When we were planning our new website, making sure that our end users found our site intuitive and useful was high on our agenda. We asked Dan Ellis, Managing Director of Orckid Business Transformation, to share some insights on how your marketing team can maximise the effectiveness of your site as a B2B sales tool.
Here are Dan’s top tips:
Your website acts as the shop window to your business and, in the world of B2B sales, connecting with your target audience is crucial. B2B conversions take more time than B2C channels, so it’s important that your website clearly and compellingly communicates your message and nurtures your audience towards doing business with you.
Ensuring your visitors understand exactly what you do from the outset is essential, so you need to make sure your lead message is clear, concise and talks to your customers in their language. Your potential customers need to know that you understand their requirements, and that you have the proven knowledge and experience to solve their problems.
Create a narrative that resonates with your customers, highlight the problems and solutions, and then provide targeted calls to action that reinforce your messaging. By showcasing key client case studies, you inspire confidence and can demonstrate your success in specific industry sectors.
Re-engagement is also a key factor in generating B2B sales. Most B2B conversions require a number of visits and touch points to convert, so give your customers a reason to come back by providing fresh content and value-add resources.
While high-quality content is a must, you also need a good grip on your website’s performance and security. If your website takes more than a couple of seconds to load, you will likely lose prospects. Make sure your site is fully optimised, particularly if you utilise a lot of imagery.
Security and mobile optimisation are also essential for SEO, as search engines will automatically lower your ranking if your site isn’t mobile-friendly or secured with SSL. Ensuring your site is secure, whether you process sensitive information or not, adds to your brand’s perception through your customers’ eyes.
Ultimately, any B2B website needs to be built with the customer in mind. This involves deeply understanding their needs and rewarding them with rich, informative content and a reason to choose you over the competition.
Successful businesses that are looking to transform and grow B2B opportunities through their website should first step back and look at more than what technology has to offer.
Start by identifying a product or service that can make a difference to your customer’s daily life. Build a team around people who genuinely embrace this offering; instilling a working culture and the processes to support them will reflect in your customer’s experience of working with you. Learn where your customers operate and how to engage them in an experience that is both rewarding and high value.
Today, businesses invariably need a website that’s more than a sales brochure. It is this shop window, powerfully combined with new technologies, that keeps us connected with our customers and unlocks opportunities.
To talk to us more about connecting sales and marketing, get in touch by e-mailing info@sbrconsulting.com or call us on +44 (0) 207 653 3740.
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