7 Deadly Sins of B2B Websites with Sam Dunning, Founder at Breaking B2B
In this episode of Exploring Growth, host Lee Murray talks with Sam Dunning, founder of Breaking B2B. They discuss the importance of customer research, clear messaging, and user-friendly design while avoiding common mistakes like jargon and hidden pricing. Sam shares actionable insights to create websites that attract and convert customers.
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Sam Dunning
00:00:00
You'll see so many websites like SaaS, websites, technology websites would be to be especially guilty of this. Like you go onto a SaaS website and it will say something like, we are the number one all in one turbocharge revenue generating platform for supercharge cash generating wizardry. And it's like, I have no idea what you guys actually do. I have no idea what you're going to try and sell me. Or the problem you solve. And I'm totally confused.
Lee Murray
00:00:34
I've talked a lot about the buyer's journey here on the podcast, and how important it is to B2B growth. One big piece of the journey for B2B companies is their website. It's unmistakable what kind of experience your buyers have on your website is very important. Whether they'll stick or they'll move on. today my guest is Sam Dunning, founder at a company called breaking B2B, and we're going to dive into how companies should be using their websites for growth. Welcome to the show, Sam.
Sam Dunning
00:01:06
Hey, Lee. Thanks for having me on. Looking forward to the chat.
Lee Murray
00:01:10
Yeah. It's exciting. and, So what? Why don't we do this? start off by just kind of telling us a little bit about yourself and your company.
Sam Dunning
00:01:19
Yeah, yeah. Sure thing. So, Sam Dunning, I'm founder of a company called breaking B2B. Essentially, we work with usually slightly frustrated B2B tech service or SaaS companies that in short, they might be a little tired of seeing competitors above them in organic search results on Google. Every time their prospects are searching for what they do, problems they fix, or maybe comparing them to different solutions meaning they're missing out on mindshare, traffic or inbound leads. Or we look at their website. Maybe they're already they already have a bit of an inbound machine. So they're doing some SEO, some paid media, maybe some outbound, some events. They're sending folks to the website, but the website is failing to resonate, convert or qualify, build trust, and actually turn all that traffic into a steady stream of the right kind of inbound demos or sales calls.
Sam Dunning
00:02:09
So that's what we usually fix with a bit of an unusual approach.
Lee Murray
00:02:14
I love it, and that's the part I want to talk to you about today. you know, the work that I do is Signal Media. We talk to our clients a lot about buyer's journey, and we have an acronym anchor A and C, RR, which is awareness, nurture, conversion, referrals and retention. And so if we looked at that as kind of the entire buyer's journey, and you have your sales process kind of built in there as well, the website is central to all of those phases, right? If you want someone to refer you, they're going to send them to someone. They're going to look at your website, right. For retention. You have to have them come back to your website. and, and of course all the other parts of the marketing funnel. it's important to so I think this is an important conversation for companies who are have the head space to think about making, you know, productive changes to their site.
Lee Murray
00:03:03
So let's jump into some of the areas where you you have seen companies go wrong with their website. Lead us through the seven deadly sins of B2B websites.
Sam Dunning
00:03:13
Yeah, looking forward to it. And I love that you said productive changes as well, because I feel so many B2B companies redesign their website for the sake of it. And we all know no one really enjoys a website redesign. It's a lot of stress, pain, aggravation. So if we can hopefully help some of the founders or marketers tuning in, maybe not necessarily a whole whole report or redesign, but hopefully make some, like we say, proactive differences that can move the needle, whether that's resonating, building, trust, converting. So yeah, let's dive into it. First and foremost. Probably one of my biggest frustrations with not just websites, but B2B marketing in general is totally neglecting customer research. Such. And that's number one. And the reason that that's probably the biggest killer of websites from everything from design, content, messaging and everything else.
