I recently had a terrible client experience, not because I was fired (I was), but because of the way the whole situation was handled.
Why should you care? Because it provided an excellent example of what NOT to do when creating a new website or updating an existing website. I’m going to explain why the moves they’re making are the wrong moves, and what you should do instead.
Let me set the scene…
I was engaged by a client to write the content for a new website.
I brought in a colleague who does excellent work to design and develop the website for the client.
Before submitting my proposal, I asked the client if they had a brand guide. They said yes, so I went ahead and sent them a proposal based only on content creation rather than brand strategy.
Only after they had accepted the proposal did they send me a “brand guide” that was nothing more than a mood board they had put together using AI.
Note to self: Before moving past the brand guide, verify the client actually has a brand guide.
Here’s the thing about my work. I can’t write anything for you without a brand guide.
If I don’t have guidelines for your brand voice, I don’t know what’s going to resonate with your ideal client.
It’s like shooting in the dark and hoping to hit something without knowing if you’re even facing the right direction.
Creating content for the sake of creating content is a waste of everyone’s time. That’s why I require a brand guide first.
But I made the mistake of taking the client’s word for it and submitting the proposal without first seeing the brand guide. That’s on me. Lesson learned.
So I ate it. I spent an hour and a half interviewing them about their brand and their ideal clients.
The web designer and brand strategist I brought in had her own branding questions for the client, which they went through in a separate meeting.
Then we got to work.
We both spent hours trying to put together something that would serve this client, only to have them come back with a “content strategy” for their website that was so generic it could only be called AI slop.
It also called for way more pages than either of us had accounted for when we sent them our proposals.
The document was sent with no explanation as to where it had come from or why they were giving a garbage “strategy” to the actual marketing strategists they had hired.
But we were committed to doing the best we could for our client. So we met with them to try to figure out what was going on, then met again just the two of us to put our heads together and try to come up with a site map that fit their needs without blowing their budget.
Then we got this email, not from the client, but from someone else she had hired to implement their CRM after they had already engaged us:
Thank you for the site map proposal. We’ve reviewed it and made some changes based on keyword research we ran in SEMrush. Since driving search traffic is the primary job of this site, we let the keyword data guide the structure.
Two updates on scope. First, we’ve decided to build the site ourselves rather than go with WordPress. After looking closely at what we need it to do, we don’t believe WordPress gives us the flexibility we’re after, so development will be handled in-house.
Second, the SEMrush research gave us a clear enough picture of the keywords and topics we need to cover that we’re going to draft the content in-house as well.
I had already put together brand voice guidelines for the client, but my colleague reached out asking if they wanted her to continue with the visual brand guide they had already started working on.
Again, the client didn’t bother to respond. Instead, the CRM person replied with:
Let’s pause that for now. Once we have a draft done of the site, we will let you know how to proceed on that.
Here’s what’s wrong with that approach:
Table of Contents
- Why You Need a WordPress Website
- Communication Is Essential
- SEO Is So Much More Than Keywords
- Don’t Use An AI Logo
- The Right Way To Approach A New Website
Why You Need a WordPress Website
I get no financial compensation to talk WordPress up. It’s just the best option, except maybe for an ecommerce website. Since my ex-client is not an ecommerce business, there’s no reason for them not to use WordPress.
While website hosts like Wix and Squarespace like to talk up that they’re easier to use than WordPress, there’s a big caveat. Read the find print on their terms of service and you’ll realize you don’t own any of the content you put on their websites.
To my knowledge, WordPress is the only platform that doesn’t require you to sell your soul content in their terms of service.
WordPress is also the best option for custom websites because, while there are WordPress templates you can buy, it’s also incredibly easy for people who know what they’re doing to build whatever you want in WordPress and connect it to any CRM.
The fact that this CRM person wouldn’t even meet with the website team so they could go over all the bells and whistles in WordPress shows, not only does that person not know what they’re doing, but they’re not even interested in learning.
Unlike most marketers, they were never interested in working as a team. They were only ever interested in shoving us out of the project and adding as much to their bill as possible, and it’s to the client’s detriment.
This leads me to my next point.
Communication Is Essential
Once I started working on this project with the web designer and graphic brand strategist, one of the first things I did was set up a Google Drive folder for the client and give the graphic designer and brand strategist access to the folder so we could easily share information and compare notes.
We had meetings to discuss the project and strategies that would best serve the client.
Then we were fired by someone we had only met once and with whom we had no relationship. They hadn’t hired us, so how did they get the authority to fire us?
Here are some alternative courses of action that would not have left me fuming:
One: For the client to reach out directly and say, “Thank you for the work you have done so far, but we have decided to go in a different direction and will be moving forward with another vendor.”
