2021 Blog

3 Essential Landing Page Best Practices to Skyrocket Conversions

In the B2B world, just about every company uses landing pages. It’s almost unheard of to not have at least one or two as part of any modern B2B marketing campaign.

Despite how long they’ve been around and how many other options have come into existence, landing pages still enjoy a reputation for being one of the most cost-effective tools for B2B companies to attract leads and set them up for conversions.

So, if this hasn’t been your experience, if you’re not 100% happy with what you’ve seen thus far, it’s time to learn about the most important landing page best practices.

3 Landing Page Best Practices for More Conversions

While there are a number of different ways you can judge the effectiveness of your landing pages, nothing is as important as conversions. After all, most of you are probably paying for your traffic, so every failed conversion means a higher cost-per-acquisition.

That’s why these 3 landing page best practices are absolutely essential.

1. Check to See What Google Ads Says About Your Landing Page

Chances are that at least some of your paid traffic is coming from Google Ads. If not, add that to your list of landing page best practices to implement right away. Google Ads will give you incredible exposure without having to spend all that time on creating original content for organic traffic.

Another great reason to use Google Ads is because of the feedback they’ll provide. Among other things, this includes what they think of the landing-page experience you offer.

“Google Ads analyzes it through a combination of automated systems and human evaluation” and the result affects the kind of Ad Rank you can hope to achieve.

Obviously, you want to use Google’s feedback to better improve your Ad Rank, but it’s also information you can use to modify landing pages across every other channel you use.

Best of all, because it’s Google, you can be certain that your landing pages are being considered against those of many of your competitors. This makes their input all the more valuable.

2. Shift to Retargeting to Qualified Leads

Without a doubt, one of the best landing page best practices to boost conversions – without making any changes to them – is simply by investing in retargeting.

The reason is fairly simple.

If you rely solely on Google Ads and other paid-traffic sources, it’s extremely likely that many of your prospects aren’t qualified. They may literally be conducting their first ever search to solve the current problem their company is facing. These kinds of prospects may then click on your ad even though they’re nowhere near converting.

With retargeting, your ads are only shown to prospects who have demonstrated a genuine interest in what you have to offer. For example, you could use retargeting to advertise only to prospects who read a certain blog post.

Now, not only do you know they’re interested in your service, but you may also know other important specifics about what their company needs. As a result, you can create hyper-targeted ads that speak to those requirements.

Again, many B2B marketers find that retargeting is all it takes to improve one of their current landing pages’ conversion rates substantially.

3. Show Your Lead What the Future Looks Like

Before another company buys from yours, its decision-makers need to be convinced that your product and/or service will improve their business.

That might seem like a no-brainer, but if your landing pages aren’t earning opt-ins, it might be because they don’t do a good enough job of showing prospects what the future has in store if they work with your company.

Fortunately, you don’t need a magical crystal ball to pull this off. Instead, you could simply include a powerful testimonial at the top of each of your landing pages. This will show prospects of how other companies have benefited from your help.

In your copy, you could include a brief case study, too. This could go into further detail about how your business improved another.

Landing pages that are short-and-sweet have always been in fashion, but the fact is that long copy tends to do better, so don’t be afraid to lengthen yours a bit if it means showing your prospects the future.

Add Our Platform to These Landing Page Best Practices for Even More Conversions

Simply by following the three landing page best practices outlined above, your business should enjoy far greater conversions from these popular marketing assets.

But there’s no reason to stop there.

At Hushly, we’ve created a platform that will increase your ABM and lead-gen conversions by at least 51%. We even guarantee it. Contact us today, and we’ll show you exactly how it works.

3 Opportunities to Improve Your B2B Marketing Strategies

In the Digital Age, it’s never been more apparent which companies are using B2B marketing strategies that earn results and which are struggling with plans that don’t work.

The former is constantly able to chase new initiatives, often breaking ground on channels the rest of their industry hasn’t leveraged quite yet (e.g. social media). At best, the latter is forced into playing catch-up.

Even if you’ve seen some positive feedback from your current strategy – say, an uptick in traffic – that’s no reason to assume your plan couldn’t use a review. Instead, look for opportunities to improve.

3 Ways to Improve B2B Marketing Strategies

While B2B content audits are one of the most important ways to improve your organic traffic and convert the leads who come to your site, it’s not the only opportunity you have to improve your company’s online presence.

1. Add Some Element of Account-Based Marketing

More and more, B2B marketing strategies that don’t take an account-based approach are going to lose to those that do.

