The foundation of your website should be marketing principles

Marketing = customers.  The role of marketing is to attract and keep customers. If your website is customer-centric, you are on the road to success.

If you are building a new website, start with marketing principles, not software options or discussions about design.

Think about market segmentation and the customers you serve. What type of people are they? What are their issues and needs? How can you help them, within your website?

Think of the markets you are serving as a cake. Each slice of the cake represents a unique segment. It is comprised of people with shared needs. Focus your website on groups of people with shared needs.

Another marketing principle is differentiation. How does your business stand apart from your competitors? It doesn’t have to be unique – just sufficiently different so that your customers can tell the difference. If you aren’t clear about this – your website vistors won’t be either.

A third marketing principle is integration: all of your marketing processes and promotional activities should be integrated. Another way of putting this is that your marketing orchestra must be in tune, keep in time and work together to produce your marketing song. (If you have ever played with other musicians, you will know how challenging this can be!)

During my marketing degree, we studied the principles in depth. For 12 years, I was a Faculty Member and Course Director with CIM (the Chartered Institute of Marketing). The work centred around the principles. Today,  every client conversation I have includes a discussion of the principles.

If you would like advice on your current website / next generation site and how to apply marketing principles to your business, by all means get in touch.