If you build it, will they come?
Eric Marjoram ??
I help complex B2B brands get clear about the problem they solve and why anyone should care.
The movie?Field of Dreams?centers around the idea that if he (Kevin Costner) ?builds a baseball field on his farm, 'they' will come. A huge gamble, considering he is to build it in the middle of his family's working cornfield and has no idea who 'they' are,*?or if they will come at all.
When most B2B brands are ready to rebuild our websites, we get stuck somewhere between the cornfield (the way we've always done it) and the baseball field**?(something completely different).?
But let’s be honest: most B2B brand websites are terrible and need to be bulldozed anyway. We make them all about us and how awesome we are. We lead with complex information in a complicated structure, like a corn maze without a map.***?We drone on and on about what we have and what we make, instead of what we make possible and for whom. The resulting vanity site resembles every other basic cornfield out there.
The reason your website is in the position it’s in is because you keep doing the same thing, season after season, and expecting different results.****?
Have you ever?been?to the center of a cornfield?
Why would you want to send your prospects there?*****
“That's my corn out there. You guys are guests in my corn.”
(the self-important content most B2B websites offer their visitors)
Your website should answer four questions for your prospects, in as little time as possible:
A great (translation: clear and effective) B2B website experience quickly educates prospects, creates interest, and generates leads—in that order.?
Let’s stop planting cornfields****** and start building something different. Something effective and less like a corn maze and more like a baseball field.
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Sláinte,???
Eric
* Thank God it wasn’t that Malachi kid from Children of the Corn
** Why not a soccer field??
***?All horror movies seem to start here
****?The actual definition of insanity
*****?Unless you're Stephen King?
******?Unless of course?you’ve got whiskey on the brain