Let us start with convincing figures and stats that would help us further conclude our discussion.
In the common marketing/sales adoption process, we are supposed to spend $92 just for acquiring customers. The amazing fact is out of which only $1 is spent in converting them, i.e., in making them complete the defined company’s goal.
However, another fact that might bother is that hardly 22 percent of online businesses seem satisfied with their conversion rates.
Please don’t confuse the CRO (Conversion Rate Optimization) as the need of the hour just for B2C companies!
B2B companies, aiming at capturing and converting new leads, must not underestimate the power of CRO.
Following 5 proven ways to boost B2B conversion rates will help enhance your websites and gain a leg up against the competition.
Why is CRO important for B2B Business?
CRO (Conversion Rate Optimization) stands for conversion rate optimization, which refers to the likelihood of completion of the desired goal of your website/page by a user.
The defined goal of your website can range from buying a product, subscribing to a newsletter, requesting a quote for successful B2B lead generation.
Irrespective of your business size, more traffic and fewer conversions can lead to a decline in your profit margins.
B2B clients tend to have longer sales cycles with fewer chances of converting the first visits into immediate sales. So for magnifying B2B conversion rates, a solid understanding of usability testing and conversion opportunity is a must.
CRO impacts how customers interact with your website content and how they perceive your brand. More lead generation is proportional to sales with the same amount of traffic on your site.
CRO strategies help you determine the list of elements in your website that are attracting customers and areas of improvement.
If your B2B company wants to maximize return on investment (ROI) with your existing Internet marketing efforts, you can try CRO to multiple channels (say, your website, email content, etc.).
How to Boost B2B Conversions?
The B2B conversions depend on the setting of every element on your website.
Many proven strategies will help you generate more leads and attract sales. But 5 top areas that you can focus on and see instant results are summarized below:
- Know Your Audience
Your target audience is the key factor for planning and starting your sales funnel. Individuals with different roles come to your website to explore your B2B business. They analyze the structure and functioning before making any purchase decision.
How can you start tracing the RIGHT audience to your marketing place without investing more?
Data-driven marketing is the ultimate solution for you. It is an approach that advances the effectiveness of B2B marketing by fuelling the technology with information.
42% of B2B marketers accept that lack of appropriate data (of users/customers) is the biggest barrier in lead generation.
In short, you can’t improve when you can’t measure an estimate!
The data of your existing customer or prospect from prior campaigns, lead generation, or third parties can act as a starting point for your next successful marketing campaign.
Data of target customers can help you with designing your website too. The website developer already knows the right custom images and offers that can hold the eyes of first-time visitors.
Resources that can help you in understanding your customers via data and stats are Google Analytics, Google Tag Manager, and heat mapping tools (for example, Hotjar and Crazy Egg, etc.).
A tool like Google Analytics can provide worthwhile insights into your customer’s interaction with your website.
Likewise, heat mapping tools can help you in knowing how far users are generally scrolling down your page.
- A/B Test Everything
A/B testing is an effective tool for measuring audience preference.
Testing allows you to evaluate different elements of your website, social media posts, and email campaigns.
The goal of A/B testing is to determine the best version of the website/page that can earn you more conversions.
But what exactly to test or compare from their previous versions?
You can start with changing the way you convey your message to the visitors. Try different offers at different places on the home page, different colors of components, buttons, or the entire layouts.
It is good to test each element until their performance improves from good to better. It is advised to run at least five phases of testing each component.
You may use software like Google Optimize or Optimizely for testing various elements. The software lets you easily conduct the tests and make required, data-driven changes to the structure of your site.
So next time when you’re willing to redesign a landing page, test several different CTAs (calls to action). A/B testing will tell you the winner CTA that resonates with your visitors and makes them fill out a contact form.
- Simplify User Experience on Your Site
Pop-up pop-up! Do you like that irrelevant ad coming your way when you visit a site for a defined purpose?
B2B marketers are prone to over-complicate their conversion funnels and in-line the user experiences.
According to a report by Baymard Institute, 26% of customers ditch their carts at the last minute because they feel that the checkout process is quite complicated.
Points to consider for improving user experience on your site:
- Simplify your website design- Rather than driving your traffic directly from Google search results to your home page, consider creating separate landing pages for each product category.
- Simplify the checkout process- Start by removing all irrelevant forms available on your website. A guest account option is all you can do to make your customer feel hassle-free at checkout.
- Improve your website’s loading speed: Don’t let your customers wait for more after landing on your page. Try removing unnecessary design elements from your website; keep navigation smooth and straightforward.
- Optimize Your CTAs
So what will make a perfect CTA?
Different companies have different strategies depending on the marketing funnel and their ideal customer’s touching points.
Those touching points can be a concise call to action (CTAs) that clutch the attention of site visitors and facilitate the next step by them.
Keep your CTAs in a place where they are highly visible to users. For example, if your page is designed in a way that the page bottom has the highest density of CTAs.
And now, if you have tracked the activity of a user on-site, not scrolling down to the bottom using a visual representation of data, i.e., Heatmaps. You may conduct a test by moving the second CTA mid-page in the next trial.
Also, shape them carefully after considering the size, color, tone, and placement of your CTA buttons.
- Redesign your Landing Pages
Many first-time customers would hesitate to convert after superficially analyzing your services.
But adding different landing pages for different purposes to your site can add to conversions with clicks.
Every B2B marketer will have different answers to:
- Who is your target audience?
- What does your audience expect?
- Where will the landing page be visible?
- How will the visitors reach the landing page?
The answers to these questions will be a unique approach of B2B marketers for designing a landing page that converts.
Such data can be gathered from website analysis. Tracking audiences via Heatmaps and user surveys is also important.
Simple tweaks, like enhancing the aesthetic of landing pages or including clearer, concise, and streamlined CTAs.
Provide all necessary information regarding the product/service on your landing pages. This will save the time of B2B decision-makers and increase customer satisfaction.
Nearly 57% of B2B businesses consider conversion rate to be an essential standard for evaluating landing page performance.
It shows how CRO (conversion rate optimization) and landing page optimization can boost B2B conversions.
Final Words: 5 Proven Ways to Boost B2B Conversion Rates
Your digital marketing strategy and conversion rate optimization will predict the future of your B2B sales.
Apart from creating engaging content and promoting it via social media channels, improving user experience on your website, leveraging the retargeting practices can help you to boost B2B conversion rates.
Wrapping up with some additional tips:
Create a B2B conversion funnel:
The main idea of the conversion funnel is to opt out of the audience that doesn’t fit your target criteria.
The idea is to focus on those prospects that can become your loyal customer.
Attract by an offering, engage with your content, nurture with your service, and convert them from visitor to buyer.
Retargeting Practices:
You may use email marketing or other strategies like ad promotion to target your existing visitors or customers.
Searching for new prospects that may or may not show interest in your products/services is time and money-consuming.
Conversion Rate Optimization is the key to unlocking sales. You may choose any of the above-mentioned approaches to boost your B2B marketing conversions and lead generation.
Do tell us which of the proven ways proved best for your B2B marketing.
