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A Simple Checklist to Enhance Your B2B Website Strategy
Imagine two websites vying for the same client: you. One is a professional brochure-style website that outlines what they do and who they are. It ticks the boxes you'd expect from a business.
However, the other website does things a little differently.
From the moment you arrive, they capture your attention, offer you relevant content, and win you over. You book that call with their sales team to find out more.
That's the power of a marketing-focused website. To help you achieve that setup, here's a comprehensive checklist to help you enhance your B2B website strategy.
Customer Research
No B2B website strategy is complete without some customer research. Here’s a list of what you need to do.
Research the Market
Before you delve into learning about your customer, examine your target market.
Researching your competitors is a helpful first step because that will give you a better high-level view of where you fit. Check the structure and design of their websites and the content they offer.
You could also run a survey or poll to get fresh insights into your market’s potential. That will help you spot market strengths and weaknesses and shape your website strategy accordingly.
If you have an existing website, use analytics tools to gather insights into website behavior and preferences.
Write a Customer Avatar
A customer avatar is a detailed profile of your target client. It goes beyond basic information like the type of industry or size of company you target. An avatar tells you a story about your ideal customer.
It will delve into the details, like the company’s most significant challenges and current business goals.
That gives you more valuable information for your website strategy because I will help you understand the motives of anyone who lands on your home page.
Analyze the Insights
Once you’ve researched your customer and market, you must begin analyzing all this data.
You want to aim for an in-depth understanding of how your customers will interact with your website, like the content they favor and how they move through your sales funnel.
Consider how people arrive from your website, like social media or via a Google search results page.
These insights will shape your long-term website strategy. It’s about tailoring a website experience that matches your customers’ needs and moves them closer to a purchase.
Create Your Content Strategy
The most crucial aspect of your website is the content. So, this is the next step in establishing your B2B website strategy.
Define Your Content Goals
Before you can begin deciding on your content, think about your goals. Every bit of content on your website should align with a higher-level goal for your business.
That might be about establishing your authority. Or it could be a goal related to nurturing your audience. For sales pages, the goal may be conversion-related - like the percentage of visitors who book a call with you.
List these goals and make sure they are measurable. Ensure they align with the audience research you did, too.
For example, if your research found that customers like to read case studies before choosing a supplier, use that information to shape your content objectives.
Outline Your Content Plan
Once you have your goals, it’s time to turn those into more tangible deliverables for your website. Here, you want a list of content across your website that links with those goals.
You’ll have different types of content - like blog posts, homepages, and about information, but go further.
Think about topics you should cover or case studies you want to write.
Perhaps you want to produce some downloadables like industry reports. Remember to think about customer-led content, such as testimonials and reviews that is vital for your website.
Create Your Lead Generation Methods
Remember that your website is there to serve your company. It’s a tool for generating new leads. Here’s what to consider when putting together your B2B website strategy.
Create Your Offers
A lead generation strategy needs an incentive.
This offer will get people sitting on the fence to act. So think of free ways you can entice your target customer. Your audience research should help with this. It could be a free consultation call, demo, or guide.
Landing Page
You need a landing page to help move prospects into your sales funnel. This landing page must be simple with a single goal - getting the prospect’s contact details.
That might be an email address or a telephone number. You need your offer as the incentive to do this.
Focus on Your Call-to-Actions
You’ll get a yes or no when you ask a prospect on your website to do something. That’s your conversion rate.
Your call to action is there to increase the yesses. So, focus on your copy and design for this, as it’s a crucial element in your website lead-generation efforts.
Personalizing Your B2B Website Strategy Via Tracking Tools
If you want your website to work hard for you, you need to think about how to personalize the experience for your visitor. It will make your content and sales funnel more relevant and help boost conversions.
Tracking Your Visitors
The first step in personalizing your website is to track your visitors. CANDDi has the tools to help you with this with a unique approach via IP tracking. It means we can track individuals rather than high-level data.
It’s more meaningful and gives you the potential to create personalized marketing approaches.
Personalized Content
Think about content that’s more tailored to your visitor. For example, you could use email marketing to share personalized offers or guides most relevant to that prospect.
Suppose, for example, a product looks at one of your products. If they exit that sales page without taking action, you can follow this up with a custom time-limited offer.
If you use a tool like CANDDi, you can utilize your knowledge about that individual to help create a more personalized discount that most benefits that business.
Analytics
Analytics will help shape your website marketing, too. For example, suppose you are getting many hot leads from one blog post.
Perhaps it ranks high on Google, or the content resonates with your audience. You can use this to double down on the strategy, producing similar content for your website.
