Don't let your B2B site lose you leads by making these five basic mistakes
There are literally millions of business to business websites out there, but not all of them are as efficient as they could be. The purpose of creating and managing a B2B website is mainly to engage with your audience and turn them from passive viewers into active clients. So, why is it so hard to engage the audience that visits your website?
Firstly, most of the B2B websites don’t respect a set of basic rules that ensure success. They usually focus on the wrong thing, forgetting about the audience. A B2B website is, of course, a way for you to present and advertise your business, but it should be much more than that.
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A VIP web experience for your VIP prospects
It’s the first sign of light after what could be months of hard slog on your ABM (account-based marketing) campaign. You generate your first lead from one of the accounts on your ABM target list. Hooray! High fives all round for sure.
After reflecting on how to build an ABM list for success, how to figure out which companies are coming to your website, and how to get ABM accounts to your website - we’ve now landed here. How to get individual named companies to convert to your website.
This is in the middle of the ABM process, and a key part of what’s often called the flipped funnel approach: AKA land and expand.
This is all about landing that first lead within an organization that you can then use a variety of engagement methods between sales and marketing to transition through the…
How to optimise your B2B website
Did you know that the average visitor spends only four seconds on a website, before deciding whether to stay on it, or return to the search results? As such, it is critical that a website homepage be high-impact, while also captivating visitors with useful cues and information. To achieve this, there are specific elements that website visitors immediately expect to see. These items are what make the visitor feel confident in the company and comfortable awarding their time to this one site, rather than the hundred others it is likely competing with. These elements span design techniques, optimization strategies, foundational information and call-to-actions that guide visitors throughout the site or to other relevant pages that support build the all important 'social proof'.
This infographic, “Top 10 Features Every B2B Homepage Must Have”, will take you on the journey of a business-to-business (B2B) website homepage, differentiating keenly between…
Your B2B customer deserves a B2C experience like these
Comparing B2B and B2C marketing used to be an Apples-to-Oranges situation, but they’re becoming increasingly comparable.
True, you don’t issue RFPs (Requests for Proposal) when you buy a Blu-ray player, and yes, a CRM decision requires a lot of research. But if you take some of the benefits that are common in B2C and implement them into your B2B space, you can create a customer experience that improves relationships and increases profits.
Three B2C Experiences to offer your business customers
Here are three things B2C experiences offer that your B2B customers might be missing out on:
1. Products or service reviews
B2B service reviews often consist of heavily starched long-form case studies and videos, which can’t hold an audience’s attention for long. Reducing the length of this information and implementing a real-time reviews feature like …
Examples showing why B2B website visitors deserve a great experience too
Whichever business sector you are in, it is still crucial to consider your digital marketing as a holistic process created around your website. In a 2013 blog post here on Smart Insights I detailed a number of areas that all effective B2B websites should have. Many remain relevant even though the technology and customer expectation has moved on.
The objective of this blog post is to build on this theme of centrality and align it with the delivery of powerful and engaging user experience that draws visitors in and keeps them coming back again and again.
Only by creating a website rich in customer focused content and that is built to respond to the device it is being viewed on, has the chance of catching and maintaining attention. I'll also be covering this topic as part of 6 key tactics to Turbocharge your digital…
Research shows how just-in-time content can re-engage abandoning visitors
When it comes to bounce on B2B landing pages, the numbers are depressing. Marketers put a lot of time and energy into these crucial pages, and research says the large majority of businesses depend on landing pages as part of their lead-generation strategy. Yet the majority (more than 50%) of traffic will bounce, perhaps never to return. The waste and inefficiency can be HUGE if landing pages aren't optimised or other relevant content isn't available.
[Editor's note: This post reviews different ways to measure engagement and explains bounce rate and typical benchmarks if your not familiar with it. Bounce rates for blogs can be in the range 60-80%, so it's worthwhile designing the blog to encourage some of these visitors to engage more].
Much of the time spent developing effective landing pages focuses on content optimization and enticing calls-to-action (CTAs) to grab…
Examples showing what is needed for a customer-centric B2B website
In a recent post, I talked about the importance of developing a solid B2B digital marketing strategy. A critical part of this is creating an enduring website presence that meets the needs of visitors while also achieving standout, leads and favourability for the business. Making their site more effective for visitors and the business should be a primary concern, but it often hasn't got sufficient attention in the past. But this seems to be changing; 2012 RWS/US research data suggests that marketing budgets are being invested more in websites and web development than anywhere else. Yet I still see a lot of basic requirements of an effective B2B site that are missing. In this post, I'll give examples showing some of the key features.
The seven essential features
Start by defining your requirements. Even…
