On Velocity’s Culture: airing out something that maybe we shouldn’t
Doug Kessler | December 5th, 2020
We’re always looking for new content formats for the B2B content marketing programs we do with our clients.
Ebooks are great for drilling down into a topic and, if needed, earning that form fill.
Slideshares are a powerful way to evangelise a point of view, take a stand on an issue or have a good old rant about any bee in your company’s bonnet.
B2B Video is a hugely versatile medium for everything from tech explainers to chalk talks to expert interviews to… just about anything.
B2B Infographics are awesome for visualising data and telling the stories that lurk behind the stats.
Interactive content like quizzes and graders are a great way to deliver value while collecting granular data about your prospects. And scrolling sites that animate as the reader scrolls are super-sexy (but tend to limit your word count).
But there’s a format that’s been neglected for far too long — and it’s sitting right under our B2B noses: the web page.
Not just any web page; a specific kind of web page we call “The Long-Ass Web Page”.
A long-ass web page is a web page that has these characteristics:
The long-ass page is best when you start by thinking about your ideal audience and then answer all the questions they might ask about the given topic.
The idea is to become the best page on the web for this specific topic and audience. You’re trying to provide a service to your prospects by working really hard to deliver value to them in the spirit of the very best editorial content.
When you do that, good things happen. Like shares, backlinks, search rankings, traffic, page (and domain) authority and, eventually, spondulicks.
The key is to choose your topic really, really carefully. You can’t own — or even cover – a huge term like “Digital Marketing’ or ‘CRM’ or ‘Car Insurance’. But you just might be able to cover and own a term like ‘The Marketing Data Lake’ or ‘Data Onboarding’ or ‘Car Insurance for Self-Driving Vehicles’.
Recently, we worked closely with the folks at Informatica (the awesome data management and data integration company) to make a long-ass page about the Marketing Operations discipline.
It’s called What is Marketing Operations? and we think it’s a pretty good example of the format (and a damn fine explanation of the hugely important marketing ops discipline).
Go ahead and use that link (or this one) to explore it while I go make a cuppa and see if anyone has left any biscuits lying around. Or, failing that, snag a banana.
Back already? Me too (banana).
Cool piece of content, isn’t it?
Here’s a view of the whole page, with some annotations:
There’s nothing on the long-ass page that you’re probably not already doing. But when you put it all together, around a timely topic, you’ve got yourself a great format. Here’s why we like it:
Long-ass pages aren’t any harder to produce than any other content. But you do need to keep a few things in mind:
There are a lot of exciting things happening with new digital content formats (we’re working on some very cool stuff ourselves — watch this space). But sometimes the very best content format is a very simple thing: a web page that acts like a mini-magazine, covering a single, focused topic in a rich, structured, comprehensive and fun way.
So go get long-ass on your web content — and do share any examples you’ve seen or created. We’re content geeks. We love this stuff.
Stephanie Tilton, Ten Ton Marketing | December 15th, 2016
Doug,
Thanks for sharing your blueprint for the LAWP. Looks great! And gave my scroll finger a much-needed workout.
Curious…as you say, ebooks can help earn a form fill. If, as Harry says, the long-ass page is the new ebook, what happens to the lead form? Just wondering how you reconciled that when executing this project for Informatica.
Best,
Stephanie
Doug Kessler | January 22nd, 2017
Hi Stephanie.
Good point. For the LAWP, you forego the web form — though you could put one at the end or in the middle, saying “Like this kind of thing? Signm up for more!”
As we look at more and more data across many clients, we’re removing more and more forms. Content wants to be free!