Sam Dunning
00:04:05
Reason being is we don't need to build the website for ourself. We've probably got a whole warehouse full of our goods, endless supply of our software and the suppliers of our service. We don't need to please ourselves or our exec team. We need to resonate with our dream clients, our dream prospects, the folks that hopefully have the expensive problem we solve and are willing to part ways with their cash. So one of the best ways to fix that issue of neglecting custom research. Because if you don't do it, the chances are that there might be messaging on your website that doesn't resonate. There might not be the right content. The design might not hit right. So a lot of the advice I give is is quite simple. A lot of the questions I advise is quite straightforward, but sometimes that's the best way.
Lee Murray
00:04:51
So that's right. Yeah.
Sam Dunning
00:04:53
My my usual recommendation is if you can, if you've got access to this ideally for customer research, you want to interview about seven clients. But in an ideal world and I appreciate this is not always available for perhaps newer businesses or smaller companies.
Sam Dunning
00:05:10
Ideally their recently one clients recent being recent recently one they're not biased to you. If you pick customers who have been with you for years, they'll be like, oh yeah, these great. I've been working for him for so long that he can't do anything wrong. And it's like when you try to dig deep and get that really inside Intel, they might not give it to you just because they love you, basically because they've been working with you for ages. So ideally recently one, because they're not they're sold, but they not have a huge bias. And then asking them kind of straightforward questions like, if we're linking it to the website, we might start with a bit general question, like what was the main problem that you had when you came to us? what was the impact that the problem had on your life, your business, getting certain jobs done? what was the tipping point? That where it got so frustrating that maybe it was costing you time, maybe it was costing you staff, maybe it's costing revenue, maybe it's just generally very annoying.
Sam Dunning
00:06:07
Or you're endlessly moving data from Excel to Google Suite because it was you needed a new CRM. Whatever it is, let's link to your software. You want to ask them things like what's most important to you when viewing a website in our sector, that's a really open, useful question. And they might say things like clearly understanding what you do, checking out pricing, checking out a demo, and that kind of stuff that's useful. Intel, if you've got a website already. One I love to ask is what do you feel is missing on our current website? And again, you'll get some gold dust here, like they might say straight away on your home page. Like I didn't understand this or on your pricing page, you didn't have pricing or on your demo page. I couldn't really play out the tool or whatever. Also another another one that's good for general B2B marketing is things like what made you decide to work with us as opposed to other companies? And there's a few others like you'll probably think of questions while I'm saying these, and the others like, what were the 2 or 3 other vendors that you're evaluating whilst you were making that process? There's plenty of more you could ask, but those are quite impactful.
Sam Dunning
00:07:12
And the reason we want to do this is it's going to inform our website messaging. It's going to inform some of the content and some of the headlines that we craft out. And what you want to do is if you do have access to seven recently one customers. If not, then maybe you can pick out seven prospects that fit your ideal client profile. Or maybe you have to go to slightly older clients once you've done it. Ideally, those conversations are recorded on zoom or teams or anything similar, and you pull the transcript. And what you want to look for is patterns. We want to look for patterns, the most common responses to each question because when you do 3 or 4 interviews, you'll start noticing patterns and the responses like what's missing on our current website or your pricing page is unclear, or it doesn't have pricing. Or I was hoping to see more under the bonnet of your product or your contact form had 100 fields. It was annoying. whatever it may be. So make a list of all those juicy Intel and the other thing you want to look out for when you're reviewing those responses is the way that prospects to describe certain things.
Sam Dunning
00:08:13
So if they're talking about a specific problem like, I don't know the reason, the problem that led to me reaching out to you specifically was I was getting tired of moving data from Excel to this other piece of software. And it's like, okay, everyone's saying they're getting tired of this. Maybe that's something we could use on our home page. So basically plucking all these golden nuggets and then pulling them through to wherever you want to pull them through to a Google Sheet, a Google Doc, whatever. Yeah, that that's the first one.
