If there is one thing every Web business executive can agree on, it’s that websites need to motivate people to act. That action can be to place an order, send an email, pick-up the phone, or maybe just join a mailing list, but whatever the intended response, your website must cause a reaction. It’s a case of simple cause and effect.
The issue is one of successful communication. What you say and how you say it are what motivates people to connect with your company, the solution provider. Websites, blogs, social networking, and mobile sites are merely venues for communication. All the Facebook friends, Linkedin contacts, and search engine traffic in the world doesn’t mean a thing if you have nothing interesting, memorable, and persuasive to say to them.
In our view, Web Video is the most powerful communication tool available to businesses today, but if you don’t use it properly it isn’t going to help, and the same thing applies to copy, graphics, photos, and blog posts. What you say and how you say it are the critical elements of whether or not, people respond to your website presentation.
What Needs To Be Said
Marketing consultants have for years suggested the use of Mission Statements as one way to get companies to focus their thinking and communication efforts into something meaningful. They are intended to be a kind of ‘Rosetta Stone’ for corporate communication, but instead, they have become a graveyard for innocuous platitudes and inane statements of self-congratulation. It’s too bad because the idea of a core guiding statement that defines purpose and personality is central to developing a framework for marketing communication content and delivery.
If websites are about motivating action, what do we need to communicate to our audience to achieve that objective? If Mission Statements aren’t the solution, what is? The answer is not a price proposition or a feature proposition but rather a presentation of emotional value because it is the most persuasive motivating factor you can provide. It is something that your competitors can’t copy, undercut, or even compete with.
Your Emotional Value Proposition Is Your Brand
If you ever thought branding didn’t apply to your company, well now you know better, because branding is nothing more than the implementation and communication of your company’s emotional value statement: the core guiding principle used to formulate all marketing communication efforts, including website video presentations.
In Lee Eisenberg’s book, ‘Shoptimism’ he outlines four reasons people buy things: to make themselves happy, to transform themselves, to express themselves, and to achieve a sense of permanence. Each of these reasons is based on an emotional value, which is why all the features and price-cutting in the world can’t compete with a well-established emotional return.
By Jerry Bader (c) 2010
About The Author
Jerry Bader is Senior Partner at MRPwebmedia, a website design and marketing firm that specializes in Web-video Marketing Campaigns and Video Websites. Visitwww.mrpwebmedia.com, www.136words.com, and www.sonicpersonality.com.