By Mike Jalonen, Mural VP of Sales & Marketing
When our creative team released our new website, the bold line on the home page made me very nervous. It said (and still does)
“Mural is a full-service digital engagement agency. Honestly, we always have been. We just haven’t done a good job of telling our story, until now.”
My thought was, how are we going to convince people that we are the best in the industry at helping them sell and market their products online if that was something that we just admitted we were not good at ourselves? I suggested that we change it or remove that line all together! But as James Murfin and James Stolp, Partners and unbelievable marketers at Mural, pointed out to me, being honest is the key to winning customer loyalty and increased sales.
This concept made me think about some of my first bootstrapped startup companies. Many times the strategy was to exaggerate our marketing to give the impression of being in business longer, looking larger than we were, or financially stable when the reality was we were a bootstrapped startup. All this was to obviously win more business and grow the companies. Sound familiar? It should, the majority of small businesses do this same thing every day. It works, no doubt, but as my fellow Partners at Mural pointed out – not even close to as well as being honest.
Consumers (B2B or B2C) have all heard the exaggerated marketing spin developed by professional marketers. The reality is that they can see right through it now. Websites are notorious for making a small company look large. People know this. An overwhelming amount of buyers nowadays are looking to buy or evaluate your products/services based on unbiased user input and experiences rather than the marketing message directly from the company selling the service/product. They can see a bluff, an exaggeration, or even a little hype and very quickly, as a result, start to form an (incorrect) opinion about you and what you are selling.
User feedback can be seen in lots of areas and can help people decide which blog posts to read regularly, which books to read online (Amazon), which applications to purchase or try on the iTunes store, etc. Take purchasing an application for your iPhone on the iStore for example. The only information you get about an application is the manufactures 1 page description and a star rating and user feedback from users of the software. I have never bought an iPhone application where I have not read the feedback and evaluated based on it. I look for applications that have the most feedback first, then at the star rating, and read the details from there. Hearing reviews that I can relate with, good or bad, help set my expectations about what I’m about to purchase. Even with bad feedback, I have still bought an application that I think would accomplish my goals knowing ahead of time the challenges. When a manufacturer calls out the dirty aspects and mentions they are working on it – it’s even better. I know that I’m dealing with an honest company. The companies who listen to the user feedback and develop applications as a result keep my loyalty.
Sometimes companies even get so caught up with creating a marketing spin (and keeping the dirty truth away from us) take away from the clear message of what their company is truly good at leaving consumers confused. Nothing is easier to understand than the truth.
The truth about Mural, is exactly what sits on our home page today – we just haven’t done a good job of telling our story, until now. We have helped hundreds of companies be successful and profitable but our strategy has been selling through channels that have kept us from telling the story to the masses. That changes now. Now we will begin to incorporate our own medicine, the Web Centric Customer Lifecycle, into our own practice. Stay tuned!
As we continue to build out our new brand and share details through our website we hope that you follow our web strategy. I can assure that we will continue to deliver the true message, for good or bad. I welcome your candid responses, good or bad.