Social media is a part of the marketing toolbox, an increasingly important one, so why does it so often get shuffled out to the side, assigned to the 20 year old intern, when it can have a profound impact on your customers and market?.
Marketing is all about demand generation, it is a very wide set of activities, behaviors, and attitudes that build an expectation of brand and pr0oduct performance. It covers everything from the usual promotional and advertising stuff people think about, to the little things, the cleanliness of the company logoed delivery truck, ( I always recall the shiny red Arnotts vans, to me they are a metaphor for the brand, sadly, there is not even a good photo on the web) to the way the receptionist answers the phone, and many other things. The “welcome quotient” of the brand.
We do all this stuff in the real world, but ignore much of it in the digital one, simply by ignoring the expectation that visitors want to feel as welcome digitally as they are personally.
Many websites are distinctly unwelcoming, muddled, untidy, hard to navigate and offering little encouragement to engage further. This post by Jay Baer lists 11 reasons people do not engage, and is a great list of the common problems I see, most of which are r4elatively easily addressed.