Lee Murray
00:08:41
I love that. Yeah. So yeah. So so what I would add to that is just kind of riffing off what you're saying is, surveying your recently lost, prospects to those accounts that didn't close. Sometimes you learn, you know, even more different, like a different light about what they thought about you. if you can get them to talk, I think it's just as valuable.
Sam Dunning
00:09:07
Love it. Oh, definitely. Definitely. And then even, like, getting into, like, why they chose another agency or team or software provider or whatever it may be.
Sam Dunning
00:09:15
And yeah, getting those juicy insights for sure. For sure. Yep.
Lee Murray
00:09:19
So that's good okay. That's one I like it. Get some get some feedback. Yeah that's a huge that's a huge one.
Sam Dunning
00:09:25
The only time I'd say this isn't relevant is if perhaps you're a bootstrapped founder. It's your first website and you need to you need to throw out an MVP website. Minimum viable product website. Quick. In which case, I'd say ignore me. You don't have time for this.
Lee Murray
00:09:39
Yeah.
Sam Dunning
00:09:40
Get get a straightforward website rolling. I'd rather you focus on getting some revenue on the table and checking people if you want your product. but we're pretending that's not the case. So step two. Step two is along the similar lines. So it's basically designing for ego. Like you'll you'll see so many websites like SaaS websites technology websites would be to be especially guilty of this. Like you go onto a SaaS website and it'll say something like.
Sam Dunning
00:10:08
We are the number one all in one turbocharge revenue generating platform for Supercharge cash generating wizardry.
Sam Dunning
00:10:17
And it's like.
Sam Dunning
00:10:18
I have no idea.
Sam Dunning
00:10:20
What you guys actually do. I have no idea what you're.
Sam Dunning
00:10:24
Going to try and sell.
Sam Dunning
00:10:25
Me. Or the problem you solve. And I'm totally confused. And then I've scrolled down your website a bit more and you've talked about recent awards one or recent funding gained, or maybe you've got some nice G2 badges for number one in a, in a category that I'm not really sure what means. and what you can tell has happened is either the investors have got involved, so they've kind of pushed like, oh, we need to get an AI buzzword in our headline. Or they've kind of thought, if we chuck in a load of awards, a load of designs, a load of logos, one, then that's gonna kind of make us sound good. And if we just talk about how great we are or how great our product is, then everyone else is bound to believe the same. When when we think about it, we're all quite selfish, especially when it comes to our buying habits.
Sam Dunning
00:11:07
Like, we we've we're quite time short. Like if we're looking evaluating vendors for software or services, we're not going to faff around, mess around on their home page for 20s to try and understand what they do. We want to probably compare 3 or 4 options quickly, go on their home page, and hopefully clearly understand exactly what they do, exactly how they can help us, why we should consider them so their differentiator. And then if they check all those boxes, then we'll be encouraged to flick through to other pages like results, pricing, demo and the rest of it. So putting your ego to one side and hopefully leveraging that, that custom research that we've gained in step one?
Lee Murray
00:11:43
Yeah. Ego is a big one, and I see it a lot where, you know, companies will I just see it a lot with leadership where they'll get an award or they'll have a PR team go out and do something and they don't really know what to do with it. So part of it could be ego, where they're saying, we want to look a certain way.
Lee Murray
00:12:00
The other part of it is, hey, we have this thing, give it to marketing and tell them to put it on our website. Right. It's like, okay, well, maybe. And where?
Sam Dunning
00:12:10
Yeah. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, exactly. And to kind of guide the audience of where these insights are from. It wasn't stuff like I suddenly stumbled upon once day, one day or thought it was good. Just like Lee. Just like Lee running a great B2B marketing podcast. I run a show as well called breaking B2B, but I interview like SaaS marketing leaders and usually I ask them a question. At the end of each episode I say, what is most important to you when viewing a website and all of those kind of 400 or so marketing leaders. Most of them have said to me, I want to quickly land on a website, understand what you do, how it helps me, why I should choose you. Then I want to check out pricing. I want to see proof of some of the results.
