Understanding your website communications goals has never been more important for the tech-sector SME. In broad terms, a technology B2B website aims to do one or more, of three things. Identify what you want to do and develop a content strategy that will help you realise your goals.
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On their journey from consumer to professional buyer, people change – a lot!
As a consumer buying just for yourself, you’re probably at your most vulnerable to emotion and impulse buying. And when buying for your family and friends, you tend to be less impulsive and a bit more cautious. But when you go to work and are tasked with buying something as a professional buyer for your business or organisation – you turn into a completely different person.
If you’re selling b2b (business to business) and creating content to connect with decision-makers in any industry, an experienced b2b copywriter knows that there is a big difference between writing for consumers and business buyers.
When I was a kid, everybody knew someone who added ‘fuel injection technician’ to their secondary school CV – as a joke. How we’d laugh at how ridiculous it was to call yourself something that sounded so ‘exotic’ but in fact was quite straightforward. People are still doing this today with their web content and they’re doing it intentionally. If you’re calling your case studies ‘customer master classes’ or your services page ‘deliverables defined’, you may well be alienating some very important people – your target audience.
The news that from April 21st, Google is going to penalise websites that are not mobile-friendly should focus the minds of website owners and their responsibility for mobile readers and consumers. And this applies to content too. While you may not be penalised for a lack of user-friendly content, mobile content is different from web content and this must be addressed. Make this date your target to sweep your existing mobile content and ask yourself, is this easy for a mobile user to read or even access? In the context of this upcoming change, today we’re looking at the best way to write mobile digital content.
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Do I need a whitepaper in 2015?
If you’re a tech sector company that sells hardware, software or services to B2B markets, a whitepaper is not a bad idea at all. Keep reading and find out when and why a whitepaper can help you sell more of your product or service in 2015.
If the mind of an industrial buyer was a room, I’d guess it would be organised, Spartan and there’d be a big checklist fixed on the wall with solid criteria outlined. These people don’t buy on emotions, whims or trends. And if you sell equipment or services to them, your sales and marketing material must reflect that.
Brace yourself. It’s not often you’ll hear a copywriter tell you this. But sometimes, you might just be better off preparing a marketing piece yourself. A case study is a fine example. If you are an owner-manager or a small SME, you know your customers very well. So well in fact, that you can list off all their project details in your head …with ease.
If you’re an SME, ‘message-definition’ is a bit like pre-season (marketing) training. It’s the hard work you put in on a windswept pitch in January that will get you results when the sun shines later in the year. Targeted ‘on-message’ marketing can only be achieved by thoroughly understanding your customers’ problems. And if you’re currently struggling with that very issue, read these four steps to message definition and find out what your problem is. Because their problem is your problem!
‘Never argue with a fool because…’… and you know the rest. You’ll find fools online and offline. Quality, informed content, whether written by someone like me or whether you do it yourself, puts you on a different level to the guy who wandered down to the content farm and bought an SEO pig-in-a-poke. While the search engines’ appetite for original content continues to grow, the cheap stuff, fattened on keywords and cliché still roam the web. Using content farms will often prove to be a foolish idea and if you don’t value the content you put on your site, you can be pretty sure that soon, no-one else will eithe
2014 is not the year of the blog! This time of year, it’s tempting to look into the next big thing and force it into your marketing mix. But for the average Irish SME, it might be best to revisit the things we have done before and see how we can make them work better for us in 2014. And that brings us to the humble blog. An effective brand builder and a practical SEO lead generator, you can be sure the right content for your blog will get you results. So what do people actually want to read about and not read about? Here are six things to keep in mind as you build content for your blog.
- Help – they want help! If you provide a complicated product or service, your consumers or even enthusiasts want to know how you can help them out of a tight spot by giving them a little information or guidance. If you’re worried about giving too much away for free – don’t…your helpfulness and generosity will hopefully not be forgotten by these prospective customers in the future.
- Insight – you know your industry and the hot issues only too well. Don’t be afraid to share your knowledge and experience.
- Myth busting – this is similar but very relevant in Ireland. Bad news continues to travel at light speed here over the past few years. If you can tackle misconceptions head-on about your industry which will be helpful to prospective buyers – do it.
- News? – I would say most people get their news from longstanding trusted news websites and you must ask yourself – is there something I can add? And if there is, great…but if you’re simply repeating news stories already found on other specialist news sites, it’s a waste of your time and space.
- How great you are – we like it to be known how successful we are and how good things are going but when we keep going on about it, others don’t really appreciate it. Over Christmas, you may have met up with an old acquaintance who told you how brilliant and successful they are at everything. I’m betting you didn’t hang around any longer than you had to! So perhaps instead of saying …we won a €3m contract, perhaps focus on why you won it and build your blog around that.
- The hard sell – even when people are expecting this technique (car dealerships/electronics stores etc) it can be tough going. So if you think your blog is another chance to list off your product benefits, please think again as you may be making people move on faster than they have to.
So this year, before turning to new tactics, think about your existing business development tools and how you can perfect them. Your blog should exude confidence, calmness and generosity. Happy New Year!