After all, as the name indicates, account-based marketing (ABM) zeroes in on the specific needs of each prospect. Blog posts, social media posts, webinars – these are all great forms of content, but they can’t compete with the kind of tailored-approach that account-based marketing represents.

Now, maybe you’ve already considered ABM but concluded it just wasn’t a good fit. Maybe your company requires far too many leads every month to make ABM a realistic option.

Then, consider only applying ABM to your most valuable leads.

You could use lead-scoring to immediately make this evaluation the moment you’re able to get any feedback from a prospect. Chatbots will give you this opportunity, but you could also email any new leads a quick questionnaire to find out what kind of returns they might represent.

Then, anytime it becomes clear that you’re speaking with one of these high-value prospects, you dispatch your team of trained ABM specialists to reach out and start nurturing them, bypassing the rest of your normal funnel and accelerating their path to converting.

2. Get into “the Media Business”

In a now-famous interview Gary Vaynerchuk gave back in 2013, he told the story about how Guinness Beer invented The Guinness Book of World Records because research showed that when their demographic went to pubs, they largely talked about two things: soccer and trivia.

By starting their own media company dedicated to the latter, they enjoyed a direct connection with their market, which included the opportunity to advertise their product.

Interestingly, Vaynerchuk told this story to a lawyer who asked about the kind of content she could publish to grab the attention of her prospects. He recommended she take Guinness’ approach by first thinking about what her market is already interested in.

Now, does that mean you need to start your own media company to generate more leads?

No.

However, it does mean that you should be generating traffic from every possible source – including those that may not be dedicated to your industry.

Even though this advice is almost seven years old, very few B2B marketing strategies utilize it. Sure, plenty of B2B companies invest in paid traffic, but they tend not to stray too far from social media, Google Ads, and industry sites. Those are good opportunities, but competition is high.

Where else does media provide you with opportunities to connect with your audience uncontested? That’s where you should go looking for leads.

3. Add Another “Content-Type” to Your Social Media

Speaking of social media, there’s probably a lot of room on your current platforms to diversify the kind of content you post.

There are all kinds of social media content-types you could post to mix things up and stand out from the crowd. For example, if none of your competitors are posting videos, that would be an excellent opportunity. Similarly, if they never post testimonials, think how good that will make your company look if you start doing so regularly.

If your current B2B social media strategy is just industry news and little more, you have plenty of room to grow. Adopt a type of content you don’t see competitors using and start implementing it.

Using These B2B Marketing Strategies to Increase Conversions Right Away

As we mentioned at the beginning, you should always audit your approach to look for where new opportunities lie. Long after you surpass your competition, it’s worth considering other B2B marketing strategies that may help to increase that distance.

At Hushly, we’ve created a platform that is able to take any strategy and immediately improve its results. Contact us today and we’ll show you how all you need to do is add our software to your site to immediately enjoy an increase in your ABM and lead-gen conversions of 51% – guaranteed.

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3 Ways PPC Takes on Common B2B Marketing Challenges

The Internet has made life easier than ever before for B2B marketers. Before the World Wide Web, successful B2B marketers were often the ones who simply figured out how to get past the gatekeepers at a company, so they could get in front of a decision-maker. Even then, it was usually a lot of work to lock in a sale.

That being said, the Digital Age is not without its own B2B marketing challenges. The Internet has made it easier for everyone, meaning successful marketers are now those that have figured out how to overcome those challenges better than the army of competitors they’re up against.

More and more, they’re doing this with pay-per-click (PPC) advertising.

3 Common B2B Marketing Challenges You Can Overcome with PPC

Marketers who love PPC really love PPC. They’ll sing its praises for days and swear they’d give up without it.

For those who haven’t used PPC at all, it can be a little hard to take seriously.

So, let’s look at three different B2B marketing challenges that everyone has to deal with and how paid ads can help overcome them.

1. The Long Wait for Organic Traffic

We’ve talked before about how you can use content marketing to overcome common B2B marketing challenges, but that approach still takes time. Unless your company faces very little competition, ranking well in Google is usually an uphill climb. In fact, according to Neil Patel, a good content marketing plan still takes about two years to pay off.

Do you have two years you can wait before seeing an ROI on all the content you publish?

It’s not that it won’t be worth the wait, it’s just that there’s plenty you can do in the meantime to drive traffic to your website. Specifically, you can use paid traffic to attract leads. While it’s not “free traffic”, it’s better than no traffic at all.

2. Addressing the Individual Decision-Makers at Companies

Easily one of the biggest B2B marketing challenges is trying to address the many decision-makers that have to sign off on your solution before their company will invest in it. The average company a B2B business markets to includes 6.8 such decision-makers.

