone number, simple webform etc and make it stand out clearly from the remainder of the page.

Then add tightly targeted supporting information under this but specifically related to the above for those that want to read further.

Make the whole thing visually appealing and target the visual presentation specifically towards your ideal customer.

Keep the visual presentation SIMPLE and UNCLUTTERED.

Keep the distraction ratio (the number of things you want them to do in ratio to the number of things that they can do) as close to 1:1 as is humanly possible.

You Have Now Achieved More Than 95% Of Businesses

What you have now is a conversion machine.

Driving traffic to that conversion machine is the subject of other articles.

Driving traffic to anything other than a conversion machine is a complete waste of your time and money.

About Kirk O'Connor

Kirk went into the tech sector straight out of school in 1978 - how many of you were even born then? Kirk has worked in hardware, software development, support, sales, product marketing, general management and web marketing without actually mastering any of the above, however, he still keeps on trying - bless him!!!