Continuity in Web Marketing
We’ve all heard of the importance of continuity in web design. A good website has a consistent layout, navigation and interface. But it’s one thing to design a website, and quite another to market it and do business with it. In both worlds, consistency can make or break your success.
Although design and content go hand in hand, continuity in web marketing goes well beyond color schemes. To keep your marketing efforts in line, focus on three things: your message and tone, online-offline strategies, and consistency with market trends.
Your message and tone
If your home page says one thing and your profile page says another, your website sorely lacks consistency. Colors and layouts can change, but every page should reinforce a single marketing message. More importantly, they should be consistent in tone: you don’t take on an overly formal tone when you’re selling shirts to college kids, nor do you use clownish graphics to market legal services.
Online-offline synchronization
The Web may be a lot of things, but it’s not the end-all and be-all of business — at least not yet. The best marketing strategies combine online and offline techniques, forging both real and virtual relationships.
That being said, it’s important to note the difference between consistency and duplication. Simply reproducing your brochure online defeats your website’s purpose.
Kevin Taylor, CEO of Expert Website Services in Nevada, says that offline marketing should aim to pique people’s interest and direct them to your site, where you put your online strategies to work. In this way, both mediums work to complete each other: there’s only so much you can express on print, but your website allows you to implement your marketing in more detail.
Keeping up with the times
A good business never sticks to one strategy for very long, especially on the web where marketing techniques come and go. Think of it as having constantly changing goals, rather than a bottom line. Stay abreast of market demographics, cultural preferences, and other factors that help you stay consistent with your market’s constantly changing needs.
