Last week, we were all served up some Pi (or 3.14 day)! So what is your favorite kind of pie? I like pecan (or do you say pe-con?). Business is like a big pie as well. You want to get your piece, but there is always more than enough to share.
The funny thing is that I am generally too full at the end of a restaurant meal to order dessert. So most of the pie I consume is at home. Even so, it's rare that a full pie gets eaten at my house! So that made me wonder how a restaurant knows how many pies they will need each day before running out.
The first thing that happens when you get to a restaurant is you are guided to your table and handed a menu. Menus are generally organized into appetizers, meals, and desserts.
Could you imagine if the menu included articles about how each meal is prepared, where the ingredients were sourced from, and what cooking ware is used to prepare your meal?
T.M.I.
BACON (Building Authentic Connections Online Networking).
Your website is like a menu for visitors. It is generally categorized based on how your visitors want to eat. But all too often, websites try too hard to over-explain the options. That's what the wait staff is for. The wait staff serves as the primary interaction point between your customers and your business.
The one thing most businesses won't deny is that a website is a necessary tool in today's online B2b marketing world. When it comes to your website, what is the biggest difference between “meh” and success? Bring them some BACON!
The goal of your website should be to get your patrons to commence relationships and converse with your wait staff (salesperson).
Types Of Websites
There are three basic types of websites…
- The Brochure – just like it sounds it's a long-form advertisement
- The Store – is a place to buy products and services
- The Library – is meant to be a place where people can reference knowledge
Many websites try to be a combination of a couple or all three. The challenge becomes when a visitor reaches your website. You can the main purpose of your website to be immediately clear to them and you want them to know where to go when they land on your home page.
As business owners, we assume that visitors know what they want. But do they? To communicate to the largest audience we let the user self-segment and search for the info they are looking for. I suggest that you do everything you can to get a human-to-human conversation started.
What's The Daily Specials?
Your website visitors may come to your website with a goal, a problem, or a question.
If all they want is to get to know your business (products and services) it's the brochure they are looking for.
If they are looking to make a purchase, they may want to know the price and availability. That's when the store model (similar to Amazon) makes the most sense.
If they are researching their issues and possible solutions, they will be looking for your card catalog with the Dewey Decimal System (search box) and expect your website to act like ChatGPT (with detailed expert responses).
All too often, you will find small business websites that try to incorporate multiple modalities to reach the broadest audience. But sometimes, “If you make them choose, they get confused!”
“Have You Decided What You Want?”
When you make people find what they are looking for, you start to try their patience with every click. Most people will give you 8-10 seconds on a home page. And if it's not clear to them what they should do next, they leave. If they stay on your website, you will generally get 3 clicks, and 2 minutes or they will move on.
To increase opportunities, you have to create engagement with your website. You also want to make it easy for them to reach out to your sales team with questions that your content doesn't or can't answer.
If you ask what they are looking for first (decide), you can guide them to the right choice and extend their visit to your site.
This is why higher-end restaurants hand out a separate menu of desserts (cake, pie, ice cream) at the end of a meal. This simplifies the choices and can help to narrow down which type or flavor appeals to the customer.
Get Them To Ask Questions
Back to the dessert analogy, you can imagine the patron asking the wait staff, “Which is most popular?”, “What is the freshest?” “Can I get ice cream with my pie?” What happens when the wait staff is too busy or not paying attention? The patrons ask for the check and leave. So the main goal is to be as engaging as possible.
That's why your website has to give visitors a clear path to engage, and better yet, get them to engage with your humans.
In the next few posts, we will outline a system we use to get people to ask for the dessert menu if that's all they want. It also creates more engagement with your website, and leads them to strike up quality sales conversations!
Final Thoughts
All of this is why I have multiple websites. I have B2b-im.com that focuses on my main business. The BaconPodcast.com is, well, for my podcast. NotAboutU.com is where I post my books. BrianBasilico.com features me as a keynote and breakout speaker. BrianLives.info is about the products I use for my business and my clients where I do offer users deals and I do get a small affiliate fee. And there are others. It helps users only get the information they are looking for when researching each of those activities for their business.
And I am in the middle of a major redo of my main B2b-im.com. This website currently focuses on everything I do for clients: marketing strategy, websites, content creation, content marketing, Google Adwords, analytics, business pages, social media, S.E.O., marketing coaching, mastermind groups, and so much more. It's just too much.
I am focusing my new website on my current ideal clients and hoping it speaks to their needs and how we are the best choice to solve their marketing and sales issues. It's all about riding the gap between marketing and sales and helping them to use marketing to build new and stronger relationships between their sales team members and the perfect current, past, and prospective clients.
“As a child, my family's menu consisted of two choices: take it or leave it.”
– Buddy Hackett
Comment below and share your thoughts, ideas, or questions about your piece of the Pie! Is your menu focused or like an Old Country Buffet? Is it easy to search and get answers on your website or do you need to simplify your website? What do you feel are the advantages or disadvantages of having multiple websites for your business?
To learn more about this and other topics on B2b Sales & Marketing, visit our podcast website at The Bacon Podcast.
