All companies have or should have a website for several reasons which all attribute to your success:

1. Discovery:
When people are looking for solutions to business or company problems and issues they will be enlightened by discovering your offering as it adds another solution or an alternative solution to their list.

2. Findability:
Not getting found on the Internet is the worst that can happen as it will leave the potential customer wondering why. Is the company too small to have a website. Is the company (getting) out of business?

3. Website off line:
The immediate or obvious reaction is that the company is out of business, which can only be verified by calling the company.

4. Trustworthy:
Trust in your company can be maintained or enhanced by being able to visit the website and getting confirmation on the already received information.

5. Craving knowledge:
As your website supplies ample information the need for craving knowledge will be satisfied.

6. Conversion:
All visitors have the possibility to eventually convert into customers. The website will play a major role in this before, during and after the purchase process.

7. Contact details:
The website provides contact details: email address or telephone number

8. Location:
For certain people the location of the company in certain cities or neighborhoods of cities are an indication of the success of the company.

9. Worldwide or countrywide presence:
As your website will list the office locations it will enhance the image of your company.

10. Management:
As management is/should be presented on the website it will give a face to the company and more identification.

How essential is your website for your business ?

Human images create website value

Website visitors are influenced by the visual aspects of your website. Using a picture of a woman or man on your website renders your website more human. Preferably images with the person looking into the lens. As the picture seems to create a relationship with the visitors people are more likely to start getting interested. These images will create value for your website and business.

Free stock images

However when you use free stock images on your website chances are they have been overly used and your visitors will recognize them. Thus instead of increasing the value of your website the free stock pictures will decrease it as they don’t create the relationship.

These are some typical examples that appear on many websites:

Although these are good picture of cute women/girls – Don’t use them as they won’t bring visitors to call upon your company or services.

It is very likely these pictures will be used on more websites which even decreases further the value.

There are four possibilities:
- Use stock images and pay the fee
- Use images you have shot yourself
- No pictures with people as you can’t afford them (unlikely)
- No pictures as you can’t create quality pictures and can’t afford it.

How human is your website ?
How did you make your website build relationship with the visitors ?

Selling through distributors and resellers has a major issue as the interested parties will visit the website of the manufacturer while searching for information to solve their problem but then they will not or only briefly visit the website of their local reseller.
Hence the potential customers are on the website of the manufacturer but the reseller don’t get any chance to contact these leads.
Moreover only the really interested parties will contact the reseller or the manufacturer by email or web-form.

In order to increase the number of leads for the resellers the sole solution is to have the companies visiting the website of the manufacturer revealed and identified their interest in products with their level of interest. This will allow qualifying the visiting companies as leads which can be passed on to the appropriate reseller by geography or specialization. Hence your resellers will be able to contact these qualified leads in order to increase the funnel which eventually results in more sales deals closed.
As during the purchase process the potential customers will revisit the manufacturers’ website the resellers can be kept up-to-date about these visits as an indication of interest level.

How do you generate leads for your resellers ?

When running a business getting sales is of up most importance. Without sales, there’s no business.

There are 3 sources of possible buyers in B2B:

New leads

These are the most exiting, the most promising: the unknown, the big expectations.
However they will be the most expensive as:
- Leads need to be generated
- Contacts within a company need to be found
- You have to define the Influencers, the Catalysts, the Decision makers, the Gatekeepers
- Products and solutions need to be explained
- Relations need be build
- Trust needs to be gained

Finding visitors on your website is a simple solution for low cost lead generation. Qualifying visitors as leads based upon website visit information is a straight forward task these days. Finding contacts within a company is now much more feasible, thanks to the information available on the Internet.

You know the search terms they used and the pages they visited. This allows you to address the contact with the best suited message and solution.

The leads generated by the typical channels will also visit your website, revealing their real interests in your products and solutions. Using a website visitor identification service your sales people will be alerted when they visit.

Customers

Keeping relations and customers is far less expensive compared to finding new leads or making new customers.

When customers visit your website again, it is often exactly the right time to contact them.
Your website visitor identification service will notify you about this event.

And again, by the pages visited you will know what they are looking for so you can address your relations with the appropriate message and information.

Ex-customers

Although they have selected another vendor, you still know the different people involved within the company.

When such a company visits again, there must be a good reason… time to find out!