Sam Dunning
00:12:54
I want to get some quick answers to my questions or potential objections. And if you check all those boxes, then I want to easily. Easy way to schedule time with the sales person. I don't want to go back and forth who jump over hoops to get the price. I want to know that all up front, clearly on your website, and then easily schedule that time or book that demo, whatever that relevant conversion point is while I'm on there, or let my exact team do it if I'm getting the data for them. So that's where a lot of these learnings come from.
Lee Murray
00:13:24
I like it.
Sam Dunning
00:13:25
So that was number two designing for ego. Number three is on a similar vein. So it's it's unclear headlines but not just headlines, unclear home page headline, unclear messaging. And what I'd encourage you to do for this number. Stage three is to basically pull those insights that we've got from our customer research. And there's a couple frameworks. For example, on the home page headline I like to use.
Sam Dunning
00:13:48
And these these are quite good if you're just not sure what what you should use as a home page headline, or you feel like yours isn't clear and one is just pure, pure clarity i.e. we do x that improves y, I, I don't know, we we provide CRM for small business that saves you time and excel sheets wherever it is. yeah, you can obviously think of one that's much better than that, but that's very quick off the head example. Another platform is picking an enemy. I'm quite fond of picking an enemy in B2B marketing in general, not just websites, so that that's what we did with our headline. So our headline is B2B SEO for revenue, not vanity, but that that actually came from feedback from prospects because on sales schools we were basically hearing like this website, The vendors are promising me loads of traffic on the back end. It's not converting to qualified leads. Yeah, so we like how can we take a stance? How can we take a stand and add a bit of a differentiator.
Sam Dunning
00:14:47
But at the same time clearly kind of summarize what we're about and what we provide. So if there's something that you particularly hate that goes on in your industry and then you can flip that on its head, I with we're for A not for B or something like that. That's quite a nice standpoint. And there's other ways that you can do that with value propositions. Like we we fix this problem that drives this result. and there's, there's quite a few options like that, but that's quite an important one certainly for your for your web page, website, home page headline to to bear in mind.
Lee Murray
00:15:21
Yeah. I couldn't I couldn't agree with that more. I mean, Matt especially messaging you know, the way you say something. But the headline especially is going to be like the headline of a newspaper. You know, it's like the subject line of of an email. All this stuff matters and it changes behaviour. And so the more the more dialed in you are to your customer. getting feedback from them, understanding.
Lee Murray
00:15:45
Like you said, if they're constantly saying, hey, we were able to do this because it got rid of all these spreadsheets, saved us all this time. That's a that's a pain point you want to call out in that headline. And the closer you can get, the more that that customer is going to feel like you fit with them and they fit with you.
Sam Dunning
00:16:02
Yeah, and that's it. And like a common page headline or common homepage, sorry. Flow is like you've got your hero area at the top of your banner. So you've got your headline that takes one of those positions. Then you've usually got trusted by X amount of brands or X amount of companies or something like that, with maybe a logo bar of some of your relevant logos. And there is there is a mistake that some companies make where they where they have their logo bar just above the fold before people scroll is they put massive logos there, like really big logos of companies that they've just like one off one. And it's like, that's not that great because if you're general market is SMB, but you've plastered with this with enterprise logos, it could actually scare off the main ICP that you want to attract.
Sam Dunning
00:16:44
That's true. So that's that's something to consider. and then that usually as you scroll just below the fold, it might list like a couple problems that you might be facing. Like, are you tired of this? Are you frustrated this issue. Is this causing you time and pain. And then it'll position like the main solutions. You have to address those. And then maybe some social proof like some client reviews, testimonial videos and then probably, your footer section with some CTAs. And that's, that's quite a common homepage flow that, that folks tend to follow.
Lee Murray
00:17:13
Yeah, I like it though, because it goes back to customer research, getting the actual, you know, pains and needs and desires and then putting those for forefront so that when they read those or say, yes, that's me. Yes. That's me. Where have they been? Where is this company been all my life?