What makes this challenge even more daunting is that most of these employees have completely different priorities. For example, the CTO may be interested in your software because it will solve their company’s cloud-related problems, but the CFO is far more interested in the payment plan you offer.

Trying to address this challenge through content marketing usually produces lackluster results. In that last example, blog posts may work really well to nurture the CTO into a lead. However, there probably isn’t a great blog post idea – much less several – that would win over the CFO. Literally, all that person cares about is what it will do to their budget.

For those kinds of one-issue stakeholders, PPC is perfect. This is especially true when you can literally target the individual via LinkedIn Ads, so you can speak directly to their concerns. Instead of wasting time and money creating content that won’t convert, you just need one landing page and the right ads.

3. Measuring Marketing ROIs

Most online marketers really enjoy sitting down to put together their winning strategy.

Unfortunately, almost no marketer enjoys being forced to figure out whether or not their strategy is actually working. It’s relatively easy to tell if conversions are coming in and if those conversions are creating a net profit, but that’s a lot different than trying to get clear about the actual ROI you’re seeing.

Plus, content audits are becoming progressively more common throughout B2B industries. Companies that carry them out will enjoy a huge advantage over those that don’t, meaning you better get on the bandwagon.

Of course, the longer you’ve been posting content, the longer they take.

Again, that’s not to say that you shouldn’t invest in content marketing, but you won’t have to go through this same issue with paid ads. Your ROI couldn’t be clearer, and you can modify your ads as you go – much simpler than a full-blown audit.

How to Overcome the King of B2B Marketing Challenges

Paid ads will absolutely help you get around the three B2B marketing challenges we just listed above. For many marketers, that’s enough reason to invest in them, even if they still have some heavy lifting to do in order to lock in the conversion.

That’s where Hushly comes in.

Companies like Intel, Juniper Networks, and Unisys rely on our platform because it locks in leads. In fact, we guarantee you’ll see lead generation and ABM conversions increase by no less than 51%.

If you’d like to see how, just contact us today?

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3 Essentials Most B2B Online Marketing Plans Are Missing

In the Digital Age, no B2B company can survive without marketing themselves online.

Even organizations with reputations that go back generations or those that serve the most niche of audiences will struggle without a winning B2B online marketing plan. Many have even gone out of business without this essential strategy.

And yet, the vast majority of B2B companies’ online marketing plans are missing some very important features.

3 Elements Every B2B Online Marketing Plan Must Include

Don’t just settle for coming up with a B2B online marketing plan. If yours doesn’t align with the following essentials, it won’t fare well against any competitor that has invested in each of the following.

1. A Document B2B Online Marketing Plan

According to the Content Marketing Institute, only 37% of B2B marketers actually document their plans. That means more than half of your competitors probably don’t have a formal B2B online marketing plan that’s written down or otherwise documented.

Think about how that limits its results (or maybe you don’t need to).

Without a documented plan, you can’t share it with others in an effective way. Word of mouth is not effective.

You also can’t reference it if team members dispute what the actual plan was. You’ll have a hard time holding people accountable when nothing actually documented what they were supposed to be doing.

Lastly, there will be no formal record of what worked well and what you should avoid investing in going forward. In B2B, many of the best strategies require a long-term perspective. That’s almost impossible without a documented plan.

Don’t be one of the 63% of B2B companies that don’t have a documented plan for their online marketing efforts. Write down what your plan is, what tools it will entail, who owns which activities, what your goals are, and how you’re using your budget. Keep it in a secure place where authorized team members can see it and revise the strategy as necessary.

2. Lead Magnets for Capturing Leads’ Information

There are all kinds of ways to bring potential clients to your company’s website. SEO and paid ads are two of the most common among B2B companies, though social media is picking up speed, too.

The problem for most B2B companies isn’t necessarily getting traffic to their sites, though. It’s that once those leads show up, the companies have no way of reaching out to them later. They go to all the trouble of creating great content to attract and engage, but then they’re left simply hoping the lead will contact them to become a client.

Don’t be so passive.

Instead, invest in lead magnets. As the name suggests, lead magnets draw-in your visitors by offering them the promise of your absolute best content in return for their contact information.

For example, if your B2B company offers IT audits, you might have a blog post that discusses the best possible servers on the market for small businesses working in finance. Then, at the end of the post, you can offer your readers a case study that shows how a small finance company was able to increase their profits by 10% after making just one change to their IT setup.

If you don’t have lead magnets, you will always struggle to generate leads from your site. Good blog posts are no longer enough.

3. A Regular Content Audit to Keep Site’s on Google’s Good Side

Finally, if your company doesn’t currently have a content audit on the calendar, that needs to change.