Content marketing is all the hype in inbound marketing.
The problem is how to benefit from the content you have produced?

Registration is a transaction payment

Most websites require to register with your name and email address for download of white papers, presentations or valuable information in order to be able to follow-up afterwards.
This registration is a transaction payment: they have to pay with their identity.
However instead of gathering useful contact information most people will use a bogus web mail addresses in order not to pay with their identity. Their main goal is to deviate the expected marketing stream of emails into this account which they never really check upon. At the same time they also avoid getting interrupting sales calls from your salesmen.

Unfettered access gives deferred lead

On the other hand by allowing unfettered access to your valuable content it might seem you have lost this lead and you have no marketing tools to follow-up.
However it is likely the person will read your content, think it over, keep it in mind. We could call this a deferred lead, still having the potential to become a lead.

Content distribution has more value

If it is valuable and suiting content it is likely he will pass it on to one or more persons. This distribution of your content is very valuable – it has probably more value than having the email address of the person who has downloaded it as your content and brand name are getting exposure.

Customers’ networks

Even your customers have a need for information and updates.
If you gate for the content then they know they will receive a phone call from a salesman trying to get a meeting. If instead the information is free to download your content will flow freely into your customers through a different network of contacts than those reached by your newsletter.

Real leads with real demands

People who do register and have no demand or are not in charge or not influencers, like students, teachers, have also no value for your company. It is a waste of time and effort to contact them afterwards and an overload to manage your CRM system or email data base.

The real leads who have been able to consume, process and re-use your content will come back as:
- They have a real need
- You have made an impact on them with your valuable content
- The ease of getting the content really helped them giving some gratitude
They will act upon and call you.

Safety net

Website visitor identification services – which are like Caller Display of your website – are a safety net as they will provide you with the company names that have visited and downloaded your content. These services will allow you to address these companies using your normal outbound marketing methods.

Do you gate your content?
How many leads does it generate?

Sales Hunter – Sales Farmer

In the classical sales roles of Hunter and Farmer:
- The Sales Hunter identifies the suspect or prospect, does the lead qualification, defines the solution to be proposed and sets an appointment with a contact
- The Sales Farmer closes the sale and will nurture the relationship further

Outbound marketing

Using Outbound marketing like email campaigns or call-operators, Marketing controls the process of finding, identifying and qualifying the prospects and eventually setting the appointment which can even be a webinar.

Inbound Marketing

In the event of Inbound Marketing using Content marketing, Internet and Website marketing, the efforts of the marketing department are taking over the roles of the Sales Hunter:
- Marketing creates and publishes content mainly on the Internet.
- The Internet search engines lead the possible interested parties to the content of their interest.
- Eventually these people will end up on the website of the company which is also controlled and managed by Marketing.

Two cases:
a) When the potential customer addresses to the company or fills out a contact form a large part of the tasks of the Sales Hunter have been accomplished.

b) In case the potential buyer refuses to identify himself, web tools are available to:
- Identify the company visiting
- Qualify as lead based upon the pages visited and the number of visits by the same company over a short amount of time
- Define the interest in a product or solution from the pages visited
- Find contacts within these visiting companies
Setting the appointment with a newly found contact will be still a challenge but is feasible and could even be executed by the Marketing team as some of the web tools can even help re-targeting the visiting company by email.

Closing the sale

In B2B the closing of the sale will in many cases or businesses still require human intervention. However when the interest is high and the product or service straight forward the price negotiation can be done using email.

Nurturing

The building of the relationship and the nurturing can typically be achieved by newsletters and informative emails on a regular basis by Marketing without requiring any Sales intervention.

The processes and actions described above are already happening in many companies slowly eliminating the salesman. Of course this is less applicable and feasible in the complex sale.

Do you feel too the salesman is getting kicked out slowly?

Bought email list

Would you shoot with a machine gun at a herd that someone else has driven together? You would have no clue or certainty what animals are in the herd. Chances are you would be shooting the wrong animals.

This is what happens when you execute an email campaign using a list bought from a provider when you send out a massive email campaign. You haven’t got the slightest clue of their interest, requirement and timing.

