By Jonathan D. Spiliotopoulos

A media "opportunity" hit my inbox recently, not specific to insurance, but applicable nonetheless. The journalist sending the query wants to write about making small-business websites better through interactive tools like online communities, polls, message boards, and more.

Here’s his pitch: More and more, a small business's website needs to embrace interactivity. I'm looking for tech experts and small-business owners who can speak to the benefits of online engagement via simple tools like polls and rating mechanisms to more complex options like online communities and message boards. What are the most affordable, attractive and effective interactive website tools for small businesses, and how can one use them to make their website better and their customers happier?

I certainly won’t be called to interview for the article since my reply outlined a strong disagreement with his thesis. I suggested few small businesses (even in the insurance industry) truly have a marketing strategy, let alone the ability to use sophisticated tools, especially in combination. They advertise because they suspect there's a connection between outbound advertising and inbound revenue, and they believe if they stop advertising, their revenues will dry up. They have websites because they think they’re necessary. But they don’t know for what. And, they almost never combine advertising, websites, and other tactical marketing elements to fulfill a strategic objective.

Small and mid-sized business owners aren’t wrong in believing ads and websites are valuable tools. They are. But tools are rarely useful things by themselves. Example: How many people can achieve the objective of cooking dinner without using multiple tools – or would even attempt to? Yet, when it comes to marketing, those same folks frequently spend money on tools and never give any thought to how to use them together – or why they should. It’s like a recipe, you have to have the right amounts of the right ingredients to make the perfect cake. Adding more complex tools to a dysfunctional mix only makes things more expensive and less effective.

Most insurance businesses – carriers, agencies, brokerages, underwriting firms, TPAs and the like included – have a fairly simple goal: make more money. They think mindfulness of this goal equals success. And, they think if they buy marketing and sales tools – from direct mail campaigns to organizational memberships, from print ads to websites – money will be made. That’s the logical equivalent of thinking that, if they buy a whisk, a frying pan, a potato masher, and an oven mitt, dinner will be made. It’s not the tools that make anything. It’s their employment. Why, then, to get back to our naïve reporter, do so many people believe poorly employed, tool-laden websites will make money?

Unless a website is literally selling products – like Amazon.com sells books – it won’t generate revenue. It might help save money, shorten sales cycles or make marketing easier. But it will not earn money by itself. What our friendly neighborhood reporter failed to consider is the negative business effect wrongly employed gadgets can create. In fact, most small and mid-sized business websites fail because they don’t do one simple thing: deliver a compelling message.

Websites need goals that are separate from, but related to, the company’s goal (make money). The goal of your website may be to deliver a message and compel prospects into the sales cycle. If you want to achieve your company’s goal, your message must be clear enough to persuade the prospect to talk to you. Only then will you be able to work at achieving your company goal (make money).

Will interactive tools on a website help, as our journalist friend surmises? No. Because they’re employed with no objective other than to impress the people who put them there, they only serve to make most websites needlessly complex and convoluted. (“We need to have flash!” “We need to have motion!”) In the fall to the bottom(line), most businesses employing these tools are thinking of themselves (“That’s cool!”), or trying to be every “impressive” thing to everyone. (“They’ll think that’s cool!”) They create websites expecting them to sell, to provide support, to conduct market polling, to mine data, to offer advice, to present news, to be a discussion forum, to show animation and video, and more. In the end, most sites have too many masters to serve. So, they serve none.

When their phones don't ring off the hook with hot prospects and cash-fisted buyers, those businesses are mystified. And, they inevitably ask: “Why don’t people buy from us?” "Why won't people work with us?" "How come nobody knows who we are?"

In the desire to be noticed, small and mid-sized businesses make a lot of noise. They do everything they can to be noticed and to cater to every audience. They pollute their websites with animated demos, video testimonials, press releases, articles, tickers, crawls, downloads, the kitchen sink, and advice on how to plumb it. They react to everything and achieve little.

The tendency is to do everything possible to say everything possible to as many people as possible in as many ways as possible for as long as possible. And, if you can’t hear them now; don’t worry. They’re thinking, right now, about how to raise their voices even louder so they’ll be heard over the confusing cacophony they created. But they’ll offer neither clear messages nor attractive inducements to enter into the sales process.

What small and mid-sized businesses really need to do is take it easy. Once they’ve mastered that, they can formulate messages, render them intelligibly and accessibly, use them to introduce prospects into the sales processes, then close sales the old-fashioned way: with dialogues and relationships.

Everything else is a misuse of perfectly good tools – and a terrible waste of opportunity.