Is it better to have 100 hooks in the water with stale bait or only 1 or 2 with the tastiest bait in the world?
I’ve been thinking about content, SEO, blogging, etc a lot recently. Some of it has to do with a recent post that has stirred considerable interest but mostly from some private conversations with industry folks I really respect.
It suddenly hit me that there are generally two approaches to content. Quantity vs quality.
If the web is an Ocean and Google the tour guide then what is the best way to be a featured stop on the tour? Is it to have as many attractions (read pages) that aren’t necessarily that vibrant (read activity) but show up at every turn or is it better to invest more energy into the BEST stop on the tour (assuming a search query is the “tour”) that people go out of their way to find?
I think the answer is different depending on what you are trying to accomplish. If you are looking to sell a trinket and make a quick buck I would argue that having a shack at every stop makes sense. The web version of a hot dog cart.
But if you are looking to be a destination, build customer loyalty, have repeat business, charge a premium for your services and products then I would argue you should invest in one really good destination (your website or blog) and maybe put up some signs along the path pointing to your awesome place. The web version of “Rock City”.
By “invest” I mean engagement. Be active, encourage others to engage, be that “tasty bait” that the fish can’t resist. Google will see that activity and reward you for it.
Neither approach is wrong, it really matters who your audience is. I would argue that a service company is best served by being “Best In Class” and a product company is better served by having as many hooks in the water as possible to catch all the fish swimming by looking for a quick snack but not a relationship.
Ideally you want both but there are only so many hours in the day and it’s important to use your time effectively. I would argue you closely consider your audience, your product and put together a strategic plan that finds a good mix between quantity and quality.
Jeb, I disagree. Quality is the only strategy which is both responsible and respectful of your customers. Quantity implies that value lies in scale, and victory is found through saturation and steamrolling.
Curiously, I think you actually agree with me too. You characterize quantity as “selling trinkets” and “making a quick buck,” which sound fairly derogatory. On the other hand, you describe quality as “being a destination,” “building customer loyalty,” and “[earning] repeat business.” These don’t sound like the words that would be chosen by someone who believes “neither approach is wrong.”
Thinking about the web as a content resource hides the important qualifier: the expertise behind content. We would all rather have the surgeon who has completed a total of five procedures, all flawlessly, than the guy who has done hundreds but botched a considerable percentage. Your blog posts, likewise, aren’t nearly as frequent as many others we could both name, but are consistently refreshingly honest. That keeps me coming back and likely reflects your philosophy on business and on life.
Anybody can do a thing poorly over and over again, but only a few can achieve greatness even once. I predict that quantity as a strategy will never be as respected or as fulfilling as a commitment to doing it right, no matter hwo long it takes.
@robbyslaughter
Thanks Robby, I appreciate your points but remember that not all companies can be best in class.
Look at McDonald’s. No-one would say it is the best restaurant. There are certainly better restaurants serving hamburgers but McDonald’s is serving a specific market- people that want cheap, fast food. The customers that are willing to pay more for quality and service will go elsewhere.
To me McDonald’s has 1000 hooks with bland but consistent bait and the local hamburger joint has one hook with the tastiest around.
They serve different markets so they need to use different techniques. In a sense the local joint is as much about service as product. McDonald’s is almost all about product. Their price point forces them to sacrifice on the server side. Same with Walmart, etc.
With the web, and marketing in general, you have to determine your market and then leverage your assets (time, money, talent, etc) to capitalize on that market.
The quantity approach works well for one-night-stand products. The quality approach works well for relationship based products and services. You have fewer people coming through your door but they spend more time and money with you.
I think you are making a big assumption here that “quality” isn’t scalable. If we wan too stay on the restaurant theme…look at our own hometown. Who can argue that Oceanair isn’t awesome? Ruth’s Chris?, that Brazilian place?
I feel like what you get kind of hung up on is the idea that if you want to be successful,credible and respected, you have to compromise somewhere and can’t have both quantity and quality. I disagree strongly to that notion.
Oceanair “wins” lots of restaurant business by being top quality ‘and’ showing up everywhere.
This is the same for search and it’s true for services or products. Mark Zuckerberg might be the best bankruptcy attorney in Indiana but if prospects can’t find him using any of hundreds of different search terms he’ll not be able to help them.
