“We’re stuck and frustrated,” the man in front of me says. Even though this is a Zoom call, I sense his exasperation clearly, it practically oozes through the monitor.
“It’s just not the right language.”
He sighs.
This man is the talented CEO of a highly respected services firm. Like a number of other leaders I’ve met recently, he’s at his wits end with his marketing agency. It seems his company has invested tens of thousands of dollars into a re-branding exercise that has, so far, yielded preciously little usable copy.
He tells me: nothing about this copy feels right. Though the packages are beautiful, like wearing someone’s skin, the words just don’t fit. After a few minutes reviewing, I spot the problem.
Ah yes, marketing gobble-y-goop.
We sit there, as I delicately explain that this copy is so far off that there is no way it can lead to an effective website re-launch – a process which, he tells me, is already underway.
He sighs once more.
If you go about the process backwards, it’s going to feel hard
The above scenario is one that many good leaders go through. It typically occurs within organizations who have contracted an external marketing agency to help them, yet lack an internal leader with sufficient marketing expertise and vision to direct the agency through the process.
It’s a common story. Everyone is keen to get going on the project. They jump into things right away. The client draws up the site map. Someone picks colors. The agency makes a fancy presentation about competitive positioning.
The client, not knowing any better, follows naively down this path.
Then, eventually, copy gets made. The agency presents it proudly to the client and… it flops.
Badly.
Worse, it seems to take forever to massage this language into something better. By the end of the process, everyone agrees: that was maddening.
Start with why
What’s really happening when this dynamic plays out? If you are familiar with Simon Sinek and Start with why, you already know where this diagnosis is going: the team had started from “what” they wanted to do – build a website – instead of asking themselves “why” they were crafting one in the first place.
Of course, things went sideways. Any time you start designing solutions without first clarifying the “why” you get into trouble.
When designing a website – if you want to avoid a process from hell – it’s best to explicitly establish why you’re doing so in the first place. At a minimum you want to think about three things:
- Who are you and what is your brand?
- Who is your ideal audience and what journey do they need to go on?
- How does this website fit into your overall marketing and content goals?
Only once you have clear answers to these questions should you proceed with stuff like map structure and aesthetic.
Start with why. Refreshing a website is already more work than people anticipate, no need to also make it painful.