This is when you literally go through every page on your website and decide if it’s legitimately contributing to your bottom line or not. If it’s not, delete those pages until all you have left is high-quality, high-converting content.

The first time you do a content audit, it will probably take a while. The more pages on your site, the more work you’ll have to do.

That’s why, going forward, it’s so important that you make content audits a regular practice. Consider doing them twice a year or even more often if your company is posting every single day.

Aside from the fact that this will make each audit much easier, it will also make them much more effective, ensuring you benefit from their effects ASAP.

Is Your B2B Online Marketing Plan Set Up to Convert?

At the end of the day, the ultimate test of any B2B online marketing is whether or not it adds to your profits. No matter what you add or do differently, it doesn’t matter if your plan doesn’t increase conversions.

That’s why so many B2B companies rely on Hushly. Our platform is guaranteed to increase your lead generation and ABM conversions by no less than 51%.

Would you like to know how?

Then, contact us today to schedule a demo.

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How to Get Started with LinkedIn B2B Lead Generation

For years, LinkedIn was a bit of a paradox for B2B marketers.

On the one hand, you absolutely had to have a presence on this social media platform. It was the one place online you could be sure your prospects visited. Everyone has a LinkedIn account, even if they’re not incredibly active on it.

On the other hand, LinkedIn’s advertising platform used to seem as though it was designed as some kind of cruel practical joke. Even though the site had all of your leads listed with a ton of valuable information about them, ads featured next-to-no helpful features and costed a small fortune. You would have been better off paying for a billboard outside your prospect’s office.

Fortunately, that’s changed. Today, if you know what you’re doing, LinkedIn B2B lead generation could easily be one of your company’s best investments.

3 Tips for Getting Started with LinkedIn B2B Lead Generation

Over time, you’ll learn how to modify your company’s LinkedIn B2B lead generation strategy to best serve your unique goals.

For now, concentrate on just getting started by using the following tips. The sooner you are able to put a strategy into place, the sooner you can turn it into a force multiplier for your marketing budget’s ROI.

1. Focus Your Company’s Page on Lead Generation

This may be a beginner’s tip, but it’s also one that 99% of companies seem to miss completely.

If you look at most company’s LinkedIn accounts, it’s as if they’re trying to put you to sleep. A lot of them are literally the About Us section from their website cut-and-pasted into the account. It’s all accurate information, of course, but who cares? If it’s not generating leads for the company, it’s not making any difference.

Do not make this simple mistake.

Instead, turn your company’s profile into a lead generation machine.

Use your header image to show off what you do. Include engaging content like testimonials or even advertise that you have case studies in your profile.

Follow through with your company description. Use this space to pitch what your B2B business has to offer. Remember, only about the first two lines are displayed until a lead clicks, so make them count.

2. Use Content to Gain Social Proof

Content marketing isn’t just for your B2B company’s blog. You can also share those posts on LinkedIn. In fact, you should be sharing them and even creating unique posts on LinkedIn as much as possible.

There are two reasons for this.

First, if your post resonates with a lead, that may be all it takes to have them visit your website and reach out about possibly becoming a client.

Second, the more your posts generate interests from your LinkedIn following, the more likes, comments, and shares you’re likely to receive. Not only will that feedback help to increase the exposure of your piece, but it will also go a long way toward building up your social proof.

When it becomes clear to prospects on LinkedIn that your company is viewed as an authority, LinkedIn B2B lead generation will become much easier.

Also, keep in mind that you don’t have to limit your efforts only to content you’ve actually created. Unlike your actual blog, you can share others’ content on your LinkedIn account and simply offer a few sentences of commentary.

3. Create Separate Showcases for Each Segment

Another tragically overlooked opportunity for LinkedIn B2B lead generation is their showcase pages. Even though they’ve been around since 2013, most companies don’t take advantage of them.

In short, these are subpages you can add to your company’s profile to promote any subsidiaries. However, even if your business doesn’t have any official subsidiaries, you can still use showcase pages to market your company’s different initiatives and business units.

For example, if your accounting-software company serves the needs of small businesses, medium businesses, and enterprises, you could create a showcase page for each. This specificity will draw more interest and automatically segments your audience right from LinkedIn.

LinkedIn B2B Lead Generation

LinkedIn B2B lead generation could become one of your company’s highest ROI investments, especially because all of the above tips are free. So, even if you’re still not ready to dedicate any amount of your budget to LinkedIn ads, this social-media platform could still be a goldmine.

