You know the B2B buying cycle is long but why aren’t your leads ever converting into customers?
If you’ve spent most of your time generating leads without worrying about quality or vetting, there’s a good chance that your B2B conversion rate is suffering.
If so, now is a valuable time to take a step back and re-evaluate your acquisition process.
How are visitors arriving on your site? Where are you collecting email addresses? Are they engaging with your content?
Put yourself in the mindset of your visitors and everything will start falling into place.
Your Leads Need a Mobile-Friendly Experience
Your target B2B audience isn’t a bunch of boomers and generation Xers. Like it or not, you need to meet the needs of millennials and Generation Z.
As of 2015, Think with Google reported that 46% of all buyers were between the ages of 18 and 34. For B2B marketers, this means creating a user-centric experience with plenty of personalization.
Your buyers go home and workout with their fitness devices, order food through UberEATS, and binge endless streams of customized content on Netflix. Their expectations for these hyper-personalized algorithms don’t change when they come into work the next day.
Think with Google also recently reported that B2Bs spend between two and three hours each day researching brands on their mobile devices. Mobile activity influences roughly 40% of B2B revenue every year.
If that wasn’t enough, by next year, 70% of all B2B searches will take place on mobile devices.
If you want to improve your B2B conversion rate, it’s critical to create a mobile-friendly experience from start to finish. In other words, everything needs to be optimized for mobile from your web pages and blog down to your lead magnets and emails.
Source: Think with Google
7 Secrets to Improving Your B2B Conversion Rate
Now you know that improving your visitors’ mobile experience is critical to boosting your B2B conversion rate – but how can you put this into practical action?
Here are a few tips to start bringing your B2B marketing strategy and website into 2020.
1. Get Rid of Forms
Forms are holding you back. No one opens a blog post, sees a form and thinks “Oh great, I can’t wait to give another website my information just to read an article.”
The truth is, there’s absolutely no way to optimize forms for mobile devices – no matter how much you tweak your layout, change the order, and update fields – because it’s still a form.
Forms are clunky and they get in the way of leads consuming your content. Instead, give your visitors a sample of your content and ask them to provide an email address if they’d like to read the rest.
Source: Hushly
2. Create an Adaptive Content Hub
An adaptive content hub with content bingeing features can satisfy your buyer’s expectation for a Netflix-like experience and ultimately boost your B2B conversion rate.
When you get rid of forms, people will spend more time reading your content and educating themselves about your company.
Use an adaptive content hub to put all of your content together in one place:
- Ebooks
- Podcasts
- Tutorials
- Case studies
- White papers
- Videos
3. Give Away Your Best Content
You spend so much time and money creating amazing in-depth content for your visitors – why are you hiding it behind a form?
Instead, include your best content in your adaptive content hub.
Research shows that 78% of buyers consume between three and five pieces of content before talking to a sales team. Putting your best content on display is important for demonstrating the value of your company and the services you can provide.
4. Let Leads Nurture Themselves
The idea of self-nurturing follows into the points above.
You want to offer your visitors an experience that allows them to educate themselves about your company, industry, and the services you provide.
When you incorporate self-nurturing landing pages into your website, your B2B conversion rate will jump because leads will be further along in the sales funnel before they even reach out to your team.
5. Incorporate AI
AI and algorithms are the only way to make these features work.
When a visitor arrives at your website, an algorithm will monitor the types of content they consume in the content hub and continue offering them similar content.
Yes, AI can sound scary but it’s essential today if you want to provide the type of experience that your visitors expect.
6. Create the Content Your Audience Wants to Read
According to LinkedIn research, B2Bs aren’t out there reading white papers – 49% of them consume video during the buying process while 65% say they find podcasts valuable for learning about a brand.
It’s up to you to do your research and find out what type of content they want from you. If your B2B conversion rate is low, it may be because you’re not creating the right kind of content.
7. Only Collect High-Quality Leads
At Hushly, we use human verification to make sure our clients only receive the highest quality leads.
Collecting email addresses from everyone who visits your website doesn’t just waste resources and send you down rabbit holes, it also throws off your data.
Accurate data is at the heart of every successful personalization campaign. Sadly, over 60% of businesses say their data is either not current or correct. Using correct data to drive your personalized campaigns like email or LinkedIn retargeting is sure to make your B2B conversion rate jump.
Ditch Forms and Watch Your Leads Grow
We promise – you won’t miss forms, and neither will your leads. Getting rid of forms in favor of self-nurturing landing pages won’t only reduce your bounce rate, but it will also skyrocket your lead conversions by at least 51%.
When people aren’t bombarded with clunky forms, they’ll spend more time consuming your awesome content and educating themselves about how you can help them. When they’ve decided you’re a good fit, they’ll sign up.
See what it’s like to build a database of high-quality leads. Learn more about optimizing your lead magnets for conversions.
