How Many Times Have You Thought — I Have No Idea What This Company Does?
By Michael Tessler, Managing Partner
In my last blog about self-service, I discussed how B2B companies need to make it easier for customers to engage with their solutions. However, before you can enable customers to help themselves, you need to make them aware of your company and how your technology can help them solve problems. Surprisingly, this is a task many organizations struggle to articulate.
In this blog, I will take a step back and highlight one of the most significant challenges facing technology companies today: website messaging.
When I think about messaging, I start with two key questions:
- What problem are you solving?
- Who are you solving it for, or who is the buyer?
These questions may sound like an easy foundation for corporate messaging, but when I visit many companies’ websites, the answers are often unclear. A critical test for your business is to have a visitor look at your site and see if they could determine, in one minute, if you can solve their problem. I am shocked by how few companies get this right.
Your website and other owned digital properties, such as social media, are where you attract your top of the funnel leads. These early-stage prospects are doing research and starting to build their consideration set. Getting your website messaging wrong can confuse them and result in your company being left off their list. Unclear messaging will waste all the time and effort you made attracting the potential customer to your site. Even worse, it can also start to get the wrong prospects visiting your website and asking questions about problems you can’t solve, which is a waste of everyone’s time.
To avoid this dilemma, it’s essential to get feedback from prospective customers and third party participants, such as industry analysts, on whether your website communicates your message effectively and if it’s clear what your company does.
Once you have the qualitative data from these individuals, it’s essential to explore the quantitative data with website analytics tools. Look at your key website metrics to understand:
- Where are your viewers coming from? (ads, social, publications)
- Who are your viewers? (industry, demographics, age)
- How long are they staying on your website? (bounce rate, time on page)
- What are they clicking on? (click-through rate, page per session)
- Are they returning to learn more about your solutions? (returning vs. new users)
These metrics should indicate whether you have the correct visitors, if your message is clear, if your content is engaging, and if you’re helping them solve problems. Remember, more and more B2B customers will not engage with a salesperson until they are in the middle of the purchase decision. In fact, some studies show that 70 percent of buyers wait until after they have already defined their needs to engage sellers. Your online presence and messages are critical in that decision-making process.
Often websites also forget to tell the reader why they are in business. Buyers want to understand your motivation and the people behind the company. Don’t be afraid to express what makes your team unique and why you are on this mission. People buy from people. In this digital world, it’s critical to find ways to communicate this vision to prospective customers and connect with their needs.
If at any point you get stuck, focus on the fundamentals:
- How can you help your prospective customers?
- Why should they do business with you?
All the attractive graphics, jazzy slogans, and industry buzzwords will not help. A lousy web presence is like hiding the front door to your retail store and wondering why nobody is visiting. Messaging is critical when you pitch to your customers, but even more important on your website when it’s the front door to that pitch meeting.
Messaging is only one piece of your company’s website. You will need to also address your user’s buyer journey as the next step. Stay tuned for our tips on how to solve this.
