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Everyone wants to grow their business, but not everyone has the time or patience to learn all the ins and outs of marketing, sales enablement, and making the most out of a CRM such as HubSpot. Join the Web Canopy Studio team, a HubSpot Diamond Partner Agency, as they chat about various topics all designed to help you grow your B2B business.
(00:00):
The majority of content that you find on a website is generally around that company's product or that company's services. And as a business, we think that's appropriate. We think that's the right kind of information to show because why else would someone come to our website? The issue with that is we're not actually solving problems inside of, of that content. And scanopo when we're thinking about how to make a website convert better, how to tell a product story or a services story, we have to focus on problems. So in today's episode, we're really evaluating problem, focused content over product focused content, and why that shift should really start to happen. My name is John Aikin. I'm the CEO of Web Canopy Studio. And this is the Website Conversion Show.
(00:50):
Hey, what's up everybody. I appreciate you guys tuning in today. I just got back from vacation been driving. I feel like all over the country, which isn't necessarily the case, but when you've got four kiddos in the back, things can get a little bit intense sometimes. And one, we actually one of my friends told me about this game that they play with their kids called the rainbow car game. And maybe it's called something else, but like everybody picks a color to start with, you have to work through the colors of the rainbow and I, the different cars that you see. So red, you know, red truck, I see a an orange semi and things like that. My whole family is extremely competitive. And so when we got all the way down, you know, it ends with violet purple. We're driving through like the middle of nowhere in Indiana.
(01:40):
And there's no vehicles for miles. I feel like there's like we pass an occasional junk yard, right? There's just, we're in the county roads. And of course, all six of us, my wife included, like we're all on purple at the same time. And there's one purple truck on the side of the road. And all six of USS scream at the exact same time purple truck. And it turns into, you would think that we hated each other because we were, it was just really intense. There was a lot of yelling, a lot of arguing over who gets credit for that, that purple truck. Anyway, like that's not really important to the topic of the, of the conversation today. I just thought I chair that cuz it was fresh on my, my, and coming back into into podcast after, you know, a week or so off is it's a little bit, it's a little bit difficult.
(02:31):
I gotta get my brain moving again. So I appreciate you guys bearing with me today. I'm, I'm really thinking a lot about the, the, the topics around content, your website. And the reason is I got a message today from, from a colleague and he was working through positioning of one of their software products and he sent me over a sample video to review. It was about 13 minutes long and he said, John, I think this is really good. I think I probably want to want to consolidate it down a little bit and I'd love for you to kinda gimme your feedback on what needs to happen. And so just some general questions, who's it going to like, who's gonna be viewing this content and so on. And so he gave me a background that it's, it's just gonna be a video that lives on the website.
(03:21):
First time visitors coming to their website are gonna review this software. And I said, okay. So I watched the video and it ends up being just a how to, or like a demo of the software and all the features that it includes. And I'm thinking, okay, interesting. I thought the software looked pretty cool. I thought that was a pretty neat thing to see. But as I was watching more and more of it, I started to put myself in the shoes of I'm their target customer. I have no idea, no idea who this company is. I have zero background about this company and I come to their website and I see this video and it starts playing or I press play. And it's just walking me through their software as a marketer of a software company. That tends to be the way that we think that tends to be the way that we say, oh, that's the kind of content we need to need to produce.
(04:16):
We need to show people how cool our product is. We need to show how this product actually works. But in reality, that visitor coming to the website to see that content is so lost, they're not gonna be interested because think about the people that come to your website today. Most of them are busy people. Most of them are hitting a website quickly. They don't have a lot of time. They're not there to just like consume content for the most part. And you just show them bottom of funnel, kind of content. Here's how to use our product. You're not really capturing any, any imaginations or any attention there. So the issue that I had with the, with the video is the video was great. I thought it looked great. I thought it worked really well, but that video is product focused content. It's very bottom of funnel.
