When generating go-to-market strategies and new messaging for our clients, we typically scour the websites and collateral of our clients’ top four competitors to understand their high-level positioning, solution capabilities, benefits, differentiators, industry focus, etc.

Having completed yet another of these exercises for a client recently, I’m reminded of the basic messaging and web content pitfalls that plague so many organizations.

Below are five of the most common and costly:

1) Lack of a simple, clear positioning statement

Imagine a prospective customer visiting your home page for the first time. In all likelihood, they don’t have nearly the depth of industry knowledge you have, and they certainly don’t have deep knowledge of your company, products and services.

To this uninitiated buyer, does your home page clearly articulate what your company does, in the most basic of terms? Does it achieve this objective within seven seconds? Most home pages don’t.

So many companies jump right into industry jargon, technical speak and product capabilities that they confuse buyers before they even get started. Don’t suffer this same fate. Get off to a good start with a simple, clear positioning statement: “We deliver x product or y service that helps companies do z.”

2) Feature centric vs. benefits centric

Many companies delve too deeply into product features and detailed services capabilities while failing to link each of these capabilities to their related benefits. This is classic “inside out” marketing; in other words it’s focusing on what your company cares about (“all the great capabilities we’re so proud of”) rather than what your customers care about (solutions to their problems, a.k.a. benefits). Product features and services capabilities are simply a mechanism, a means to an end. Benefits are the real value.

When I see corporate messaging replete with features, and light on benefits, I immediately assume they haven’t done the hard work of truly understanding their customers. To know your customers is to know their pains. Only when you truly know your customer pains can you effectively link benefits to capabilities.

3) Lack of focus

All too often we see companies that purport to be everything to everyone. This is true of companies that list a dozen industries of “focus” on their website, as well as those that advertise impossibly broad product or services footprints.

My esteemed colleague, Seth Lucash, has a wonderful saying that applies here: focus brings market traction. No one can be great at everything. By saying that you are, you’re only confusing your potential customers and diluting the potency of your message.

4) No differentiation

What do you do better than any of your competitors that genuinely matters to a customer? So few companies nail this crucial messaging element; it’s the reason so many sales cycles devolve into a price battle.

Many of the companies we assess either lack differentiation statements altogether, or they list too many. Pick the two (maximum three) things you know you do better than anyone else, as validated by your customers to be mission critical, and work these into your core messaging early and often.

5) Verbosity

Most of the websites we see are far too text heavy. A crisp two minute flash video presentation or a simple graphic is far more effective at illustrating a concept than text.

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