Getting the basics right makes a big difference. Caring about what you do and taking pride in your marketing efforts is a foundational element of marketing your business.
Even if your credentials are solid and you can point to results, phoning in your marketing materials is a sure-fire way to damage your credibility.
Case in point: the screenshot below, the home page of a consulting firm, is a credibility killer. Relying heavily on academic credentials to make a case for the value of their services, this firm blows it straight out of the gate when it comes to their Web presence.
The tagline is a disaster. The misspelling of “quantitative” stands in opposition to any credibility gained by touting the partners’ academic credentials from “top research universities;” and the 21st century spin is as generic as the ACME products in old Road Runner cartoons.
This isn’t a case where a professional needed to be brought in; though it’s a do-it-yourself job. It’s an example of a business that apparently finds little value in articulating how they create value for others and thinks little of attending to the basics, like proofreading critical copy.
(A side note: the dominating stock photography fails to support the content; it’s irrelevant to the copy and distracts with more questions than it answers. Is that the Guggenheim? Are those corporate guys cutting a deal in an arboretum?)
The resulting message is subtle but unnerving: we’re a generic firm that doesn’t care.
It’s a hard truth: if you don’t care enough to pay attention to the fundamentals of your efforts, your marketing and your business will likely, perhaps deservedly, fail.
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I agree. Misspellings are definitely a credibility killer and the use of ho-hum stock photography just sends the message “I don’t care to bother.”