We see so many websites that read much like print ads or brochures: going on and on about the virtues of the company and its products or services. Phrases like “leading”, “most flexible”, “best-performing”, “cutting edge”, “best practices” and other such superlatives appear to elbow each other for more and better page space.
Not that there’s anything wrong with that …to an extent. After all, it’s your site; so you have every right – in fact, a responsibility – to present your firm and its offerings in their best possible light. And especially in those early days… if you don’t say nice things about yourself, who else is likely to?
But if that’s all your site is doing, you’re very likely disappointing your most cherished audience of potential purchasers of your products and/or services. So at least would say KnowledgeStorm and MarketingSherpa, in their landmark Connecting through Content joint study of over 4,000 technology marketers and buyers (from which study come the percentage data in the paragraphs below).
Your buyers want credible, problem/solution-centric education
Fortunately, you start with a leg up, because nearly 80% of technology buyers get at least 25% of their information from vendor-generated content (more than a third say they obtain the majority of needed information this way) …so there’s already a benefit-of-the-doubt grant of presumed credibility. You can build on that, of course, by having your site include:
- white papers …that aren’t thinly-disguised brochures or user guides for your product, but that treat the broader industry problem/solution context
- webinars and podcasts, with the same content caveat
- case studies that illuminate similar customers’ problems and their solution
- summaries of / pointers to analyst reports and other independent research
- summaries of talks given at industry conferences by your key execs
…in short, the kinds of things we’ve blogged about as conferring thought leadership, which of course has credibility as a prerequisite.
And be sure it’s educational: 85% of technology buyers rated the educational quality of Web material as “very” or “extremely” important to them. Good education starts with a problem, not an answer; and it tells prospects something they didn’t know …not just about your product, but about their business/industry and its relationship to technology. It’s also couched in their terminology, not your company/industry’s jargon. Far from just marking time before you can get to the real stuff, education builds familiarity with your solutions and helps prospects see the world through your prism …which, after all, is the same view that originally led you to develop your solution.
Sometimes an independent viewpoint can be very useful. Your Web marketing consultants can assess your site’s educational content and suggest improvements that will bring it closer to what your prospective buyers crave.
