In this podcast I interviewed Dale Underwood, CEO of EchoQuote to discuss B2B website conversion strategies. Dale is a 20 year veteran of the IT industry. About three years ago Dale began implementing internet marketing strategies providing tools to convert website visitors into sales opportunities. Here’s an excerpt of the interview. To hear the full 20 minute interview, click or download the podcast above.
When a visitor comes to your website due to your well planned SEO or SEM strategy he or she is not necessarily ready to convert into a buyer, or to fill out a form, or ready to talk to a salesperson. This is especially prominent in B2B websites.
Buyers have many options when they do their research on the web and therefore, they are harder to convert to leads. Many marketers struggle with how to engage a website visitor.
Marketers must look at their website from the customer’s point of view. Visit your website as a prospective customer. Ask yourself if your website content and calls to action are engaging for visitors at different stages of their buying cycle.
Most marketers have not done a good job of engaging visitors based on where the visitor is in their buying process. Some of the calls to actions marketers offer such as white papers, are not very compelling. They often don’t address needs of the buyer at the current stage of his or her evaluation when they visit the website.
Often a website visitor wants to know the general price range of your products or services. By offering your website visitor the ability to self-service request budgetary pricing the requests can be very high quality.
When someone asks for pricing info using a link for budgetary pricing the first detail captured is an email address. Therefore, this email address can be nurtured for future sales potential. This is also a good way to build your email list.
Once someone requests pricing they are a “suspect” and it’s generally advisable to have a sales person contact the visitor to explore their criteria in order to avoid a situation where they price your products or services without your input.
This approach to converting website visitors to high quality leads works best for B2B sellers with complex products or services and a direct sales force or a knowledgeable channel partner.
Example: a 20 year old company who traditionally does a lot of email marketing had noticed a drop in leads from the contact form. When they implemented the self service budgetary pricing their website conversions picked up by 30%. The client attributed it to giving visitors the ability to receive budgetary pricing in a self service model.
Of course, all B2B sales leads situations are unique but it’s advisable to visit your website with your customer’s perspective and assess if you’re providing compelling calls to action relevant to different stages of the buying cycle.