Never ignore the power of analytics to act as a navigation tool for your marketing.
Usability and Tracking Tools
Another way you can use tracking to improve your B2B website strategy is to focus on usability.
Making your site more usable has an impact on conversion rates. Plus, it makes your brand look more professional. So you’ll fare well against competitors. Use tracking to see what visitors’ behavior is most common.
For example, perhaps people often exit on a specific page.
It might be that the page is confusing, which you can address with some usability improvements. For example, you could add links to popular pages or a stronger call to action.
Considering SEO In Your Website Strategy
SEO will always shape what you do with your website because all businesses need ongoing traffic from Google. Here’s how to align that with your B2B website strategy.
Your Keywords
The customer research you did during the early part of your checklist will help you here. It will give you more insight into your customers’ needs and the search terms they likely type into Google.
You can use this to target keywords that will bring you new B2B prospects.
Optimizing Your Website
When optimizing your website for search engines, don’t forget the number one rule: your website is for humans. So, don’t go overboard with keywords.
It’s more critical that customers love your website and feel impressed when they land on it. Plus, impressing website visitors will likely get you a better Google ranking in the long term.
Your Off-Page SEO
You may want to generate more backlinks to your website. It’s useful for SEO purposes.
However, think about a longer-term strategy that will help improve your B2B leads and sales. For example, is it best to build backlinks to a product page, sales page, or an offer?
There is no definitive answer here; it will depend on your business. But one way you can answer that question is by using tracking tools.
In other words, build backlinks to the pages that offer high conversion rates and help move your prospects through your sales funnel.
Technical SEO
Don’t forget some of the essential technical elements for SEO and your website strategy. For example, a slow-loading page could cost you lost business.
If you see an unusually high number of visitors exiting a page, do a technical audit to check bugs, speed, and mobile accessibility.
Testimonials and Other Social Proof
Testimonials and reviews are the sales tools that can help you turn a maybe into a yes. There are several ways to achieve this as part of your website strategy.
Videos
Testimonials are an excellent asset to any website.
Stories delivered directly from your customers are among the easiest ways to persuade a new prospect to buy from you. But in this modern era, customers expect more than a written testimonial.
Videos work better. They are more authentic and engaging. So consider adding some to your website.
If you pitch to a potential customer, you can send them this video link to secure the sale.
Case Studies
Some B2B sales will be lengthy and involve complex projects.
In these situations, prospects need to know more than whether your product is good. They are also interested in how you deliver and your approach. A case study is a valuable way of providing this information.
Provide a step-by-step walkthrough of how you worked with a customer, focusing on a metric you achieved.
Social Media
Social media has been a powerful marketing tool for a while. And that’s unlikely to change any time soon. Use social media to invite your customers’ comments, reviews, and testimonials.
External Review Sites
Customers are wary about reviews and authenticity. So, they increasingly rely on independent sites like Trustpilot and Google Reviews.
Integrate this into your website so that customers can see your positive reviews are from a trustworthy source.
Ongoing Improvements
A website strategy isn’t about making changes and leaving them in place for all eternity. The best strategies are fluid. Here are the steps to continuously improve your B2B website strategy once you have it in place.
Make Data-Driven Decisions
Rely on data via tracking tools to make decisions on your website.
It means you aren’t relying on guesswork that could go wrong. Data-driven decisions mean you are listening to feedback from customers about how they use your website and what they need from it.
Focus on metrics such as lead generation, engagement rates, and conversion rates.
Test Ideas
Before changing your website, test your ideas to see what resonates best with your audience.
You can do this using A/B testing. For example, suppose you want to create a case study and use that as a lead magnet in your site.
You could test this case study against a different offer - like a consultation call - to see which achieves a better conversion rate. Testing is a low-risk, evidence-driven way of fine-tuning your B2B website strategy.
Integrate Feedback Into Your Website
Use online polls and surveys to get real-time feedback from your users about their experience on your website. That will help you adapt your website over time.
It’s also a valuable way of keeping up with trends.
What customers love now won’t necessarily be what they love about your website in a year from now. And you don’t want to lose out to your competitors if they have a more cutting-edge setup.
Your B2B Website Strategy: Winning New Customers
Your website is your shop window. It’s the most powerful tool you have to woo prospects and turn them into paying customers. Use this B2B website strategy checklist to ensure you do everything you can to optimize it.
That includes getting the right tools in place.
CANDDi is essential for B2B businesses that rely on connecting with individual leads. It means you won’t lose valuable sales. Get a free trial now to see what it could offer for your business.