Convert Visitors Into Leads – Part 1

Dale Hursh February 13, 2012

by Dale Hursh, President, SmartSearch Marketing

In B2B digital marketing, your success depends on converting web visitors into qualified leads. Perhaps you have plenty of web traffic. Great. But how’s your conversion rate? What percentage of your visitors is turning into leads – and customers?

Unless it’s 100%, you can improve. So marketers like you need to continuously boost their efforts to convert more website visitors into profitable leads.

Boost your conversion rate when you request a complimentary Website Usability & Conversion Assessment, custom-tailored for you by our team of experts

As many B2B marketers have learned the hard way, web marketing strategies that work with consumers aren’t necessarily effective with B2B. That’s because B2B typically involves a high-value, complex sales cycle. So you need to convert visitors into qualified leads, who are added to your database or CRM so your sales team can follow up by email or phone.

The following 10 tips are sound, proven techniques that – when  implemented properly – will increase the quantity and quality of your leads and your web marketing profit.

1. How to Find Out What Your Web Visitors Really Want

Start by analyzing which pages your visitors visit most – this reveals their areas of interest.

There are a number of analytics programs such as Google Analytics. I recommend focusing on your top 10 pages, then looking at two key reports: which pages visitors came from – and which pages they visited next. By understanding your visitors’ behavior and navigation, you’ll understand what they’re seeking.

Usually the home page is your most visited page, but where do visitors go next? An understanding of what pages they visit next is essential to identify what your visitors want. And once you know what information is important to them, you can gather or create effective marketing assets.

Do visitors click on your About Us page to learn more about your company? Or do they click on the Solutions/Services page to understand more about your offerings? If the Solutions page is the second-most visited page, look at the navigation summary to determine which page most visitors clicked on next. When on your solutions pages, what additional information are they seeking? Then create an asset that provides that information.

2. Implement Clean, Clear Landing Pages

The design and verbiage of your websites, microsites or landing pages is critical to success. Through extensive testing, I’ve learned that clean, simple design usually performs best with B2B visitors. That’s in contrast with consumers who often prefer flashy, busy sites. While consumers usually enjoy being wowed or entertained, business buyers don’t have time for fluff and appreciate a simple, clear landing page.

The best web marketing copy also differs in B2B compared with B2C sites. In B2B, you should always present – as quickly and efficiently as possible – clear benefit statements, points of differentiation, and calls-to-action. You’re not writing to entertain – you’re writing to inform, quickly and efficiently.

3. Focus on Visitor Benefits

Many marketers make the mistake of focusing on their products or services – and how awesome they are. But what business buyers really want to know is “what’s in it for me?” So focus your webpage content, calls-to-action and downloadable assets on benefits to the prospect.

 Boost your conversion rate when you request a complimentary Website Usability & Conversion Assessment, custom-tailored for you by our team of experts

Give business visitors something of value, something that will boost their knowledge or skills, and help them do their job better. Provide unique, helpful information, rather than a self-serving promotional piece about your company.

For example, studies on market research have a much higher conversion rate than marketing brochures. This is especially true if you promote the study by focusing on the benefits the reader will receive. So a good description for a white paper might be something like Find out how to increase your search marketing ROI or Case study on how 5 companies successfully used social media to generate leads.

 

4. Create Unique, Compelling Calls-to-Action

You know what pages your visitors look at most, you have a clean landing page. At this point, your goal is simple: capture your visitors’ contact information. To do this, you need to identify the most effective calls-to-action (CTA).

Go back to your navigation summary report, and identify the navigation path.  For example, if your searchers are clicking through to your services page, you might create an asset for that page focusing on services in your industry, such as a guide, report, or white paper about your industry, and how to compare and contrast service providers.

The CTA – and the asset offered to your visitors – should vary from page to page, as you seek to align the asset offered with the information your searchers are seeking.

5. Offer Value in Exchange for Contact Info

This is it, the goal of most B2B websites:  to capture contact information. In order to persuade your visitors to give up some privacy and give you their contact information, you need to provide something valuable in return.  Identifying the most attractive assets to offer will help convert more website visitors into qualified leads.

The more contact information you want (e.g. visitors’ phone numbers), the more valuable the asset needs to be. Reflect on your own experience – we tend to give out email addresses relatively easily (especially if we have a secondary email address), but we’re much more guarded about our phone number. If you want a phone number, you need to create something of great value that meets the visitors’ specific needs.

I hope you’ve profited from Part 1. Be sure to check out our March newsletter, which will feature How to Convert Your Web Visitors Into Leads – 10 Essential Tips – Part 2

Boost your conversion rate when you request a complimentary Website Usability & Conversion Assessment, custom-tailored for you by our team of experts

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Dale Hursh is CEO of SmartSearch Marketing with over 15 years of experience helping companies improve lead generation and lead acceleration through the full sales funnel. He has spoken at numerous search marketing and B2B Digital Marketing conferences around the world over the last 10 years.