(05:01):
If I was at a decision stage of whether or not I wanted to purchase this software, I would definitely consider it because I thought the software was cool. The problem is that's only gonna be like a fraction of a percent of the people that hit their website. So the, the, the video itself was not presented in, in the right context to the right audience in that situation. So what was the issue you, what has to happen and what are the things that we need to talk differently about? Well, we have to shift the way that we do marketing. We have to shift the way that we think about content for our company. Especially if we're something that's technically a little bit newer, that's not necessarily existing on the market. We cannot talk about our product guys. Just not, it's not good marketing. It's not good energy to produce information about your product.
(05:49):
And I know that feels so counter to everything that you've probably been doing or that you've heard other people say is like, you gotta talk about all these things with the, with what you guys are selling and, and the product we need cut sheets, we need all this information, but the problem is nobody cares if they do not already know who you are, apple can produce amazing content about their product and the features and, and everything that there is to know about the product. The intricacy is the technology behind it, the benefits of, of what's inside and why you should switch to the new iPhone instead of your current iPhone. And it makes sense to all of us because the majority of us are using a product of theirs, or we're very familiar with their product, but it is if it, if it was a different company who had no idea, like clients have no idea who this company is talking about, those benefits and the, the intricacies and, and the product.
(06:44):
So the product systems inside of there is not beneficial to that audience. The reason is because we haven't engaged their problem. Therefore they are not, they are not tied to what it is that we are, we are producing. They are tied to the benefits of why this product is existing in the first place. So if we really, really want to talk about how we can be beneficial to different kinds of, of, of prospects that come to your website, especially if they are net new content, net, new people coming to your website, we have to focus on their specific problems. We have to focus on their biggest issues that they have and, and the kinds of things that they are seeking when they would hit your website. Why are they looking for something anyway? Why are they looking for something that would be beneficial to them?
(07:37):
I, if it, we're talking all about the, the problems we can shift to that kind of a con context with what we're discussing, whether it's in videos, it's in your copy on the website, it's in your ads, it's in your blogs, you're highlighting the issues that these people have so that when they come to your website within just seconds or within just seconds of seeing your ads or within just seconds of watching a video, they immediately immediately say, Ooh, I have that problem. Or, Ooh, I haven't thought about how I could fix that yet. You're capturing their attention and you're giving them a reason to stay and engage. Okay. And that's what we want to continue to build on. That's why thinking about problem focused content is so important. So back to the example of my friend who sent over the video of, of one of their products that was talking about the features and the benefits, I said, you know what?
(08:26):
This is valuable. This is good for a portion of, of your market. Unfortunately, it's a very small portion of your market, and you're not doing a favor to all of the other people who are, who are going to be potentially seeing this video. So if I were looking at redoing this video, that's gonna sit on like the homepage big and bold, right? At the top of the page, I'm going to change that content to being problem focused over product focused. And I'm not even gonna talk about the product until the very end. And the way I would do that is like, you could even go as cheesy as putting on your, your late night info, commercial hat, right. And being like, okay, you're sitting it's two in the morning and you see the ads BBA come up on the commercials. And they're like, do you have sciatica?
(09:14):
Do you all these back problems? Obviously you don't want to be super cheesy, but that works very, very well with the audience that it's intended to hit because you're calling out their problems first. So if I'm redoing this video for, for this particular person, the first thing that I would do is I would get on their level. And I would talk about the, of problems that they have. I would walk through. Hey, totally understand. You're in a situation where you probably are dealing with this kind of issue. This probably describes how, how you're, you're trying to handle it, but it's not working. This is how that's making you feel. And here are some other issues that pop up as a result of not having a solution for this original issue. And so, as you go through these problems, that person who's watching that video is immediately gonna be like in the back of their mind.
(10:02):
Yes, actually, that, that is an issue. Like these are things that I would need to have solved. Or yes, you're describing me precisely to a T. So now what you've done is you, you have captured their attention. And so you, you just acknowledging the problems in most cases is enough to get people to stay on your website or to stay on the content that you're giving to them. And that's why, when you're looking at problem focused content, it works so much better for getting clients to engage, getting clients, to stay with you. We talked about building brand awareness in the past. This is one best ways to build brand awareness. It's, it's about tying in their problems and how they can solve those. So, first thing I'm gonna do in that video is, or in the content is I'm gonna talk about problem focused content.
