Website Visitors - Leads or Just Impressions - B2B Marketing and Sales Tip #85
We all know that as B2B marketers we must manage our online presence well. The first step is having an easy-to-navigate and information-rich website. Then we try to find new ways to drive traffic by investing in banner ads, Google AdWords, SEO or by using sponsored whitepapers and participating in social media through Facebook or LinkedIn. In addition, we have all spent real dollars on landing pages. Many of us have also taken on a company blog to indirectly promote our agenda and promote ourselves as thought leaders. We do all of these things with the feeling in mind of “if we’re out there they will come”. What happens once you get them to your home page or landing pages? We try our best to capture as many leads online as possible, but with only 1% of web visitors filling out a form and only half of those being accurate, don’t you wonder about the other 99%?
My view is that AdWords and other PPC marketing techniques are B2C optimized and that we as B2B marketers have to work harder (in new ways) to try to monetize these investments – not just stop on impressions but on the entire value chain of the investment as it translates to real revenue.
As more and more marketers are having to show real results for marketing dollars spent, is measuring web traffic enough? Seeing a spike in your website traffic is exciting and being able to correlate that spike to a press release, change in a Google AdWords/PPC program, or an email campaign proves that your tactics are working. But are website visitors any different than people driving past a billboard? Are they just impressions?
I want to capture the people not just visiting the homepage, but the ones who spend time on my product pages, looking at my case studies and reading my white papers. And I want to weed out those that just look at my careers page or press releases. To me, online marketing is important but lead generation that drives real revenue is priceless, so how can I convert more web visitors into actionable leads?
3 Responses to “Website Visitors - Leads or Just Impressions - B2B Marketing and Sales Tip #85”
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March 26th, 2008 at 12:40 pm
I share your perspective, Suaad, that just asking visitors to sign-up for newsletters or register for downloads, is not enough. You’re also right that search engines are geared for consumers, not B2B customers. Recently, I’ve come to see how analyzing visitors’ clickstreams can make a big difference in (1) understanding what visitors are focusing on (on my clients’ websites) and (2) identifying spots where they exit the website instead of taking the steps we expected (like digging deeper, registering for a webinar, etc.). In addition to clickstream analysis, you can run controlled experiments like A/B tests et al. to systematically find the combinations of content and flow that raise the sign-up percentage to 5% or (in some cases I’ve seen) as high as 35%. That’s a 500% to 3500% gain over the 1% you’re worried about.
March 26th, 2008 at 4:19 pm
In my experience one must use a strategy which appeals to the both the conscious and sub-conscious mind(s).
Google AdWords, PPC techniques, and even SEO are tactics (not strategies like some think) required to create context for your audience. Context can be defined as: The circumstances in which an EVENT occurs; a setting. Please note that the afore-mentioned tactics can only create a setting in which an EVENT must take place. The potency of the ‘event’ can dictate if the user/audience will take further action. These events, if well designed, can induce a behavioral ‘tipping point’.
If a user has arrived at your homepage after reading about your company, or found a link on a search result which resonates with them, you have essentially set the stage successfully. Now you have to appeal to the user’s subconscious decision making process. Appeal to their senses with solid interaction design techniques (mostly visual in nature). Judging from an ever-increasing body of scientific knowledge, one has about 0.1 to 3 seconds to begin a compelling presentation. Due to vast and varied changes in media technology over the past 10-15 years, the average user has a much more sophisticated palette for online media… this is where great visual design can have an immeasurable impact!
How many times have you watched a cool flash demo and had a emotional response. Can you think of moments when a single interactive experience, whether it’s a flash demo or a compelling lecture or just a great conversation with another smart person, changed your mind… redirected your perspective. That’s what I would call a cognitive ‘tipping point’.
April 26th, 2008 at 3:32 pm
There are a number of solutions on the market (mostly web services), allowing the reveal the company name of the visitor and at the same time the pages visited and time spend on pages.
Drive the visitors to your website and capture the company names. Qualify the visitors as leads or not.
start to Cold call the qualified companies, which are more likely to be interested to respond to your cold call.