Hook audiences with engaging web content

It’s a scenario most marketers will be familiar with: you spend months helping to revamp your company’s website, yet what starts out as an exciting project ultimately becomes a burden. Things seem to have taken forever and so many people have dragged their heels that you can’t wait for the damn thing to go live so you can get on with something else. “By the end of it all, people are thinking, ‘thank God that it’s over’,” says Paul Hatcher, head of digital at Base One.

Hatcher’s words – which will resonate with many – perhaps help explain why so many businesses miss the bigger picture when it comes to website development. Elaborating, he says, “You have to see the creation of the initial website as just the beginning.” The flipside of this is that unless your website engages its audience – understands their wants, talks to them, interacts with them, entertains them – then all the time and resources that went into its initial creation will count for nothing.

The importance of engagement


One thing we can all agree on then: having engaging content on your website is a must. “Often people’s first meaningful encounter with a company is through its website,” Zoe Taylor, marketing manager with Mardev, says. “Poorly written or out of date content is an instant turn-off no matter how good the company behind it may be. In a competitive B2B world this can be costly as the user will go to the next company listed in their Google search.”

But what do we mean by engaging? All our marketers agreed that, in web content terms, engagement is about the here and now. It is current, interactive and very much of the moment. “Engagement is providing something relevant and of value that you can digest and interact with,” Hatcher says. Illustrating his point, Hatcher points out how there is “nothing worse than a news section with one item posted in the last year.” I’m sure we’d all agree with him, and yet the Internet is littered with organisations – many of which you would think might know better – that commit this exact sin.

But why? Two words: time and cost. Michael Gerard is vice president of research with the CMO Advisory Practice and Executive Advisory Group with IDC. He says that the best websites are those that create a genuine online community. “For people to go there and keep returning, it has to be engaging and have the latest content – and that requires a lot of work and resources.”

That’s the bad news. The good news is that techniques to engage your web audience are being developed all the time. The steps below offer an outline of how to make the most of them.

1. Be relevant

Relevance, of course, depends on context. Content that is relevant to some potential customers might not be relevant to others. Where they are in the buying cycle plays a key role in this. “Clearly, not all buyers are at the same stage,” says Matt Smith vice president, IDG Connect, a company which recently carried out some in-depth research on how content provided by vendors influences purchasing decisions.

IDG’s research identified five stages in the buying process, ranging from education and business case development through to evaluation and short-listing. “We found that buyers are looking for different types of content in different formats in each of those stages of the buying process,” says Smith.

Rolling off a few examples, Smith suggests techniques that offer straightforward information – such as white papers – might be used early in the buying cycle. “We found that documentation features prominently in the early stages, while in the second and third stages there is a reliance on video, broadcast and case studies,” he says.

Such sentiments are echoed by Stuart Wheldon, head of client services EMEA and Asia Pacific at Eloqua. Wheldon argues: “The way you communicate to [potential customers] changes as you move along the buying cycle.”

Being timely and relevant, he suggests, is key in order to grab attention given that there is so much noise out there in cyberspace.

Likewise, Will Schnabel, vice president of international markets with Silverpop, argues that web engagement is all about relevancy. “Otherwise it is falling on deaf ears,” he says.

2. Be responsive


Users of your website leave a fingerprint, which offers evidence of their viewing or downloading habits. This is invaluable for marketers, argues Wheldon, who says: “With today’s technology you can track the activity of your website visitors and, based on that, be more intelligent about how you engage those people and provide a better, more relevant experience.”

He continues: “I really like the idea of having an online dialogue with people. For instance, they can download a white paper – but in order to do that you ask them a couple of questions. Next time they come back to the website you ask them a couple more questions. You’re building this long-term relationship a bit at a time and – hopefully – slowly moving them along the buying cycle.”

Schnabel backs this up, saying: “It is vital that you learn how customers are interacting on your website, what they are downloading, what they are watching and so on. All that behavioural information can then be used for targeting content to provide information that is more relevant to them. Also, on the B2B side, it can help marketers decide when a customer has passed a certain threshold and is ready to be engaged for a sale.”

3. Be personal


Many marketers agree on the importance of communicating with the person, not the business. So when we get towards the end of the buying cycle, long, dry, white papers are likely to be inappropriate.

Videos or other interactive techniques that talk to the potential buyer and address their concerns directly are much more likely to engage.

Wheldon says: “Ultimately, buyers want to know how [the purchase] is going to benefit their business. They want to see real success stories about real people. Although it is a business that is buying the product, the website still has to sell to the individual. Indeed, what we are seeing more and more of in B2B especially – where the buying cycle is longer – is lots of photos of people and success stories that potential customers can relate to.”

The research Smith alluded to earlier backs this up and suggests that buyers are looking for confirmation via case studies and testimonials, for instance, and a chance to make meaningful comparisons.

Think peer to peer


All observers acknowledged the growing impact of social networking and peer-to-peer software – including techniques such as blogs, discussion forums and websites such as Facebook and Twitter – on customer attitudes.

“Peer-to-peer content and comment has gathered momentum and credibility when measured against traditional marketing communication methods,” says Taylor.

Such technology, while offering – arguably – the most compelling engagement techniques of all, is not without its risks.

As Taylor points out, there is a risk that companies can lose control over their messaging. She suggests many companies simply lack the resources required to ensure this form of engagement is effective.

In the research Smith and his colleagues undertook, they found that peer-to-peer or social network generated content was the most influential of all in terms of the buying process.

Indeed, these techniques featured in or influenced all stages of the buying cycle.

“Discussion forums, blogs, social networking – our results suggest that all were massively influential in the buying process,” he says.

Schnabel agrees, and suggests that, “in the B2B space, where the prospect cycle is quite long, you need these techniques to keep potential customers interested.”

He adds: “Techniques ranging from blogs through to Twitter enable businesses to drip feed information about their products and take a leadership position.”

Schnabel accepts that many businesses are still getting to grips with how to utilise such techniques but – like many exerts – suggests they simply aren’t going to go away. As such, we have no choice but to embrace them if we want to engage our potential customers.

“The fact is that more and more companies are using various tools to engage online, whether through blogs, online social networking sites and so on,” he argues.

“They are putting themselves in front of possible prospects in the process. Therefore, those that don’t start to engage effectively [through these techniques] will disappear from the radar.”

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