by Emanuele Villa - July 14, 2023
Content Design for Business: How to Stand Out from Competitors and Be More Effective
Modern marketing is a more or less synergic ecosystem of different professional skills, roles and activities, but with many points of contact .
It is not easy, even for those who work in this field, to understand the essence of different activities and specialized roles that have arisen over the years and that, in fact, contribute to the recognition and success of a brand, a product or a service. Since we realized that content is king also online, there is no doubt that it must be designed according to the needs of those who will use it.
So far, so easy. But to de-trivialize the topic, what is the distance between content design, content management, content writing, content strategy, UX writing and UX design, copywriting and the like?
The (Central) Role of Content Design in B2B
Content design is the activity of designing any type of content, the aim of which is to provide the user with what he needs in the most effective form and in the best possible way.
To give a simple but eloquent example, defining the (content) structure of a product Q&A is a form of content design aimed at ensuring that the user finds the requested information immediately and in a language that he understands. Clearly, the designer's responsibilities are much broader than this, since he works end-to-end on the customer/user journey and must ensure that at all stages the content provided is adequate to the upstream need.
Usually, the designer is also the author of the content, which can be a text, an image, a video or a hybrid and innovative form; in any case, it is born following an in-depth research activity related to the public to which the content is addressed. In doing so, his role moves away from:
who manages the content, that is, must enhance it through a coherent distribution;
who plans the content strategy , objectives and indicators;
who makes it ideal for search engines;
who creates the “copy”. Strictly speaking, copywriters can rely on specific skills of persuasive communication for sales purposes. They do not design the content, although all this has more theoretical than practical value, given that countless overlaps exist.
Compared to UX Designers, the distance is quite clear but collaboration is essential because content design serves to provide the right content where the user expects to find it and is therefore an essential element of the experience in a broader sense.
Content design in B2B and the concept of quality
In a world where both consumers and professionals are exposed to a relentless flow of information, attention spans have collapsed.
The concept of quality content , while still central, is no longer sufficient to capture the attention of your audience. Because even in B2B there are competitors who do the same thing, who provide a similar service, who provide consultancy with the same purpose and so on. And then, what does quality mean ? Unpublished content, with information that does not exist elsewhere? Content structured to provide answers to real problems? A well-written paper that is pleasant to read?
Naturally, the answer is a mix. You need all of these elements plus one: it has to grab attention quickly. Very quickly.
According to the research institute Statistic Brain , the average france whatsapp number data 5 million person's attention span on a piece of content is 8 seconds and we are only able to process 28% of the words on a web page.
The lesson is clear: we can provide the best content in the world, perfectly target the buyer persona, introduce new elements and data, but if we don't design them correctly, we will never get the attention our efforts deserve. Worse: maybe some competitor will take them on and "redesign" them effectively. Adding insult to injury.
Give it a try. Visit a landing page, read a newsletter, download a white paper, or better yet, go to the home page of a B2B company . How many times does it take minutes to understand what it does ? Too many.
Content design, how to win the challenge
I think designing B2B content is a fascinating challenge . To win it, you need skill, experience, but above all passion. And so far, nothing new.
The greater complexity of journeys compared to the B2C macrocosm is noticeable, but this is precisely where the charm of designing effective content for different personas comes from , each with:
customized needs ;
ad hoc skills ;
specific pain ;
domain lexicon that cannot be trivialized, under penalty of immediate loss of authority.
Complexity reaches dizzying levels when, in 90% of cases, we hear that " our interlocutor is decision maker A, who however has to go through B and sometimes convince C ".
How to do it? Content must capture the first, but it can provide useful elements to convince the others, who will then be provided with ad hoc content. This is why content design is essential in B2B : for example, those who read the landing page must find in 10 seconds a content that " blocks " them on the page for the following minute, in which we can extend the range towards further solutions to their pain, and possibly provide ideas for other professionals involved in the sales cycle.
All of this works only if, in addition to a valid strategy, its execution, the monitoring of the various channels and data analysis, the content is ideally designed based on who is reading it and the stage of the journey they are in.
