I have just landed on your home page. You now have less than three seconds to hook me and get me to stay. What are you going to say to me?
I can’t tell you what it should be. Not without learning much more about your business and your customers. But I can tell you what it won’t be:
- It won’t be the year you were founded.
- It won’t be that award you just won.
- It also won’t be a statement of what you are selling (I already know what you sell, I just did a Google search for that service or product).
On the other hand, it could be something:
- I care about.
- That is clearly beneficial for me.
- That makes me think or question what I’m currently doing.
- That inspires me.
- That surprises me.
- That offers a solution to my problem.
- That promises something different and better than something I already have.
The simple version: good website content is all about the impact it makes on visitors.
With that in mind, now go and look at all the pages of content on your website. Built around your customers? Designed to make an immediate and lasting impression? Or built around describing what your business does?
Does your content reflect that B2B customers buy customer experience rather than your products and services?
A business-centric website makes life hard for your customers
Writing about your business is taking the easy option. You don’t have to think much about it. You don’t have to imagine yourself in your customers’ shoes. You don’t have to concern yourself with their problems and desires, how they want to be communicated with, or how they will go about discovering what they need to know.
Just lay out your wares across multiple pages and leave it to prospects to pick their way through. Let them sort out what’s relevant to them and where the value lies.
Focusing on the technicalities and detail of what you do also means you don’t have to worry about the beliefs, values and behaviours that are at the very core of your brand. The things that create your repeat customers and referrals, in other words.
A customer centric website makes life easy for your customers
Or you could be planning content based on what customers want to do, what they need to discover, and what will persuade them to act. This allows prospects to glide effortlessly through your content towards the action you desire.
The stories you tell could reveal an authentic picture of who you are. The real brand; not one cloaked in stock marketing words or bland phrases about how hard you work to understand what your customers need… blah,blah, yawn.
The more thought, effort (and even love) you put into planning and crafting your content, the less work your prospects will have to do on the road to becoming a customer. Surely, that’s what you want?
Break the mould
Breaking free of the business-centric mindset isn’t easy, which is why so few B2B companies seem to manage it. You are living and breathing your business every day. That’s bound to limit the content you create unless you can get a different perspective.
As an external resource I have no preconceptions and no pet passions. All I care about is that you connect successfully with your prospects and convert them to being customers through words and stories. I can look at everything objectively as a customer would. I will challenge everything you want to say by asking whether anybody outside of your business really cares.
Would a potential customer give a damn about the content on your website?
A CONTENT AUDIT will give you the answer
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