In this video, you’ll learn the types of content you want to create for your consulting website’s resource page.
Navalent is the firm and website discussed in this video — their Resource Center in particular.
[Slides]Transcript
Welcome to the 6th installment of Consulting Website Design, Resources Done Right.
In this episode, we’re looking at the website of consulting firm Navalent, and more specifically, their “Resources” center.
Navalent was featured in my recent article on the best small consulting firm websites, and you can find a link to that in the post for this video.
I consider a resources page one of the five essential pages for consultants — and I hope this video helps to explain why.
So here we are on the “Resource Center” page of Navalent’s website, and the parent page copy gives you an idea of how long they’ve been curating this advice – 10 years. This obviously helps establish them and their advice as experienced and trustworthy.
If we hover over the menu tab for Resource Center, we’ll see the variety of different types of resources they have available.
Let’s check out their blog. Lots of recent, quality insights. You can also sort by author and topic, which is really helpful.
Now articles — these are one-off content, and you can see how they introduce an element of scarcity here with the phrase “private thoughts.”
Navalent uses the articles lead magnets, which you can see here: “to download this article..”
Let’s see the Books section: and here, you can see books by the firm’s Managing Partner, Ron, with links to both buy and read the books as well as a place to learn more. Books are a huge credibility marker for consultants, and this page does a good job of showcasing the firm’s thought-leadership.
Now here’s a section I really like: the video section. So not only do these teach you something useful, but they put a face and a voice to the consultants at the firm. And that’s a very powerful trust builder — you’re actually seeing and hearing another human being — one that you might potentially work with if your one of their potential clients.
Finally, we have their quarterly magazine, which is another type of lead magnet and one-off content that you trade your name and email address in order to access.
Overall, the Resources Center is a very strong part of Navalent’s website, and one of the best resource center’s I’ve seen.
Put yourself in the shoes of one of their potential clients, and you land on their resource center. And then you check out one of your other options, the website of a different firm, and all they talk about is their own business — and don’t have anything to actually help you.
The former type of website like Navalent is going to have a huge one-up on the latter. They’re positioned well, they can back up their expertise, and they also give the prospect a good idea of how to engage them through this section of their website.
This snippet from a great article by ProtoFuse helps explain how Navalent uses their resources page so it’s like the opposite of a brochure website — they have a ton of interesting, useful, and quality content posted to their website, and not just information about their company.
I’ve heard people also call a brochure website an “informational website.”
Informational for WHO exactly?
Most websites understand they should provide services/products information, company information, and contact information. However, brochure or “informational” websites will come to a screeching halt after they cover those basics.
A brochure website’s content fails to:
-Engage, Educate, be Effective, Entertain & Encourage action (Five E’s of Content Marketing)
-Follow the 80/20 content rule (80% helpful to audience, 20% promotional)
And I asked Ron, in my article on best small consulting firms, what the website does for him and his clients:
We want our website to be a “destination” website where there is always dynamic content, relevant and engaging material, and ultimately, the right client-centric information to help prospective clients make informed choices about how to engage us, or ask the right questions about their circumstances.
This is the same mindset you want to have when creating resources and curating them for your website:
- they help your clients make informed decisions on how to engage you,
- and helps them ask the right questions about their circumstances.
Action Step
So your action step for today is to just start your resources page. You don’t have to write 5 articles or make it super fancy yet.
Just create it, and the next time you come across an interesting article (doesn’t have to be yours) that you might find helpful in one of your upcoming project, put it up on your resources page.
And of course, as you produce any type of content, put it up on your resources page, and organize them in a way that helps your prospective client know what to read first.
Over time you’ll create a really valuable page that your prospects will rely on for their information, and it will make a great lead-magnet as it positions you as the trusted advisor — the consultant who’s curating the information they read.