Clarion and Community Hospitals are world class, high quality institutions. There are potentially thousands of different ways that potential constituents describe problems that these two institutions are well suited to intervene. And when I’m looking for a very specific wine that I just read about in a magazine, Greenfield Liquors will only capture my search if they have a lot of hooks in the water….and speaking as a fish, I’m only interested in one…the one that answers my search.
Chris, my point was more about the landing page. This goes back to our email conversation about comments on a blog. My argument is that you probably won’t have active conversations on every post, it just isn’t possible, but the ones that are more active are more likely to show up in search engines.
I have seen this numerous times. So assuming you can’t have 100 pages indexing on the top of Google for their respective searches you need to balance that with what search words you are targeting, which ones convert the best, how competitive they are and what kind of customer you are looking to land.
I recommend creating activity around those searches and their respective landing pages.
With my company I know that having activity on my blogs is really important for Google and the subsequent visitors. It also reinforces our message of having a meaningful online conversation as part of a company’s marketing strategy.
Other companies don’t really need to be as aggressive in terms of activity. Their searches aren’t that competitive and their prospects don’t need an active blog to be convinced of the need to purchase their product or service. They just need to get them in the door and convert them into a sale.
Which comes back around to my thoughts on products vs services and best in class vs bottom feeders.
There is a need and a market for both business models.
I didn’t quite follow the Oceanaire, etc examples since to me that is a best in class company focused on being a destination. They put their energy into being better than everyone else which creates buzz, referrals, etc. McDonald’s is a bottom feeder. I would argue in the current economic climate there may not be much room for companies in the middle.
Either be cheap ala Walmart or be the best ala Zappos. Walmart is much more scalable than Zappos since Zappos is about culture and Walmart is about price alone. Their culture and service is horrible and they can’t afford to invest in changing it since it would probably raise their prices. Culture is not unrelated to compensation.
So to some extent quality is not infinitely scalable since it requires time and money which is finite.
It’s tempting to draw analogies using McDonalds (quantity), family business (quality) and upscape chain restaurant (arguably both), but there’s an important difference between these businesses and the experience of the web: content online is mostly free.
However, the cost of producing content varies! Writing a great post once a week is about as expensive and time-consuming as writing mediocre posts every day. But readers don’t care how much it costs you to write it as long as they get it for free. Perhaps some people are willing to endure lots of poor quality work as long as there is plenty of it, but I believe the most interesting opportunities come from high quality work, even if it is not as frequent.
As far as terrific bankruptcy attorneys and fantastic liquor stores, they need advertising, not content. It’s the customers who need content???expert opinions on chapter 7 and chardonnay, respectively. Of course, any company can make itself more attractive by giving away free information. Blogging and content management is sharing expertise for free with the world, which means that you and your competitors can only compete on quality. Who cares about the guy with a hundred pieces of boring content that are all basically the same? Eventually, the search engines and the people will leave him bound for the person who has something interesting to say.
@robbyslaughter
Good points Robby. I agree that the cream definitely rises to the top. I maintain that for some companies simply being everywhere is a better marketing strategy than focusing on great cont
ent with lots of user activity. Look at Netflix, you can’t miss their ads. Or the Snuggie, it’s everywhere on cable TV. The content of their ads, website, etc don’t matter as much as their product or service. People just want to get their Snuggie or movies and not have to research or engage any more than needed.
Now I’m sure there are Snuggie and Netflix fans out there but the companies don’t need quality web content to make a sale. They just need the right product or service and then get it in front of as many people as possible. That’s lots of hooks with a little bait. That goes back to Chris point about calls to action and acquisition. Get them in the door, give them a clear call to action and make the sale. Afterwards use email marketing and other communication for repeat business.
My company however needs to focus on quality since we need fewer customers who pay us much more money than Netflix customers. Since they are making a bigger investment they will spend more time vetting our company and services. We also serve a smaller slice of the population. So it make sense for us to put fewer hooks with better bait in the water.
Bottomline point I’m trying to make is size up your audience, evaluate your resources and leverage them in the most effective way to market your products or services to that target audience. Business 101 I know but the Web gives us new tools to determine how we leverage our assets. With real time metrics which weren’t available until recently with almost any media we can really pinpoint what works and doesn’t work eliminating layers of waste.