For best results, add Hushly to the mix. Use LinkedIn to drive traffic to your site and then let our software turn those visitors into qualified leads. We’re so confident in what we’ve built that we actually guarantee lead generation and ABM conversions will increase by at least 51%.

Contac t us today to see how.

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How to Improve Your PPC Lead Generation Quality

Every B2B company should be actively investing in PPC lead generation.

While there’s a lot to be said for organic traffic and building a following on social media, PPC often offers the best possible ROI. If nothing else, it’s a great way to generate leads while you’re working on that social media following and impressive Google ranking.

Of course, even if you’ve already been investing in PPC, there’s always something more you can do.

3 Ways to Improve Your B2B Company’s PPC Lead Generation

It’s tempting to rest on your laurels when your PPC lead generation strategy is returning impressive results, but if you implement the three tips below, you may be surprised by how much better you’ll do in a very short period of time.

1. Try LinkedIn Ads

Despite the fact that LinkedIn is an absolutely essential social media channel for B2B companies, in the past, its advertising platform left a lot to be desired. While B2B marketers would use LinkedIn to share posts and build their network, they would generally take their budgets to Google Ads.

LinkedIn used to lack custom audiences, had almost no metrics whatsoever, and didn’t offer goal-based pricing. Twitter and Facebook’s advertising platforms have offered these for years.

And, on top of all that, LinkedIn ads used to cost a small fortune.

Fortunately, LinkedIn Ads have improved a lot over the last year. Now, they do feature account-, web-, and contact-targeting, and sponsored InMail campaigns.

Of course, these features are made all the better by the fact that LinkedIn is a social media platform dedicated solely to business. No matter what industry you’re in, your leads are most likely on LinkedIn.

So, if your PPC lead generation budget isn’t producing the ROI you want, one easy solution may be simply reallocating some of your funds to the new paid advertising powerhouse that is LinkedIn.

2. Focus Your Ads on Securing Email Addresses

B2B and B2C ads don’t work the same way.

If your company was B2C, you could probably just run paid ads right to your product, service, or landing page. In fact, you may not even need to invest in a PPC lead generation strategy. Your buying cycle would be so short that you could simply sell someone right from an ad.

This is almost never going to work in B2B. For one thing, B2B buying cycles have actually increased in length over the past five years. Then, there’s the fact that the average B2B company has to convince 6.8 decision-makers before they can close a sale.

All that is to say that if you’re trying to close deals with a PPC ad, you’re probably not seeing success. Instead, use those ads to secure leads’ email addresses. Bring them to a page where they can download the advertised lead magnet in exchange for their email address, and then use that address to continue your marketing efforts.

3. Pay Attention to Your Most Successful Times

There is no shortage of metrics you can monitor in order to improve the success of your B2B company’s PPC ads.

Unfortunately, most marketers miss one of the most important, especially in the world of B2B: the time-parameters when your ads will be displayed.

In Google Ads, this is known as “ad scheduling.” Facebook offers scheduling-by-time, too. Unfortunately, as far as LinkedIn has come, it doesn’t offer time-specific parameters for ads, but hopefully, that will change soon.

The reason this metric matters so much is that your prospects are probably most susceptible to your ads’ offers during certain times of the day. For many of you, this will mean 9-5, Monday through Friday, when they’re at work. During their personal lives, they might not care as much.

On the other hand, your market may be so busy that the only time they can ever consider their options is when things slow down outside of normal business hours.

More likely than not, you’ll find that your openings are even more specific. For example, Mondays and Fridays might be busy, and mornings may not be good. So, you’ll find that your PPC lead generation efforts work best Tuesdays, Wednesdays, and Thursdays in the afternoon.

Always check back to see during which times your ads are most successful and then schedule them accordingly.

Turning PPC Lead Generation into Easy Conversions

Implement those above strategies ASAP and your PPC lead generation strategies will begin paying off more than ever before.

Of course, many of your fellow B2B marketers have discovered another shortcut to the results they want. Our platform is so good at earning conversions, that we actually guarantee a 51% increase in lead-generation and ABM conversions.

Want to see how?

Contact us today for a free demo.

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How to Use Content to Lower Your Cost of Leads

Launching a lead generation strategy can be exciting, but there’s no better feeling than when it pays off and your B2B company actually has the number of leads it needs to be successful.

Sadly, for many marketers, this ecstasy is short-lived when they find out what their average cost-for-leads is. It becomes clear that, if something isn’t changed quickly, the strategy that seemed so promising may actually turn into a major problem.