(10:48):
First, I'm gonna talk about the problems that they have. The second thing I'm going to do is I'm gonna walk them through step by step, how they need to solve those problems. What are the things that they could do to fix those problems? And I'm just gonna give them free advice for how they should think about fixing those problems. Okay. I'm gonna say here's the issues you have totally acknowledge it. Totally understand it. I know that sucks. I know that hurts. Here are the ways that you need, here are the things that you could do to solve that problem, or to solve those problems. Step one, you gotta think about this step two, you need to do something with this step three, you have to have a solution for this. And you're gonna list out what those are. And they're gonna acknowledge that. They're gonna love that.
(11:28):
They're gonna take notes on what it is that you're sharing, cuz it is helpful. And they're gonna say, I've thought about it, but I've never actually done it or I've tried it, but it's not working. So now that we've acknowledged a problem, we've given them a step by step process for how to solve that problem. The last thing that you can do in a problem focused content mindset is to say, look, I've shown you all of this. I've shown you the, I acknowledge these problems. These are what we're dealing with. This is what you need to solve. I get it. I've given you a step by step thing, process, plan, whatever you want to call it for you to solve it for you to go and do this and implement this on your own. And the last portion of what it is that we're talking about here, I would say, so you're kind of at a crossroads.
(12:12):
Now, do you feel like you have enough to just kind of go and, and, and solve that problem with the steps that I've given you or would you like some help? Because if you want some help, we actually have a software. We actually have a platform that solves a lot of that for you that will completely, you know, white glove service take care of this issue for you. And so in that situation, then you go in and talk about the actual product or how it solves those problems or, or you're giving a pitch. And so that kind of three part process for building problem focused content over product focused content is how you're gonna get considerably larger numbers of people to stay on your website, to stay gauge in your marketing. We've talked about that as how to book more demos on a previous session as well.
(13:00):
It's that same kind of concept, but it can be replicated in a lot of different ways. It's one of the biggest steps that we look at when we're wire framing homepages on companies, websites, because in general, most companies are talking about pie in the sky stuff. They're not really rooting it in any kind of real data. And they're giving product focused attention. They're giving, they're giving content away. That is nothing to do with the problems that they're solving. They're just talking about the features and the benefits and how long they've been in business and all of that kind of access. And it works to an and only, but only to a small portion of that market. And I hope that makes sense. The last thing I want to wanna add here we've, we've, we've done a lot of surveys with clients. We, you know, we've got a, a ton of, of people that we've worked with over the years.
(13:50):
We have a ton of people that subscribe to our, our email lists. And we're just, we're, we're, we've been building our audience for quite some time and we do surveys occasionally. And we recently did a survey to ask the people who are not our clients, but are on our mailing list on a scale of one to 10, how they feel about how well they, their or website and their marketing tells the story of the problems inside of, of what they're solving and overwhelmingly. The majority of people said that they do a very poor job. 60% of our responses came back at four or less on a scale of one to 10 for how well they solve problem and focused content. So I think it's an issue that we have to really address and we have to address it head on because if we just sit about and think about products all the time and services and, and how what we sell is the best thing ever.
(14:51):
We're not actually solving the problems of our, of our visitors and they're not actually gonna stick around. So I hope that's helpful, guys. I think that's it. That's everything that I have today. Just a reminder to please go and check out webcanopystudio.com/assessment and take your website conversion assessment. It's a, it is a great questionnaire. It's about 30 questions long. We've got six different categories, five questions in each category, and you're going to evaluate how well you feel your website is performing in these individual steps. As a result, you get a score and a report that gets sent back to you. That includes all kinds of things with like checklists and howtos and, and situational elements that you can start to implement on your own to fix those individual components of the website conversion framework. I think that's it. Let me know if you have any questions, we'll catch you next time. Bye. Bye.