How Does Your FAQ's Content Fit Your Inbound Marketing Strategy?

The Frequently Asked Questions section is a website's section or page on a website that answers your company’s most received questions. It’s full of easy-to-read and quality information for leads, potential customers, and clients usually grouped around different content like pricing, functionalities, system operations, payments, etc. The objective is for the website or app users to quickly find and respond to their questions themselves, improve communications, and possibly relieve the company’s customer service of some tasks.

FAQ sections can be found in different areas of the website depending on the decision of the project owner, UI/UX teams and marketing. This will depend on the relevance this section should have: should it have its own page or be part of another one? 

Links to FAQ pages can usually be found linked in the header or footer, which will grant ease of access during the whole web page navigation or be found internally in each web page, with custom questions according to that content and the process sales funnel they’re in. 

How Does Your FAQ Section Benefit Your Sales And Marketing Efforts?

FAQ questions are meant to be quick responses to the most common questions. This reduces people’s need to reach out as it accompanies their research process. This means that you avoid spending time on leads or contacts who don’t add value to the buying cycle. It also reduces your users’ frustration as they can easily find the information they’re looking for without having to wait for an answer from the company. 

What’s The Difference Between A FAQ Section And A Help Center?

A FAQ section are a group of common questions, with answers that shouldn’t be over a few paragraphs long. If a more extended response is needed, then it’s likely it should provide a link to a webpage with a full explanation. 

Help Centers are complete webpages, sometimes in a different domain or subdomain, that thoroughly explain how to use the product or service, usually more oriented towards a person who has already purchased and needs post-sale assistance.

They can depend on the complexity of the solution being offered: a SaaS software will probably need to answer more questions regarding functionalities, integrations, payments and communication than a simple e-commerce page that sells products online. 

How Do You Know Which Questions You Need To Add To Your FAQ Section? 

You can gather this information based on the questions you are commonly receiving on social media, forms and through your customer success team. 

You should also analyze adding high-value questions that can also help differentiate you from your competition. Make sure you are also answering these questions on your webpage: if too many people ask the same question, you may likely need to improve your communication on that point.

What other sources can you gain your questions from?

• Open question interviews: Similar to what you would do in a UX/UI test. Hold interviews with people related to the market, ask them what they think about your webpage: if they understand it, what should be easier to find, what questions come to mind, etc.
• Customer success: This team is usually very close to your lead and client’s needs since they’re in constant contact with them. They should also be able to provide valuable insights into their expectations and the most common questions and concerns.
• Marketing: They can use their different marketing tools and assets to analyze what people are looking for. They should be able to gain valuable information by browsing their different assets like forms, social media questions, feedback questionnaires, and other online tools like web page analytics, google search console and landing pages.
• Sales: They also have close contact with leads and clients. They should be able to provide information on questions that would help qualify the prospect before establishing the initial conversation, helping more qualified leads reach that stage of the buying process.
  

Characteristics Of A Good FAQ Section

• Reduced to its most important content.
• Provides links to expand their knowledge in further detail: may reply to the question broadly and, for example, redirect you to the site’s Terms & Conditions section, to the contact center for further reference, etc.
• Are divided into sections to group content together and make it easy to find the subject you’re looking for.
• It is relevant to the web page's topic. 
• Is easy to read, through the help of good web design, implementing accordions or search bars, for example
  

Many customer support systems and Livechat systems include a FAQ page or help center in its functionality, since it helps users answer their questions themselves without recurring to a live person. Some examples of these are Zendesk and Intercom. 

It may be an excellent option to consider if you have a large influx of questions coming in and a Marketing automation system, since it can give you more information into your lead’s buyers journey and provide further reporting data.

In Conclusion

The FAQ section may seem like a small part of your webpage, but it can add real value and shouldn’t be taken for granted, since it can help your users in their research during their buyer process and minimize the company’s demand on personal customer support.

It’s essential to regularly monitor this web page to understand how people use it, evaluate if they’re finding the responses they’re looking for, and occasionally adding new questions based on feedback from your internal teams and users.