Sam Dunning
00:17:29
Yeah, it's it, it's it. I mean, one of my one of my favorite books for learning the importance of that is actually not even in marketing.
Sam Dunning
00:17:37
It's gap selling by someone called Keenan. And he talks about the importance of the gap between where your prospect is now and where they want to get to. And if there's no gap, there's no sell. And he within that book, he builds something out called a problem intent problem identification chart, where you list the top three most expensive problems your ICP has, you list the impact of each one, and you list the root cause.
Sam Dunning
00:18:03
And if as a marketer.
Sam Dunning
00:18:05
Or a business owner or founder, you can know those three most expensive problems. You can know the impact and you can make the root cause. Not only is that good for your website, that's gold dust for your marketing in general, it's going to inform your ads. It's going to help with email copy. It's going to help with videos social like it's so useful. Really really good exercise.
Lee Murray
00:18:20
So true.
Sam Dunning
00:18:22
Cool.
Sam Dunning
00:18:23
So went on a bit of a ramble there. So I think we're up to number four, which.
Lee Murray
00:18:27
Is I think so yeah.
Sam Dunning
00:18:29
My most frustrating one, which is hiding pricing on websites. And usually software companies aren't too bad for this until you hit enterprise. most are quite good. You usually have your traditional tiers like low tier of our software, medium tier like low tier. 20 bucks a month. Medium tier, 100 bucks a month. And then enterprise speak to sales. Fine. where it gets well, there's usually issues as B2B service companies, and the usual pushback I get straight away is, Sam, we can't put pricing on because everything we do is bespoke and customized. I said, okay. Fully appreciate that. But are there buckets like for example, let's say I don't know, you provide you provide some kind of custom software, for example. Is there a bucket like this kind of offer typically falls between 5 to 10 K. This more advanced offering is 10 to 20 k. And this this is 50 K plus enterprise level that where they need to discuss with you for a custom quote. Fine. Can we at least give them a guideline? So if your website is driving a lot of traffic, it's getting a lot of inbounds when it's not going to frustrate your sales team with all these tire kickers that can never afford your offer.
Lee Murray
00:19:38
Yeah. All they want to know is the price.
Sam Dunning
00:19:40
And two. You don't decipher value. Your prospect does. So even if they do love your offer or they love your sales team, which you might think they do, they determine value. So let them know the price first so they can self qualify in or self qualify.
Lee Murray
00:19:54
That is a huge, huge piece of wisdom. I think people need to. Let's stop and say it again that you are not the determiner of value in your customer's eyes. Now you want to influence that value, but that is a huge piece that they determine the value. So whenever you're looking at that number, you're looking at it from a PNL standpoint. A lot of the times, what does this cost me and what kind of profit can I make, you know? And as it scales up, they're looking at it as, what does this cost me? But what value does it bring my business? And so one business to the next may think one value or another.
Sam Dunning
00:20:33
Exactly right. Exactly right. And the other thing you'll see is a few points on the pricing page. One, it hurts you as a small business because you might be trying to force leads at all cost by hiding price. And as a result you get more form fields or you get more requests or you get more calls, but you're wasting loads of time and thus you're you're actually annoying those prospects as well. They get a bad taste in their mouth because you're forced to sell school. and the second is your pricing page, if you have one, is usually one of the most visited. It's often the second or third most visited page on your website after home and then potentially about pricing. Case studies, results, demo page. They tend to be up there. Now the thing is, your pricing page can be really powerful, not just for showing the price. Yeah, you want to show the price quickly, but to back it up and build trust. So you can say look this is our price.
