If you’re like most B2B marketers, your conversion rates could stand to improve.
It’s nothing against you as a marketer. It’s just that B2B isn’t an easy field to convert prospects into leads and leads into loyal customers.
Across all industries, the average B2B conversion rate hovers around 2.25%. Ouch, and that’s average which means many are much lower.
Don’t think of your B2B conversion rate optimization as a tactic you improve every so often when sales dip. Think of it as an entire system. After all, it’s the whole point of marketing, right?
Here’s how.
Your B2B Conversion Strategy Isn’t a One-Off Tactic
Every business – whether B2B or B2C – has a website to convert leads into customers. That’s the whole purpose of digital marketing: to convert leads.
Unfortunately, too many marketers look at their B2B conversion strategy in the wrong way. They think of it as a tactic to improve every so often.
In reality, everything marketers do should improve their conversion rate: every tweak you make to your website, every social media post, each email you send, etc.
The question then becomes, is your website even set up and designed to optimize conversion rates?
For most B2Bs, the answer is no, it’s not. Here’s why.
There’s a massive gap between what B2B buyers want and what B2B vendors deliver in terms of marketing. B2B buyers are young – most key decision-makers are millennials now – and they want to research on their own terms. They don’t want to fill out lead forms and wait for you to contact them.
Unfortunately, most B2B sites are still clinging to marketing strategies of the past, and it’s costing them leads and customers.
Instead, you should strive to create a website experience that makes it easy for every visitor – whether a collected lead, customer, or anonymous visitor – to find the information they need seamlessly.
How to Boost Your B2B Conversion Rate Optimization Strategy in 2020
If you want to create an accessible website experience for your leads in every sense of the word, what tools can you use? What features can you adapt? What changes can you make – today?
Here are a few suggestions to get started.
Ditch Lead Forms
If there’s anything standing in the way of visitors accessing information on most B2B sites, it’s gated content and lead forms.
B2Bs invest so much money in their content and then put it behind intrusive forms. According to Content Marketing Institute, the average B2B spends $185k annually on content.
When you remove clunky lead magnet forms from your content, visitors will stay on your website longer, consume MORE content, and spend time learning about your company.
We all want those things, right?
Don’t worry. Genuine leads, leads who truly want to stay in touch, will hand over their email addresses when they’re ready. And when they do, they’ll be highly qualified and closer to a conversion.
Make It Easy for Visitors to Access Your Content
Removing forms from your site isn’t enough. If you’re serious about B2B conversion rate optimization, you also need to structure and deliver your content to web visitors in an accessible fashion.
The truth is that traditional blog themes aren’t conducive to lead nurturing and conversational marketing. According to Salesforce, 83% of B2B buyers say the key to winning their business is treating them like a human being so conversational marketing is critical.
Instead, incorporate an updated content structure with adaptive content hubs.
You can still organize your content into broad categories, but artificial intelligence uses machine learning to recommend similar pieces of content to every visitor – just like Netflix.
Automate Your Email Marketing
Email marketing is one of the easiest touchpoints to personalize AND automate efficiently but many B2Bs still fall short.
Set up multi-email campaigns ahead of time. You could create a welcome + nurturing campaign for different companies (for ABM), different job roles at a company, different stages of the buying cycle, or any other audience segments.
When a lead decides to hand over their email address, you can send out a personalized campaign based on whichever segment they fall into.
Don’t send one single email either. Create a welcome email and a few onboarding/nurturing emails to help them learn about your company.
Personalize Every Touchpoint on Your Website
Artificial intelligence makes it easy to provide every visitor with a seamless personalized experience. This is hugely important because 85% of B2B buyers say they have no problem dismissing a company that doesn’t personalize the very first point of contact.
With AI, you can use the same algorithms and technology as Netflix, Facebook, and Amazon to offer highly personalized content recommendations.
For example, you could use exit-intent popups to offer your leads MORE personalized content suggestions instead of shoving a lead form in their face. Like so:
Give Your Leads the Tools to Self-Nurture
At the end of the day, B2B conversion rate optimization is all about making it easy for your leads to self-nurture.
Leads complete an estimated 57% to 90% of the buying process on their own and they want tools to help research at their own pace. They don’t want to email sales teams. They don’t want to make phone calls. They want to browse your website and find the information they need right away.
Enter self-nurturing landing pages. Instead of ending with a single call-to-action, the self-nurturing landing page offers an endless stream of content to keep your visitors engaged and interested through personalized content recommendations.
Nail Your B2B Conversion Rate Optimization with the Power of AI
Hushly makes it easy to harness the power of AI to create a hyper-personalized experience for your leads. Our AI system uses behavioral data from each visitor, intent data, and behavioral data on earlier similar visitors to create a truly unique experience for everyone. It’s like Netflix or Amazon with recommended pieces of content but it also guides leads down the sales funnel towards a purchase.
