Special Reports

With Web sites becoming so common, more and more are looking and sounding the same. The lack of content, of originality, results from a lack of focus. We need to jump in head first, but we also need to adapt and adjust. Marketing strategy is the starting point for all my projects, resulting from my publishing experiences of the past 10 years. As the saying goes, those who forget the past will repeat it. We need to be original and stop the old mistakes. It all begins with a plan.

A Brief History of Technology: 1986 to the Present

I started my business in 1986 with the promise of desktop publishing. Creating my own magazine, I soon discovered that all the promise was buried by too many fonts and too few original ideas. Looks can't hide poor content. I developed design skills which provided a subtle look that decorated well-written articles.

In 1989 I moved into multimedia and ran into the same problems. We developed amazing video, audio, and graphic capabilities; we also buried ourselves in overindulgence of the media. Guess what was (is) lacking again? Content and that holy grail of technology--interactivity. We kept ignoring the audience by overwhelming them with multimedia tricks.

In 1993, I moved my business onto the Web and "surprise, surprise" the same things are happening again. No content, too much focus on the bells and whistles of technology, and too little for the audience to grab hold of. I am beginning a four-part series of reports on how to develop a Web site and audience. Creating a marketing strategy is the first step for any Web site. Marketing simply means promoting awareness and finding the best way to make the audience your site's primary focus. Whether commercial or noncommercial, if no one knows you're out there, what's the point?

Develop a Learning Curve With the Audience and Plan to Build On It

Randomness is nice, but you can't get to where you're going unless you know where you want to go. No business succeeds without a plan. On the Web, planning means preparing to overhaul and replace your original idea. With such a new medium, you're bound to bring in old approaches and match your vision to the Web. Remember your learning curve; change your site often to give signs of life to the audience, but at the same time adapt your end goal.

That's what is so hard for many traditional businesses, who want to create a static business plan and follow it up. This plan can be your guide, but the audience is the key. They want to build a sense of community. A Web site is a meeting of minds. You can't predict what they will want, so prepare to go with the flow. Your goal should be to make your site the center of that flow.

Reaching your audience involves the first steps in any marketing campaign—trying to create a market for your distribution. Those email addresses you collect, feedback you develop on, and community you build are one way. These will allow you to develop personalized mailing lists, means of attracting attention, and following up on details. I wish it were as simple as just going to search engines and newsgroups, posting your message, taking out classified ads, and waiting for traffic. But the audience who comes to your site needs more, they need to be involved in what you are doing.

Give Them What They Want and Keep Giving to Create Perceived Value

Netscape and Sun began by giving away their software, establishing an industry standard and a customer base. You must use the same system of barter, trade, and shared transactions to your advantage. Trade for display advertising, for banners on other sites, and build your traffic by not profiting early. Few businesses generate revenues in the first three months, so why would the Web be different? The Web is a business, built on the strength of working together, of throwing away your old ideas in favor of new ones. Don't be opposed to change; oppose being static.

Give away something (information, products, services, ideas, feedback, anything!) to begin with, develop value with your customers, then add value to that. This will assist in building trust, your client base, and your reputation.

Special free offers will draw people to your site, as will events and contests. Provide special reports, insights, or personal style; the goal is to think of what everyone else is doing and be different. Dare to be the site that openly builds on a learning curve, that doesn't know it all about their particular subject but trusts the depth and breadth of the audience's knowledge to guide them to their final goal.

Your end goal should be defined by the audience; making them aware of you is the beginning of your marketing strategy. Letting them take over your site is the end goal.

Focus Your Ideas into a Simple Beginning

Each week I get emails from people wanting to develop Web sites. First they have an idea for a business. Then they progress to a widget they want to sell, some real estate they own, a business opportunity, and some philosophical ideas they propose to merge into the whole package.

Sound confusing? The confusion comes from the lack of focus. No one would try to incorporate different businesses into the same approach, but somehow people on the Web dream that it is different, that it is cyberspace and can cure all that ails them.

Cyberspace—what does that word mean anyway? From what I've seen, it only creates confusion. I equate it with those Web sites that look like black holes in the middle of space, sucking the viewer into absolutely nothing. Disorienting your target audience is not the way to build a site. You are forcing them to change and adapt to your vision. Selling visions is not a profitable, nor healthy business; ask any prophet who has tried to change the world.

Begin your site by being succinct. Write a 25-word description, along with 8-10 keywords that describe what you want to do. The search engines ask for this and it is an excellent way to begin your Web site by forcing you to focus on the here and now. Develop your storyboards and outlines to organize your information around this description to define your marketing strategy. You have to know what you want to present before you can define it.

The Big Secret: What is the Missing Element On the Web?

We always think that new media mean dramatic new ways of communicating. While the Web affords this opportunity, the big secret is that we are missing the one key component—writing. Do you know a talented writer on the Web? I know many who are talented at technology, but not so many who can provide organization and structure to a Web site. New media always lack for content, for direction, and organization.

Begin your Web site with a good writer, focusing on text and narrowing your vision. Let the audience expand the vision. Give away value and keep changing. Plan obsolescence and build on it.

The audience is only as strong as your ability to understand their strength. Learn from all of our past mistakes in desktop publishing and multimedia to forge your own vision. The Web is a window of opportunity for those creative enough to remember that no matter what the medium is, we are all just communicating messages, stories, and experience. The power comes when the audience is moved. Begin with this end in mind.

Copyright © 1997 Declan Dunn. All rights reserved.

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