Most Websites Talk About Me, Me, Me, When It Should Be About You, You, You When you are looking for a product or service today, what do you typically do? Depending on what it is, you might pick up the phone to talk to a peer, post something on Facebook asking your friends about their experience or advice, or go online. Whether or not you do the first two, you will most likely do the last and run your own search. In looking at websites in the industry, what I often see are bullets and paragraphs detailing brands of printers in your lineup, how they can print, scan and fax, along with the seemingly obligatory speeds and feeds. The copy details the vibrancy of the color output, the automatic document feeders, its capabilities for duplexing, and the names of the document management system you carry. No offense, but who cares! Once upon a time marketing materials were designed as a leave behind after you had actually spoken with a customer, and the rep was able to deliver the value prop. This is often not the case with your website. People go there first to get information before they even pick up a phone to call you. It has become critical for your website to engage and to capture their attention. How do you accomplish this? The answer is to take a customer-centric approach. Keep in mind, your customer does not really care what it is solving their pain points. A good way to approach this is, for each product or service you offer, break it down, and start by writing down the features. Let’s go through three common examples for a printer in this before and after: Current Wording Customer Centric Approach 1200 x 1200 dpi Crisp, high-quality documents (The resolution can be listed on the back of the datasheet) Automatic duplexing Saving money on paper, save a tree, increase workflow efficiency 3,000 sheet capacity High capacity paper drawers to reduce time spent adding paper Which do you think it going to garner more attention from your customer, the list on the left or the right? There is no question that it takes more of a time commitment, but it is worth it. Take a good look at your website copy and brochures available online. Read it, paying close attention to titles, headlines, and callout boxes. A website spewing nothing but features is equivalent to having a conversation where the people talk about nothing but themselves; and who likes that? This gives you some good ideas from a content standpoint, but let’s chat a little about the images on your site. Images should complement the message you are trying to get across. I do not suggest having a picture of your building on the home page. Instead, you need to determine what makes you different and look for images that help depict that. As you move from selling printers to leading with services, such as managed print services, you will want to limit the number of printers your customers are seeing when they arrive at your home page. This is just one more way to show your customer it is about them, not you. Hopefully your reps are out in the field taking a consultative approach so that your website will be engaging and customer focused. These are all pieces of the puzzle that when fit together enables you not to just be the copy guy, but a solutions partner: Opening more doors for you, closing your competitors out. Kelli Jones is the Marketing Manager for Strategy Development with over 11 years experience marketing solutions and services in the industry. Jones has also worked for industry leaders Objectif Lune and IKON Office Solutions. Jones is a marketing strategist with an expertise in variable data printing including transactional, transpromotional and promotional. Jones can be reached at kjones@strategydevelopment.org.