3 Ways You Can Use Content to Cut the Cost of Your Leads

There’s a lot to be said about the importance of publishing high-quality content to your B2B company’s website. Sharing it on social media can be extremely helpful, as well. The right content doesn’t just help to bring in organic traffic. It can help you build authority and qualify your company to prospects, as well.

Content can also go a long way toward dropping your cost-of-leads. Whether it’s currently out-of-control or you’re just worried it may be heading in that direction, here are three ways content can efficiently clip those costs.

1. Invest in Intent Data

At Hushly, we’re big advocates for the power of intent data. As the name suggests, this is data that reflects how someone behaves online with the goal of linking individuals to particular topics of interest.

So, if you sell CRM software, it would help to know if a prospect is reading your content because they’re trying to more effectively follow-up with leads or simply increase their lifetime value. Intent data would show you this, making it easy to deliver them the most relevant content.

Without this advantage, it will not only be difficult to keep your cost of leads down, but to convert them, as well. Imagine the prospect who wants to learn about how CRM can increase lifetime-customer-value who is shown several pieces of content on other topics instead.

They might stick around.

But they may also just go back to Google to see what the rest of their options are.

2. Switch to PPC Until You Have a Better Handle on Your Prospects

Every B2B company should have a plan for securing a reliable stream of organic traffic. It’s not just a high-ROI strategy, it can also be one of the most effective methods of increasing conversions, especially with long buying cycles.

These benefits are only reserved for those companies that know how to create the kind of content their most qualified leads want.

Again, intent data will help with this.

Until it does, though, you should consider focusing more of your marketing budget on paid ads that target those prospects directly. This will help cut your cost of leads and give you a reliable ROI while you take some time to better understand what kind of content works best for your market.

3. Conduct a Content Audit

Finally, one of the simplest steps you can take toward cutting the cost of your leads is by actually looking at the effectiveness of the content you create.

Even if you were to create all of your own content, there would still be a cost involved. That’s a lot of time spent away from other important priorities.

Of course, most B2B executives are paying others – either employees or contractors – to handle content creation for them.

That’s why it’s so important that you go back and see what’s actually working and to what degree. Otherwise, you may continue to invest in content types that offer little-to-no ROI. Your client acquisition costs will always remain inflated, then, because you’re paying for content that doesn’t move the needle.

There are a number of benefits to conducting a content audit, not the least of which is that it will help increase organic traffic, something that should then help you drop your costs significantly.

However, a detailed audit will also show you what kind of content to quit creating, what kind to double-down on, and even what kind may have potential but deserves further consideration.

Cut Your Cost of Leads by Converting More of Them

Implement the above advice and you’ll quickly find your company’s average cost of leads drop. Even just switching to PPC can give you some valuable breathing room while you consider the other two.

That said, we are also very proud to offer a platform that will increase your conversions immediately. Nothing will make your leads cost less than being able to convert them quickly and we guarantee that your lead generation and ABM conversions will increase by at least 51%.

Sound too good to be true?

We know.

That’s why we would be more than happy to prove it. Contact us today to set up a free demo.

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How to Audit B2B Marketing Strategies

Nothing is quite as frustrating as putting lots of time and money into your B2B marketing strategies only to be disappointed by their results.

However, before you go investing even more into improving your funnels, take a step back and conduct an audit first, so you can be sure of what’s wrong.

3 Ways to Audit B2B Marketing Strategies

The only way to consistently improve the ROI on your B2B marketing strategies is to continuously audit them.

Here are the three best ways to do it.

1. Audit Individual Marketing Assets

Today’s B2B marketing strategies may use any number of different assets to generate leads and nurture them towards conversions. Even social media platforms have become extremely popular in B2B industries.

That doesn’t necessarily mean they’re all equally effective, though, which is why you should audit your company’s individual marketing assets regularly.

This seems obvious enough when you have, say, blog posts with no social shares, comments, or clicks. Clearly, that needs to be addressed ASAP, either deleted completely or updated.

A simple content audit could be all it takes to improve your conversion rates, even when it involves getting rid of whole pages on your site.

Where most B2B marketers struggle is assuming that, as long as a piece of content is bringing in leads – no matter how few – it’s doing its job. Marketers put a lot of work into creating these pieces, so they just assume that it’s doing as well as it possibly can.

Even if that was true when it was first published, its effectiveness may drop over the years for countless reasons. If there’s not a way you can improve it now, you may need to replace it with something better.

We recently talked about one of these misconceptions. It used to be that time spent on an asset led to higher sales. This was taken for granted for years until it became impossible to ignore it was no longer the case. Companies that haven’t adjusted or replaced assets designed to increase the time that leads spent on them are going to continue to see funnel problems until they do.

