Let's talk about the first thing people see when they land on your website.
Your hero section.
That beautiful, expensive, agency-crafted, stakeholder-approved, seven-rounds-of-revision masterpiece sitting right at the top of your homepage.
It is absolute garbage.
And I say that with love. The kind of love a doctor has when he tells you that you need to completely change everything about your life or you're going to die. Tough love. Necessary love. The kind of love that costs you a copay.
Let Me Show You What I Mean
Here is an actual representation of what 90% of B2B hero sections say. I'm not making this up. I wish I was making this up.
"Accelerating Human Potential Through Intelligent Digital Ecosystems."
Okay.
What does that mean.
No seriously. What does that MEAN.
I have read that sentence four times now and I genuinely cannot tell you if this company sells software, consulting services, vitamins, or is some kind of cult that meets on weekends. And cults, for what it's worth, have better marketing than this. Cults are extremely clear about what they're offering. They lead with the value proposition immediately. Free community. Sense of purpose. Matching outfits.
Your SaaS company could learn a lot from a cult.
The Anatomy Of A Terrible Hero Section
Every bad B2B hero section follows the exact same formula. It has been copy and pasted spiritually across the internet since approximately 2014 and nobody has had the courage to stop it.
It goes like this:
The Meaningless Headline. Something that sounds profound but communicates absolutely nothing. "The Future Of Work Is Here." Cool. What work. Whose future. Where. "Unlock Your Business Potential." My potential is locked? Since when. Who locked it. Was it you. Did your company lock my potential and now you're selling me the key. That's actually a little sinister if you think about it.
The Confusing Subheadline. This is where marketers really get to stretch their legs. The headline was vague so naturally the subheadline needs to explain it. But instead of explaining it they just repeat the same nothing words with slightly different nothing words. "We help forward-thinking organizations leverage cutting-edge solutions to drive meaningful outcomes at scale." Meaningful outcomes. AT SCALE. I want to find the person who first wrote "at scale" in a marketing context and have a very serious conversation with them.
The Stock Photo. A woman. Headset on. Smiling. Not because anything is funny. Not because she received good news. She is smiling because she is a stock photo and smiling is all she has. Sometimes it's a dashboard. A very clean, very fake, suspiciously well-designed dashboard that bears absolutely no resemblance to what your actual product looks like. Your actual product looks like it was designed in 2009 during a hackathon by someone who had consumed too much Red Bull and not enough sleep.
The Three Value Props Nobody Reads. Little icons. Usually a checkmark or a lightning bolt because lightning bolt means fast and fast means good. "Scalable." "Secure." "Seamless." The three S's. The holy trinity of saying nothing with confidence. Every single B2B company on earth claims to be scalable, secure, and seamless. You know what else is scalable, secure, and seamless? A brick. A brick scales. A brick is extremely secure. A brick never crashes, never needs an update, never sends you an email at 3am about scheduled maintenance.
Nobody is buying your brick.
The CTA That Asks For Too Much. "Schedule A Discovery Call." On the first interaction. We just met. I don't even know what you do yet because your headline was "Transforming The Way Humans Human" and I'm still processing that. And you want me to schedule a call. With a salesperson. Who is going to ask me about my budget. I would rather assemble furniture with a Chinese pamphlet and a broken Allen wrench than schedule a discovery call before I know what I'm discovering.
Here Is What Is Actually Happening
Your hero section was written by a committee.
I can tell because it has the fingerprints of a committee all over it. It is smooth and inoffensive and completely devoid of any personality or specificity because every time someone tried to say something real, someone else in the meeting said "but what about our enterprise segment" and then someone said "we should probably run this by legal" and then legal said something and then three weeks later you have a headline that means nothing to everyone equally.
Congratulations. You have achieved perfect demographic neutrality. You have created content so broad and so safe that it will connect deeply with absolutely nobody.
What A Good Hero Section Actually Does
It answers three questions in under five seconds.
- What do you do.
- Who do you do it for.
- What happens when I click the button.
That is the entire job description of a hero section. It is not complicated. It is not an opportunity for poetry. It is not a brand manifesto. It is a sign above a door that tells people whether or not they should walk through it.
"We help mid-size e-commerce brands reduce cart abandonment by 30% in 90 days."
Done.
I know what you do. I know if I'm the right person. I know roughly what success looks like. I didn't have to think. You handed me the poster board instructions.
Was that so hard.
Apparently yes. Apparently that was extremely hard because the entire industry looked at that option and said you know what sounds better? "Pioneering The Next Frontier Of Commerce Intelligence."
It doesn't sound better.
It sounds like you fired your last copywriter and replaced them with a LinkedIn post generator that had a fever.
The Fix
Go to your homepage right now.
Read your headline.
Ask yourself — if someone who had never heard of your company, who was mildly tired, who had a lot going on, who found you from a Google search at 6pm — would they know within three seconds what you actually do.
If the answer is no.
Burn it down.
Start over.
Write one clear sentence that a human being would actually say out loud to another human being. Not at a conference. Not in a pitch deck. Like at a dinner party when someone asks what your company does and you don't want them to fall asleep before the entrée arrives.
Say that.
Put that on your website.
And for the love of everything replace that stock photo woman with her headset on. She's tired. She's been smiling since 2011. Let her rest.