Sam Dunning
00:21:24
Then underneath you might have some customer reviews, like a customer review video or two saying the exact reason why they chose you over 2 or 3 other vendors in your space. Ideally, it's someone that's actually willing to talk about price and say, yeah, these guys were more expensive, but here's the reasons why I chose them. That would be awesome. Or worst case, a customer quote with a picture of them, their job title, and some kind of testimonial covering that. Yeah. And then my favorite piece of advice is an FAQ section, but not your standard generic FAQ section. Like how does the process work? What does pricing mean? Actually ripping hard objections you get from sales calls? Like why are you guys so expensive compared to this other vendor? Do I get an account manager? What's your return? What's your refund policy? like, are you gonna pass me off to a junior account manager as soon as I close? Literally, the questions you're going to get on sales calls, address them head on.
Sam Dunning
00:22:19
It shows transparency, speeds up sales sell cycles and helps your sales team because this is a useful page for your sales team to send people and be proud of.
Lee Murray
00:22:28
Yeah, I think that it's also a brand marker showing honesty like that. it really builds you up your brand in their eyes to see that this is very, personalized and feels, again the fit, like they feel like they fit more so than the site that just they just looked at before yours. That was everything generic.
Sam Dunning
00:22:48
Yeah. Yeah. Exactly, exactly. So that's pricing really really powerful page.
Lee Murray
00:22:54
Yes.
Sam Dunning
00:22:55
Now this is more of a general point. So so number five is hiding the goods which software companies love to do. And what they mean by hiding the goods is you have to book a demo is the only way to see the product. Yeah. And like I said, when I'm with my 400 or so interviews with marketing leaders, they want to see the product, they want to see under the hood, they want to see the offer.
Sam Dunning
00:23:16
So if you can weave in like there's so many softwares now, if you're SAS that allow you to you to show at least a taster of your demo. like Novatek story Lane. Bunch of others. So if you can do that. Great. Failing that, maybe you can have some kind of video. Several video insights so people can at least get a taster for it. Or worst case, you can weave in GIFs into the pages so people can see the moment of when. Like for example, if your calendar scheduling software, they can see the moment. We click the date and time boom straight into your inbox, straight into the salesperson's inbox. That's the moment. but if you're a service company, it's a little bit more difficult, right? That's when you got to get a bit more creative with showing Under the Bonnets. That might be awesome. Case study videos, client reviews, customer ratings, awesome aerial drone photography videos, or whatever. Get a bit creative with how can you give folks a taste for what your offer is like before they book that? Cool.
Sam Dunning
00:24:14
Yeah, because they're going to ask for it on the call anyway. Yeah, give it to them before.
Lee Murray
00:24:18
Yeah. So so true. I've been on lots of, you know, software websites, if we're calling it out specifically, and there's been a few that they've had a demo video that was 45 minutes long, and it's literally them taking you through the entire, not the entire product, but like a lot of it. And I sit there and watch the whole thing by the end of it, you know, if you're going to buy, you're going to buy from them because you feel like, again, you fit with them. You there's a connection there. They showed you everything. There's no I mean, really now it just comes down to your budget and and timing.
Sam Dunning
00:24:53
It's, it it's almost making it like a lot of these feel like tactics to drive more mql or drive more leads or drive more signups, but a very small percentage of them, from my experience anyway, actually convert on the back end into one revenue.
Sam Dunning
00:25:08
Yes. And there's a reason that is and most of it's transparency. So it's it's just ways to save your business time basically a lot of this stuff and get more of the right type of customers.
Lee Murray
00:25:19
Yeah. And I think to for B2B service, it can be done with content as well, where you give them an inside look into your company and sitting with a client or, you know, solving a certain problem or whatever it may be. Again, go back to the customer research. giving them the insight so they can kind of meet you before they meet you. Is is critical for for people to see, you know, if what you're selling is a little more nuanced and it's hard to you don't want to give away trade secrets or you don't want to walk them through the whole recipe. That's fine. But I think giving people some insight or certain transparency is key.
Sam Dunning
00:25:54
Yeah, yeah yeah definitely. Definitely. So we're at six I think. Yeah. Which that's probably a bonus one I can throw in if we've got time.