2. Actually Speak – and Listen – to Your Sales Department

It should come as no surprise that one of the most common ways to judge if B2B marketing strategies are working or not is to look at their conversion rate. If you know you’re generating leads, but you’re not seeing new clients, that’s a logical place to look.

Usually, this “audit” involves looking at the sales teams’ numbers relative to the amount of leads the marketing team is generating for them. If there’s a costly disparity, it’s usually assumed that the marketing department needs to be more careful about focusing on qualified leads.

The problem is that the sales department is rarely consulted for specifics. Maybe the leads are qualified, but they’re getting sent to the sales team far too early. They still need some nurturing before they’ll convert.

Maybe the problem is fraudulent contact information, an extremely common problem that often ruins the potential ROI on otherwise valuable lead magnets.

Of course, there could be a number of different issues at play, too. The only way to know for sure is to sit down with the sales department and find out what their experience is with trying to convert the leads your marketing team generates.

3. Understand Sales Velocity

Finally, this next method is absolutely essential to auditing B2B marketing strategies if for no other reason than because most marketers don’t even know what sales velocity is.

Simply put, sales velocity measures the efficiency of your marketing funnel. In other words, not just how many sales your funnel nets you, but what kind of timeframe is involved. This concept is absolutely essential for effectively auditing your funnel because it provides you the most comprehensive view of its performance.

For example, without this kind of perspective, you might think the problem is an insufficient number of leads. So, you start investing in lead-generation without realizing that it’s the average ROI and the conversion rate that’s killing you.

Fortunately, the equation for sales velocity is extremely simple. It’s:

Number of Leads x Average Deal Size x Conversion Rate Percentage

Then, take that number and divide by the average amount of time it takes to get a conversion.

This equation – not just its product – will help you better understand why your results aren’t satisfactory.

Are B2B Marketing Strategies Falling Apart Right at the End?

Finally, if you’ve checked every other box on your B2B marketing strategies but are still losing qualified leads after they visit your site, it’s time to start using Hushly.

We are so confident in our platform that we actually guarantee a 51% increase in lead-generation and ABM conversions. Contact us today to find out why.

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B2B vs. B2C Social Media Marketing

In the last few years, social media marketing has gone from a method that almost no one in B2B was using to a strategy that’s been proven across almost every industry.

As just about everyone in the world uses at least one social media platform, B2B companies have an opportunity to engage their leads directly.

Still, widescale adoption hasn’t necessarily coincided with a widescale understanding of how to use these platforms for best results. Far too many don’t understand the difference between social media for B2B vs. B2C companies, which results in lackluster results.

B2B vs. B2C Marketing on Social Media Platforms

We’ve talked about B2B vs. B2C marketing before because it’s a persistent problem on this side of the fence.

Here are some of the main differences between B2B and B2C companies when it comes to using social media.

1. Understanding the Consumer Mindset on Social Media

When Facebook first introduced the idea of being able to use their platform to run ads, most marketers scoffed. They pointed out that people weren’t in a purchasing mindset when they visited Facebook. Google Ads was still the best bet, they contended because people use the search engine when they want to make a purchase.

Obviously, we now know that Facebook marketing works for most businesses, but much of that sentiment should still be considered.

B2C companies that use social media marketing can often get away with linking directly to product, service, or landing pages. They can literally advertise what they’re offering in a post and then funnel the resulting interest to a page where leads can make purchases.

The same can’t be said for most B2B companies. As you probably know, yours has a much longer buying cycles compared to B2C buyers. An average of 6.8 decision-makers are involved in each buying decision, as well.

All of this is to say that your social media presence needs to involve sharing content – not just your own, either – and building authority. As you do this, your prospects will be more comfortable with converting.

2. There’s No Need to Be Boring

In recent years, there’s been a push for B2B companies to put a little more personality in their copy. Traditionally, it’s been acceptable – even expected – for B2B companies to create fairly boring copy, no matter the industry.

Even though that’s begun to change among blogs, the same can’t necessarily be said for social media posts.

In this way, B2B and B2C companies should be on the same page. It is “social” media, after all. It’s okay to adopt a more informal tone and have a bit of fun. Boring social media strategies won’t just fail to garner leads. Given the way these platforms put your company right next to others, it can actually position your business in a rather unflattering light.

So, while you still need to take the above advice into consideration, that’s no reason to risk putting your followers to sleep. The best way to earn those followers in the first place is by adopting a fun, engaging tone with your posts.

3. Invest in LinkedIn

Maybe one of the biggest differences between B2B and B2C social media marketing is LinkedIn. For B2C companies, it’s almost never a good investment. However, LinkedIn is amazing for B2B businesses. Your prospects are definitely waiting for you there.

