We have all experienced it. You visit a BtoB website hoping that they can solve your organization’s pain, but instead find a convoluted, outdated digital mess. To ensure your site is not guilty of this offense, here are 10 recommendations to consider.
- Assume nothing: Call me crazy, but let’s just assume the person visiting your site has no idea what a”SEO-PPC Optimizer” does. Presume your audience is starting at square one, and knows nothing.
- Aim for the Pain: Stop shoving your new X4001 model in their face. Change your messaging to first focus on their pain. There is a reason people are coming to your site; they are looking for a solution to overcome a challenge they are facing. Start there. Define what pain your organization is trying to alieve (Drive Sales Results?)
- Kirk/Spock Model: BtoB Solutions are typically purchased and considered by more than one individual. Ensure your marketing works for different personalities. For the emotional (Kirk) side, pitch how your solution will revolutionize their business, for the intellectual folks (Spock) show off your facts and ROI calculations.
- Educate them: You have defined their pain, and grabbed their attention, so now explain how your solution solves that pain. Keep the message simple, with links to more indepth info. Show them that you are the industry expert. Use blogs, webinars, white papers to build this respect and your lead generation. Never assume they understand your industry or tools.
- Create the checklist: If the site is designed correctly, you should have an interested and newly educated person browsing your site. Now, you need to focus that energy and convince them that your solution is the best. Create a checklist on what features are needed in the ideal solution. Match your product features with your education. For example – “poor channel education can be improved by personalized messaging which is delivered by our X4000”.
- Personalize: Have the user’s online actions such as white paper downloads, or webinar enrollment, personalize the site for them in real-time. Have the site promote items (events, documents) that the client appears to be leaning towards.
- Continuing the conversation: Take the time to develop a strategy on how you want to build your relationship. Where do you want to ask for key contact information? When in the lead cycle do you want to the person to be contacted by your sales team? How do you want to handle this conversion? Many sites lose leads, as they are never followed up on, or they fail to ask the right questions at the right time.
- Sound Bytes: Show customer testimonials and reduce the number of case studies. Case studies are typically so whitewashed that they have lost all value. Short blurbs from clients can be extremely valuable in helping build trust.
- Visuals: Show me exactly what it is you are selling. Don’t make me book a demo just to see a couple of screenshots. I need visuals to help vet out your solution from the 500 other sites that came back when I googled “CRM”. Think of it as a teaser; just make sure its dead simple to get to it.
- Pull the Email links: Pull every single Mailto link off your site and replace them with online forms. Ensure the information posted by a client is A) sent to a distribution list and B) stored in an accessible database. Build an admin tool to view the postings or export it into your CRM, but absolutely do not rely on email to manage these leads. Check the postings frequently.