Sam Dunning
00:26:04
which is just a very simple one. But six is wall of text blogs. So nothing annoys me more these days than taking the time and effort to invest either your team's time or an agency or contractor to build you out a blog, and then it's just you land on it and it's just like a massive wall of text. And as a prospect, if you see that, you're probably going to bounce within a couple seconds.
Lee Murray
00:26:27
Yeah. Two seconds.
Sam Dunning
00:26:29
So s refs and SEO tool, they're like the masters of this making their articles product lead. And if you're a service company it doesn't necessarily need to be a product. It can be your offering or whatever, whatever is relevant, but basically making them more visual. So a lot of folks invest cash or resource to build out a blog, but then the design is poor and they just like, totally skimp on the UX. And it's like, this could be quite a big traffic driver and it could feel like art. Blog articles can be crafted to rank at the top of funnel, like how to middle funnel like comparisons or bottom of funnel like best software, best best service provider, whatever.
Sam Dunning
00:27:10
Yeah, so many folks just make them walls of text and and skimp out on the look and feel. So if you can have a really, really nicely designed blog and what I mean by that is it's nice and simple on a mobile, it's easy to feel on PC, on tablet, it weaves in depending on the topic you're talking about, relevant images of your product or customer quotes. Or maybe you've got a YouTube video guide weaved in or a podcast link. So when people are scrolling and getting visual aids, or they're referring it to your product, or they're linking back to the moment of your offer, all that kind of stuff and then relevant call to actions. So like a really nice best practice on an article is to have like a fixed sidebar so people can flick through to different aspects of the blog and areas of the blog. They can. And then a fixed lead magnet if it's top funnel, like how to maybe sign up for my newsletter or get this relevant asset, or if it's a bottom up funnel, but more closer to the buying kind of end of buying cycle then it might be book a demo book of cool and just simple stuff that can can help a lot.
Lee Murray
00:28:10
Yeah, yeah, it's a tried and true kind of, tactics. And I think on the sidebar to, you know, a lot of times you can do categories, but if you could surface up to the top or prioritize at the top, some of these key, questions or concerns or things that you've pulled out of your research that you know, people are going to want to look for and click on whether they're looking at a top of the funnel blog or blog or a bottom of the funnel. You know, they're always going to be there. Those are always good to put there right at the eye level.
Sam Dunning
00:28:41
Yeah, you nailed it. You know that. It's it's basically most of these tips are trying to think of your website as your best salesperson. So if it's a landing page okay. What topic are we talking about. How can we make this the most useful, helpful, educational and trustworthy page to the end prospect? The end customer? Can we put FAQs that are real questions they're going to ask in objections? Can we give them a guide video? Can we walk them through the process? Can we maybe qualify them? Maybe share pricing? Share when it's not a fit, when it is a fit? Can we do everything in their best interests to either repel them if they're not a fit, or guide them to the next step if they feel they are? That's right.
Sam Dunning
00:29:23
A lot of this stuff. Simple stuff, but rarely put into great practice. and then the last one, number seven, is along a similar vein as a lot of these are, is just completely ignoring SEO. So there's a lot of folks, especially at the time recording saying Google's dead. Search gets out. Yeah. Not quite. I mean, search GPT is literally just out probably a week and a half at the time recording this. And I mean, if you compare Google's market share, you're comparing billions of queries per day to hundreds of millions. So I don't think they're quite at Google's level yet. But the interesting thing about search GPT is that they're great for conversational based searches, and they don't have the traditional blue links to trawl through. You don't have to mess around clicking through the pages. You don't have to mess around avoiding ads. so that is great. They are. I'd say they're probably better for more technical, technical literate users. Sure. Whereas a lot of us might not sell to those folk.
Sam Dunning
00:30:19
So Google is still a beast. Plenty of people still use Google. Yes. Unless ignore what I'm saying if you're not in a known category. So if you're not in a category or selling an offer that people know exists, then this is not relevant. So if you're if you're creating a new piece of software or a new service that's kind of proprietary, then ignore this. But if people are searching for what you do or how you help, or the problem you solve, or comparing you to alternative solutions, then Google's a beast to capture that demand and drive inbound. And if you don't really follow some straightforward SEO best practices on your website, then you can miss out on a lot of that traffic and inbound.
