Research from Sitecore in conjunction with B2B Marketing magazine shows that B2B marketers know their website is the main touch point for prospects finding out about their business, but 80% of sales orders still come through via phone calls, faxes or emails.

50% of B2B marketers reported that less than 10% of their sales orders come via their website, but 56% of marketers say that generating sales leads (and sales) is their primary objective for their website.

Our research shows B2B marketer websites are great at delivering the basics, but need work on the next stage of the digital journey, to engage the visitor more effectively and work towards a ‘conversion’ goal, such as providing contact details, downloading relevant content or even making a purchase from the website.

Here’s some pointers on how to use websites more effectively as a sales lead generation engine, and ‘convert’ more web site visits into something more meaningful for your business.

i) First impressions matter: If a web visitor comes from a search engine looking for a specific product or service, show content on your home page relevant to that search. Use tools such as GEO-IP location look-up to show relevant, local information, such as their nearest branch. For content, make it easy to get information on a range of factors, such as their vertical sector or business size.

ii) Make it easy: Some brands report that 30-40% of traffic to their website comes from mobile devices, but from our research, 46% of B2B marketers rate their website experience on mobile devices as poor or very poor. If your web visitor struggles with your site on a mobile device, they will simply leave and bounce away.

iii) Establish conversion goals: What do you want visitors to do on your site? If you orchestrate visits towards meaningful goals for your site, the more likely you will achieve these goals. If you want to capture contact data, how do you begin to drive this, what steps does the visitor go through to leave contact data, what is their incentive to do this?

iv) Continue the conversation: For returning visitors, use your knowledge of their previous visits to deepen the conversation with new, relevant content and start to introduce calls to action. Similar to a prospect who visits a sales showroom multiple times, this shows that the prospect is interested in your brand and could be moving towards a purchase.

v) Sell on the site: Half of B2B marketers told us that they get less than 10% of sales from their website, but more and more consumers want to buy from the website. If you could sell your product or service direct from your site, this could open a huge revenue stream for your business, to not only generate sales leads, but convert on site.

Click here to download a free copy of the Sitecore/B2B Marketing report. 

 

By Shawn Cabral, marketing director of Sitecore UK.  

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