B2B Website - Marketing Interactions

Is your B2B website compelling or. . .

boring them at Hello?

Most sites are so similar in claims and value propositions that it's hard to tell one vendor from another without the logos.

Why not make your company's website into a strong marketing asset that drives demand and engagement? Focusing on your prospects' and customers' needs and preferences will do just that.

If that's not enough to convince you, a recent survey of 1,000 B2B buyers found that respondents across all buying stages agreed that the vendor's website was the top influence on buying decisions.

For over nine years, Ardath Albee has worked with clients to create compelling, highly differentiated websites. The most common problem she finds is that B2B website home pages tend to focus on the organization's achievements, media coverage and products/solutions, forgetting all about their prospect's needs. More and more of them are including customer-oriented benefit statements, but their websites still fall short in helping the prospect quickly understand how the company's claims will help them solve their problems.

As an example, let's take a common theme that every website claims: Increased productivity.

What is increased productivity in this context and how does it apply to me and my business?

Was the company instrumental to the customer in achieving that goal, or did their customer have a brilliant employee who drove their solution to gain that outcome?

How do your website visitors know that your company has the expertise to deliver more than just the product? Today's buyers want vendors with strategic ideas and expertise.

Let's face it, they can probably buy a similar product from a lot of different companies. Why should they buy it from you?

Your B2B complex-sale website needs to showcase more than airy statements that promise outcomes. It must tell the story of how your customers actually achieve those outcomes. In addition to showcasing your products, your expertise needs to shine through. After all, your expertise and how you use it is what differentiates your company from the competition.

Ask yourself the following:

Are your white papers and articles about your products? Or are they about key industry concepts that help your prospects understand why they need to change and why they should?

Are your features and benefits lists self-serving or really insightful? From whose persepective? (It should be your customers'.)

Do you share your expertise before the sale or only with existing customers?

How useful is your website to longer-term leads that may not yet be sales-ready? Is your website a nurturing, engaging experience or a brochure that touts your company's achievements?

How much do you learn from your website visitors? What are you doing with that information?

Websites should be an integrated tool in the marketing process. They should effectively garner mindshare from prospects who have the potential to become customers by keeping them interested through engaging and informative communications. To gain mindshare, your website should offer new content at least monthly.

With a strategic e-marketing strategy, website content will work in concert with email stories, themed newsletters, solution microsites and marketing events. Consistency is the rule. The experience your prospects and customers have with every interaction should build their engagement with your company.

Marketing Interactions can provide a website content assessment with strategic recommendations for how to tell a story that engages your prospects on every single web page. We can also help you create the content to drive that outcome. If you'd like to improve your website's contribution as a marketing asset, let's talk.

The blog posts below will expand how you think about marketing storytelling for B2B websites: