Google is collecting information. Google is collecting an awful lot of information. And Google is collecting an awful lot of information about me, about you and about everybody else.
We too
In marketing we like information too. Information about (potential) customers. Not only their contact details, but also their activities, the products they are interested in and a lot more.
But not everybody is happy with that. Not everybody is happy with what Google is doing. As you can see in this video.
Not too much
B2B marketeers have to take into account too that not everybody likes to give away information.
So do not ask all kind of details from customers that want to download information from your website. Don’t ask them to register if you want to give away something for free. And try as much as possible to limit the information you ask from them when you want them to subscribe to your newsletter.
What you can better do is make it optional for people to leave their details. Tell them you need some details to make more interesting information available to them. You will probably be surprised to see how many people are prepared to give you something extra if you return the favour.
Asking too much can scare your customers. They may abandon downloading your information or abandon subscribing to your newsletter. Leaving you with nothing at all.
Today Seth Godin writes on his blog about the Driveby culture and the enless search for wow. About the fact we are creating a culture of clickers, stumblers and jaded spectators who decide in the space of a moment whether to watch and participate or not. And whether we should be chasing those people who click and leave.
Not in B2B
Some time ago I wrote about the wow factor (see: The Reaction You Should Always Be Looking For). That your website (or your e-newsletter or whatever you present to your customers) should be something special. Something that grabs their attention. Something that blows them off their feet.
But in B2B (more than in B2C) this should of course only apply to people that have an interest in your products.
People that are randomly surfing the Internet and that end up on your website by accident are of no interest to you at all. So it is no problem if they decide in the split of a second to leave again and click on.
Therefore your website does not need to be 100% wow. It is no problem if people need to invest a little bit of effort to understand the merits of your products or if people need to click once or twice to get the full story.
But of course the essence of your message should be clear right from the start.
Visit Duration and Number of Pages
That is why the success of your website is not measured by the number of visitors only. You should also be measuring the time people spend on your site and the number of pages they are visiting.
If the average time people spend on your website and the number of pages they visit goes up, that is a good sign. The visitors are interested in what you have to offer them and they are prepared to spend some time to understand your message.
If time and number of pages goes down, you have to start worrying. Even if the number of visitors is not changing. Because in that case a lot of your visitors may well be those jaded spectators that Seth Godin is writing about.
Google has indexed billions of websites and many millions of webmasters are struggling to get their website in the top ten. On the first page of Google’s search results.
Two days ago I managed to get there. On page one. And not with some exotic search term. No sir. Searching for ‘Google Adwords’.
The Trick
There was not trick. I published my post Google Adwords – connect to the future. I opened Google Search. I typed “Google Adwords” and I hit the search button. And there my post was on page one. That’s it.
Okay, this is not really the whole story. I forgot to mention I also selected ‘Last Hour’ in the search options.
Sorry, but it feels so good to be on Google’s page one.
Really Amazing
What really is amazing about this experience is that Google was able to index my post only three minutes after I published it. Out of these billions of websites Google found the change on my website in less than 200 seconds.
The future ain’t what it used to be. And although a lot of people try to predict what the future will look like, I dare to say we have not the slightest idea.
It may take another year or two or more, but your online B2B marketing activities on the Internet will change.
The role of your website will change and you will really start communicating with your customers on-line on different social media channels.
Because you will be active on different communication platforms at the same time, you need to find a way to use and re-use your contents. And it better be an automated system if you want to have some time left for other activities.
Therefore finding a good content sharing system is one of the challenges you are facing the coming years.