Two: For the client to send us an email introduction along the lines of, “This is Voldemort. He’s our CRM strategist, and as such, should be included in your conversations on strategy for the firm, including how to integrate a new CRM into our lead generation strategy. I look forward to seeing what you come up with together.”
But Voldemort didn’t bother to reach out and offer to work on a strategy together and see where we could find common ground. He just slapped something together (probably using AI) without even asking about the branding work we had already done for the client, and that does not speak well of his abilities.
Which leads me to my next point…
SEO Is So Much More Than Keywords
It’s not a bad idea to do some keyword research when figuring out your site map, but that’s just one piece of the SEO puzzle.
Don’t forget that you’re not building a website for robots (or at least not just for robots). You’re building it to engage and convert the real, live people who make their way to your website wondering if you’re the right company for them.
A website designed with keywords but no brand strategy isn’t optimized.
Anyone can get more traffic.
But an effective SEO strategy should bring more of the right people to your website, not just anyone with a mild interest in your industry.
You can’t really understand who your ideal clients are, much less what they’re looking for and how they’re looking for it, without a brand strategy.
By contrast, consider a recent experience I had working on another project:
The client and I discussed his business, his history, and how he wanted to position his business going forward. Based on all that, we decided on a core message for his business.
Then I talked to some of his existing clients.
Not only were they thrilled with the work he had done for them, but when they talked about the benefits they experienced from his work, it was distinctly different from the core message we had come up with on our own.
That’s why I include those interviews in my brand strategy. Because no one knows your value better than the people who have already worked with you.
A marketer who doesn’t understand the value of that, especially as it applies to an SEO strategy, isn’t worth the fees they’re charging.
Don’t Use An AI Logo
In addition to “putting a pin in” the visual brand guide, the client decided not to move forward with any of the logos the graphic designer had provided, and instead use one regurgitated by AI.
I say regurgitated rather than generated, because AI isn’t capable of generating anything. It can only repurpose and regurgitate what it’s been fed.
The whole point of a logo is to provide a visual representation of your brand to help you stand out from the crowd.
You can’t have a visual representation of your brand without a brand guide.
You can’t stand out from the crowd with a visual that’s a composite of a bunch of other visuals.
Because AI is a composite of a bunch of human-generated content, it always lands on the most mediocre solution. You can’t convince anyone you’re the best in the business with a logo that says, “Meh.”
For all those reasons, you can’t trademark an AI-regurgitated logo, which means anyone else can slap it on their website and there’s nothing you can do about it.
The Right Way to Approach a New Website
Now that you know what not to do and why, let’s talk about what you should do when creating a new website. Here’s my approach:
Start with your brand guide. It’s so much more than a color palette and a mood board. A comprehensive brand guide includes:
- Your brand story: Where did you come from? How did you get here? And why should we care?
- Your ideal clients: 2-3 marketing personas
- The vibe: How do people feel around you? How do you want them to feel when working with you?
- Your voice: What words (other than keywords) should be used consistently throughout your content? What words should always be avoided? How are we going to use words to evoke the vibe you were aiming for in step 3?
- The color palette: What colors need to be used consistently in your marketing efforts to evoke the vibe you were aiming for in step 3?
- The fonts: Fonts have a surprising effect on how people feel about your brand, so choose carefully before deciding on how your text is going to visually represent your brand.
- Marketing Dos and Don’ts: Some guidelines on how to use the words, the colors, and the fonts to get the word out about your business. Where your audience tends to hand out and the places you should avoid because they’re not there. The types of content they like to consume and the topics related to your industry that most interest them.
Only once you have all of that put together should you even think of trying to create a website, much less a content strategy.
After the brand guide, comes the content strategy. This is where we think about the steps people take in getting to know you, everything from social media and SEO to your blog to your newsletter to your landing pages. What does that journey look like? How can you lead prospects through the each stage of that journey in a way that makes it feel natural, like they’re deciding for themselves rather than being led?
Part of this process includes identifying 3-4 content buckets: What are the 3-4 buckets all of your content should fit into to make sure it’s relevant to your brand? If you come up with an idea that does fit into a bucket, ditch it and move onto the next idea.
Then I start writing, checking in with the client early and often to make sure I have the voice right.
Once the content is finalized, the web designer works they’re magic, finally putting it all together in a beautiful package that, not only looks great, but will effectively attract and engage the right people to it, then do the heavy lifting of converting them into a client before they ever get on a sales call.
If that sounds like something you could use, let’s talk. If you want someone to slap something together for you because AI told them to, I know a guy who can help you with that.
