B2B Web Strategy Blog – eMagine » Does your site provide too much stuff, but too little information?

Does your site provide too much stuff, but too little information?

February 25th, 2010 Posted by: Bill Gadless

Perhaps it’s because B2Bs are getting the message that they need substantial content in order to make their sites adequately visible to the search engines. Or maybe it’s just a feeling that “bigger is better.”

Whatever the reason, we’re noticing lately that some clients are throwing lots of content up on their sites, though perhaps not with sufficiently careful consideration of what each page of it will do for their visitors (if anything). We’ve started thinking of it as the “too much stuff, too little information” syndrome.

Also noting this trend – with some alarm – is Susan Fantle; in a recent post over on her B2BMarketingSmarts blog, she suggests that “to have value to the reader, content should include one or more of these types of useful information:

A better understanding of the causes of a specific business problem.
Some best practices for solving a specific business problem.
What peers or experts are saying about the problem.
Some kind of self-assessment of how the prospect’s company is handling a specific problem.
Industry advances being made to make solving the problem easier.”

Note that the overriding flavor is educational, not salesy …although there’s certainly no problem with putting a related sales story and/or offer at the end of each content piece.

Readers may want to review the hints in our post of a couple years ago, “Is your B2B website educating? …or simply boasting?” In addition, Susan offers four tips in her post that will help ensure that the content you’re offering has real value…

Provide content information that matches the specific needs of each pipeline lead. Here’s a great use for your nurturing emails: send a short survey to your pipeline asking them to identify their 3 biggest challenges; then target the next content you send or offer them (white paper, webinar, etc.) to the specific issues they identified.
Create content that has how-to takeaways that can be implemented without buying your product or service. Taking this tack demonstrates your thought leadership, and that you truly care about solving your prospect’s problem, whether or not it involves selling them your widget.
Offer a mix of some content that is available without registration and some that is not. The former helps position your company as a thought leader and exposes your content to a much broader audience; the latter, of course, explicitly feeds that leads-to-buyers funnel, which ultimately pays the bills.
Provide content that satisfies the focus of each decision-maker and influencer in prospect companies. Chances are, your product’s purchase will need to be signed off on by the prospect company’s CEO, CFO, at least one VP, and one or more technical analysts and/or users. Clearly, you put your company a leg up by having available content tailored for each of those roles.

As Susan concludes: “Content is not designed to directly sell products or services. It is designed to educate prospects on how their peers are handling similar challenges, and subtly edge them along toward choosing the marketing company’s product or service.”