Instead of just direct messaging them, though, see if you can’t first grab their attention by sharing helpful posts.

With that being said, B2B companies can find success on other social media platforms, too. It would be a real shame if you missed an opportunity on, say, Twitter only to let one of your competitors enjoy it uncontested.

The key is doing your due diligence. Don’t just assume you have prospects on a certain platform. Don’t think you’ll be able to lure them over to one, either.

Instead, find out where they’re already congregating. Search for topics related to your field and see how much engagement they get. Otherwise, you run the risk of investing in a social media strategy that may have never had a chance of succeeding.

B2B vs. B2C: Converting Social Media Leads

When you understand the difference between B2B and B2C social media marketing, you should also find it much easier to attract leads to your website who are ready to convert.

Still, it’s usually not that easy.

That’s why so many B2B companies from across multiple industries rely on our platform. At Hushly, we’re so sure that our software will get you more leads and conversions that we guarantee it. We’re that confident that our platform will increase your lead generation and ABM conversions by no less than 51%.

Of course, we’d be more than happy to show you how.

Just contact us today to schedule a demo.

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How to Maximize the ROI on B2B Marketing Technology

I thought that moving from Sales to Customer Success was going to be easy.

No more unanswered emails, people bailing out of meetings five minutes before they start while I’m in the lobby signing in at the reception desk, or problems with follow through on the few things they have to take care of in order to achieve the goals they provided me.

I was headed for the easy street, right?

Wrong.

Very wrong.

5 Ways to Increase the ROI on Your B2B Marketing Technology

As it turns out, even though B2B marketing technology is literally designed to support success, it often seems to actually get in the way.

I never blame the customers, though.

The truth is that there are a number of different reasons it can be extremely difficult for companies to fully realize the benefits of the products and services in which they invest.

Many of them have inherited the responsibility of managing a project, piece of technology, or service without having any input in the decision to purchase it.

In many cases, this person is looking to learn and manage dozens of solutions as well as multiple internal stakeholders who have no idea or insight into the business value of this technology. It’s just one more thing on their plate.

Fortunately, I’ve also discovered that it doesn’t need to be this way.

In fact, I’ve come up with a list of five factors you can focus on to ensure that your organization is able to maximize its return on investment in all new technology. Prioritize them, and I think you’ll find they also help to minimize stress and may even lead to a promotion.

1. Align on Expectations

Put together a schedule, clear goals, and KPI’s and clearly define roles and responsibilities on both the customer side, as well as the customer success team on the B2B marketing technology or service vendor’s side.

2. Take Advantage of Your Customer Success Managers

As their titles make clear, Customer Success Managers are there to help you succeed and want to do everything they can to make your life easier.

So, schedule regular meetings with them. Schedule them frequently in the beginning until you become comfortable in using the product and running its reports. Among other things, this will demonstrate its value to other people in your organization.

Never be shy about letting Customer Success Managers know what you need from them, including:

Hands-on Training
New Product Features
QBR Presentations for Senior Leaders

Again, their success depends on your success with their B2B marketing technology. Give them every opportunity to help.

3. Show Off What Your New B2B Marketing Technology Can Do

Organize a big show-and-tell or some type of roadshow for as many people in your organization who are interested in learning about the capabilities and opportunities related to a particular technology.

Even though content and campaign teams may not use the technology, the more they understand the capabilities before planning the content, the more successful everyone will be at getting it to the right audiences and increasing engagement and conversions.

4. Follow the Leaders

Chances are that other companies have already invested in these same platforms and found success using them.

Look at use cases of how the longest term and most successful customers are using this B2B marketing technology. They’ve likely done a lot of learning that you can benefit from without having to go through the same exact process. Ask for examples and connect with the community when possible so that you don’t spend a lot of time reinventing the wheel.

5. Secure an Executive Sponsor

Find at least one Executive sponsor who can make adoption and implementation of the technology much easier.

This could mean removing roadblocks, helping you when you have too many competing priorities, and being there to recognize a job well done once the investment has paid off. That last benefit is extremely important because it will help secure further buy-in from the rest of the staff.

Invest in the Right B2B Marketing Technology for the Best ROIs

Finally, one of the easiest ways to see better ROIs from your B2B marketing technology is simply making better choices about which versions you invest in for your business.

At Hushly, we’re extremely proud of the version we’ve created, specifically because it offers such a concrete ROI. In fact, we’re so confident in the power of our platform that we actually guarantee it will increase your lead-generation and ABM conversions by at least 51%.