Lee Murray
00:30:53
That's right. Yeah. And I think I think, you know, the, the GPT or AI search is going to change pretty rapidly over time, but those changes will become, noticeable enough for us to catch up with them and get on board with them. but I agree with you.
Lee Murray
00:31:11
As a as of right now, there's still a ton of people who don't even know what ChatGPT is. you know, there, there's generational, perspective you can take on it. there's just people that are still searching Google and Bing and, and and that they're using it like they've always used it. They won't they won't ever use it any different as long as they can. but I think ignoring SEO, is a is a great one to end on. I was I've been kind of like wanting to get to this, kind of funny enough the whole time because, you know, you were talking about wall of text blogs and making it more user friendly, essentially, you know, building it for the reader, for the user. And really, I would say to that your whole website should be built for the user. So building it around not only what they want to read, but what they want to see, how they want to, you know, flow through the site, the UX of it and then make it searchable, then make it, you know, do the things that you you should do technically on the back end, to make, Google and Bing and hopefully, you know, maybe in the future, the GPS of the world, search it.
Lee Murray
00:32:23
Right. it doesn't need your website, does not need to be SEO. It needs to be, humanized and, you know, sort of assisted with the SEO. I think you can do both of those together. And I think if we look at what makes great SEO, it's still today, Google looking for some sort of authentic content that is created for authentic, you know, actual humans. So, you're kind of SEO ING by making it relevant, relevant for the user to start with.
Sam Dunning
00:32:53
Yeah, yeah, yeah, it's it's it's a good point. I mean, Google literally rolled out a framework some time ago, some time ago called e t experience, expertise authority and trust. And those are the are the signals that they look for in the content that you craft. And a lot of what you just said is right. I think the only thing that a lot of folks fall into a bit of a trap with SEO is they think it's a one and done. It's just I still see it.
Sam Dunning
00:33:16
Like I'll say, like, are you considering SEO for the new website redesign or are you considering migrating like the URLs and the pages carefully? And they'll be like, hey, I'll be okay, we've got Yoast plugin or oh, I didn't know we had to transfer the URLs or something like that. They kind of think it's like just one thing, like a tick box SEO is done and it's like, yeah, no. So not like, yes, yes, you can do some simple quick wins, but it's a lot more thoughtful. in terms of, yes, you can create great content, but you still need to consider URL, the page structure, a little bit of technical SEO, and you still need to make sure it hits what's called search intent and gives prospects what they're expecting on a Google search. Exactly. So there are some nuances to it that folks need to bear in mind.
Lee Murray
00:34:02
Yeah. For sure. Hey, this has been a great interview. Thanks for coming on. I know when we started, you're like, hey, only seven we got.
Lee Murray
00:34:08
I think I have ten that we can walk through. So maybe we'll have you back and go through the other, the other three or I'm sure by then maybe even another five. but I know this has been super helpful for everyone listening.
Sam Dunning
00:34:19
No, I appreciate it. Good fun.
Lee Murray
00:34:22
if people want to find you, where should they go to find you?
Sam Dunning
00:34:25
Yeah. Thank you. So there's three main ways. One is LinkedIn. So if you search Sam Dunning, I share ramblings on SEO and B2B website tips most days. Second is the breaking B2B podcast and that has interviews with marketing leaders for practical tips you can use today, as well as some solo episodes. And then the third one is if you maybe listen to this and you're a bit frustrated that competitors keep showing up ahead of you on Google Organic Search or your website isn't converting a steady flow of qualified in-bounds and breaking B2B. I'm happy to have a chat and see if we can help.
Lee Murray
00:34:57
Love it. All right. This is great.
Lee Murray
00:34:59
Thanks, Sam.
Sam Dunning
00:35:00
Cheers.