Email interested parties only

If instead you would be able to use a sniper rifle and could aim at only the specific species you need that are coming to your bait. That would be more effective.
Your website is your bait as it contains content that attracts the people from companies that are from your target group.
After qualification as suspect why not re-target by email companies these companies that have visited your website and that have shown interest in your products by their visit, pages visited and returning visits?

Still marketers in companies buy email lists while at the same time interested parties are visiting the company website.
Is it because buying email lists is easier?
Or because the lack of awareness of these new type of solutions?
Or because it is just too obvious to re-target your visitors by email?

Do you buy lists and why ?

Most people don’t want to register for the download of a white paper.

If they are asked for registration a large part simply clicks away to the next link in Google search. Those who do register often use web email addresses which they use for diverting all email marketing and possible spam emails.
As a result your harvest of useful email addresses is limited and the distribution of your marketing message is even more limited.

Without registration most people that have found your white paper will download it and after reading will distribute it further when they find your content interesting for their colleagues, peers, partners and friends. This way your marketing message gets distributed but you have no clue who your readers are.

You could argue that if your white paper is interesting enough, they will contact you anyway. People who contact you are more likely to end up working with you with less effort compared to people that were lured into giving their email addresses. They gave their email address because they wanted the white paper, not because they wanted to do business with you.

Still, some of us are hunters and like to chase leads instead of sitting idle by the fireplace waiting for them to drop in.

You could include a link to a specific page on your website which you describe with a teasing title within your white paper, catching the visits of most interesting parties. All you need now is a web service that reveals the companies visiting this page, keeps track of further pages visited and informs you about all visits (and future revisits) from every company. Often, this will give you more lead intelligence than that bunch of free web email addresses you captured on your white paper registration form.

It is probably better to remove the white paper registration as the benefits of the white paper distribution without registration can be far higher.

What are your experiences with forced compared to voluntary/no registration?
If you are using forced registration now, would you want to try voluntary/no registration?

Email marketing list

It might be a surprise but the length of your email marketing list has no importance !
Is a list of 125,000 names any better or worse than a list of 25,000 names ?
What’s the value of the list ?

The people on the list are just people who are opt-in or names and addresses you have bought from a list broker.
There is hardly any relation between them and potential buyers.

Value of mailing lists

How do you know who is a potential buyer on your list ?
How do you know what product really interests them ?
How do you know when they are interested in a certain product ?
How do you know you are wasting your and their time instead of successfully nurturing ?

The shorter list can contain more interested and potential buyers than the long list.
Even having no list can have more value in case you have more prospects than you can handle.

Reaching out to potential buyers only

You can email the people on the mailing list with hundreds of messages and still not getting one purchase. Meanwhile you will have to do maintenance on the huge list to keep it updated as people change jobs and companies.

A much shorter list containing only interested parties with real buying potential is much more valuable than a very long list.
Your website can provide this list of potential buyers as you can reach out to your leads early in their buying cycle using a website visitor identification service. Moreover they are showing buying intentions as shown in their visit behavior.
By knowing the product that interests each of them, will allow you addressing them with matching nurturing messages.

So no longer brag about the length of your email marketing list as only sales results count.

Boring B2b Marketing

In most cases B2B marketing is just boring.
- Nothing exciting
- Anything impressive
- No emotion
- No fun
- Not to be remembered

B2B Marketing describes briefly the problem, the solution and presents the facts and figures and maybe some references or testimonials.
If a potential customer is not completely interested there is little chance he will remember the brand, the product or the benefits.

B2b marketing wants to portray an image of seriousness, reliability and trustworthiness of the products or services and the company which leads to boring marketing.

Personal instead of boring

For most companies it would be too daring to bring excitement and emotion.
Moreover the goal for seriousness and trust could be lost

So instead of boring marketing automation programs that are way too generic, bringing relevant and personalized messages to each of your potential customers would be a great step.
What you could do for client oriented marketing:
- Website that provides relevant information while visiting
- Emails that deal with the problem or need of a specific company
- Re-targeting companies visiting the website with an email message that matches their shown interest
- Cold calls with the appropriate questions and messages

These methods are likely to engage your potential customers of your target market without the immediate need for excitement, emotion or fun.

Entertaining for capturing the audience

If you really want to capture a large part of your target market at once your marketing will need to be entertaining in order to have the audience listening.

Even the serious Microsoft achieved it in B2B:

How boring is your B2B marketing ?
What are you going to do about it ?