Your relationship with your customers is like every other relationship you’ve known and maintained. It starts small, then grows over time as you both come to trust, believe in, and value each other as mutual exchanges of assets occur.
Marketing is about facilitating that relationship and helping your customers understand the parameters of the relationship. Often, your website will be where you make your first impressions. It might not have been where someone first heard of you, but when someone wants to know more about you, they’ll visit your website.
The thing is, they usually only spend a few seconds on your website—if you’re lucky, a few minutes. So how do you capture their attention within that small window of time? By leading with value.
Tell them why you’re a perfect fit
Your greatest strength as a business owner is understanding the problems your customers are facing at an expert level. Whether you have experienced those problems, have been in a family business that specializes in solving that problem, or studied and practiced for years, you’ve set yourself apart as someone who can provide valuable solutions.
Your solution will improve lives and change the world, but no one will know unless you communicate that value. No one buys a thing without first hearing or reading words that convince them to buy it. No one marries a person they feel they don’t know. No one commits to a cause or leader they don’t believe will improve the world.
You differentiate yourself from your competition by clearly letting people know the value.
How to build relationships with your website
Tell stories
Most websites on the internet—especially websites meant to sell you something—are little more than a digital business card or brochure. In the last few years, however, some have been coming around to using websites to tell stories, yet they still seem only to get it half right.
Some brands focus on telling and sharing their story with as many people as possible. In contrast, others lean into the story of their customers. Both of these are great, but when brands use them independently of the other, they fall short of building relationships.
Relationship building is a give-and-take between two parties. To successfully build relationships with your website, you must introduce yourself to your customers while demonstrating that you understand who they are.
Your customer’s story casts them as the main character while you and your brand are the expert guide. You are the Gandalf to their Frodo, the Alfred Pennyworth to their Batman, the June to their Johnny.
By telling your customer’s story, you show them that you understand their problems, know what will happen if they go unsolved, and have solutions to help them. Your website helps them envision the positive transformation they can expect by doing business with you.
Your story, however, is the tale of how your company came to be and why you do what you do. Your customers want to do business with people—not faceless brands. By sharing your story and describing what you’re about, you develop an idea that people rally around it and form a community out of.
Use clear and concise language
Writing for your website is just like having a conversation. Imagine that as someone scrolls down a website page, they simulate their first conversation with you.
When meeting someone new, typically, one of the first questions asked is, “What do you do?” Then, you have just a few seconds to describe it as accurately and concisely as possible. At 6th Ave Storytelling, we handle organic marketing built on storytelling for your business.
Suppose you’ve captured enough interest and your description was clear enough. In that case, the follow-up question will usually be similar to, “How’d you get into that?” Responding directly to that question means detailing the problem you saw in the world and how you envision people's lives would be better if the problem is solved.
By taking the time to consider the questions a customer may ask you during the first meeting, you can start to write and develop a website that communicates the value you provide, what’s at stake, and how you’ll solve your customers' problems.
Simple, beautiful branding
People say not to judge a book by its cover, but books still use and need covers. First impressions matter. In real life, how you dress and present yourself aesthetically affects perceptions for better or worse. How you “dress” your website up matters in the same way. If your website’s theme is simple, clean, and consistent with your branding, it will encourage users to read and engage in the dialogue you laid out for them.
Build a website that makes you money
If your website tells stories, uses clean and concise language, and has simple, beautiful branding, you are well on your way to turning it into your best marketing tool. To know more and dive deeper into building your Storysite, download our guide, Storysite 101: How to Build a Website That Makes You Money.
However, if you’ve used up a ton of resources and time working on your website and it still isn’t to your liking, consider scheduling a meetup with us! We’re all about helping small businesses grow through the power of storytelling.
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