“Rhett, Rhett … Rhett, if you go, where shall I go? What shall I do?”
“Frankly, my dear, I don’t give a damn.”
Scarlett O’Hara and Rhett Butler in conversation in the novel Gone With the Wind written by Margaret Mitchell and published 73 years ago today. The film came out two years later and remains my wife’s number one favorite which means I’ve sat through it more times than I care to remember.
I wonder if Margaret would have ever guessed that the response she gave Rhett would stand the test of time. Now remember back in 1936 it was pretty edgy to use that kind of language in a novel, clearly damn was considered by many as a swear word, but she did and it stuck.
What about your marketing message? Is it edgy, is it clear, and is it sticky?
Look at your marketing material, which for many today consists almost entirely of a web presence. I don’t see many individual professionals or companies producing brochures like they used to, or sending as much on letterhead emblazed snail mail as did even five years ago.
Part of what I do with Salesopedia is visit a lot of websites, mostly from contributing authors or sales related companies with a product or service to sell. I am galled at what I see. Granted the bigger firms have bigger budgets and can pull together the resources to create a hum-dinger (technical talk) of a website. This doesn’t mean individuals and smaller companies can’t have a great looking and functional site for not a huge investment. Certainly if you think what you used to pay for a couple of thousand three-panel glossy brochures and compare that to the money you need to spend on a website (which is more permanent, flexible and has great reach), the decision should be relatively easy.
Quite a number of professionals (speakers, consultants, trainers) might have got on the bandwagon four or five years ago and paid someone to build them a website. Probably created in such a way there is a needed ongoing maintenance fee to have the webmaster on retainer to make any changes for which you pay, each and every time. This compounds the issue as many get tired of paying and paying for changes, so they stop updating the site and guess what; it gets static.
When someone visits your site to “check you out” (which you can bet they will if they are going to do business with you) that prospect doesn’t get the favorable first impression you want them to receive.
If your site isn’t a tad edgy, clear in purpose and sticky enough to keep the viewer engaged at least long enough to discover what you selling and why they should be buying; you are missing opportunities, “and frankly, my dear, you should give a damn.”
Clayton Shold
Salesopedia
