6 Tips to Building a B2B Website for Business

If you want to build a B2B Website that roars with energy and engages prospects, converting them into qualified leads and customers, these simple tips can guide your thoughts for a more profitable online property:

1) Ask yourself; “Who is my best customer?” We ask our clients to review their sales statistics and CRM data for client job title, role, gender, geographic location, age, associations, level of education, and more. By getting to know your best customer, we can help craft an online experience that meets their needs, and appeals to their aesthetics.

2) Create a persona to reference against copywriting, marketing approach, and site flow. The persona (a representation of your ideal customer’s characteristics) should be based on statistically relevant information and should be leveraged as a way to constantly reflect the interests of your current and future target audience. You can look at each area of content and ask yourself, “If I was this person, would this interest me? Would I know what to do next? Would I do it?”

3) Really understand your customers’ goals. By really exploring the goals of the typical user, we determine what type of functionality will best match the user’s goals while providing a structure that can simultaneously support your corporate goals.

4) Qualify your leads. Commonly used qualifiers include online calculators, whitepapers, case studies, testimonials, video, demo’s, tutorials, webinars, e-newsletters and more. Online qualifiers collect prospect data, track their activities, and reassure prospects that their needs are understood.

5) Think about an online revenue channel. Some businesses don’t naturally lend themselves to being an online revenue channel. But thinking out-of-the-box on e-commerce can take your site from a marketing cost center to a sales revenue center overnight.

6) Even if you are not in the position to conduct a direct e-commerce transaction, use today’s Web technology to track and report sales back to the 24/7 online marketer.

Wendy Flanagan
Co-President, MurrayMedia
wflanagan@murraymedia.com

Wendy Flanigan is also Chairperson for NJ MarCom Council, serves on the Board of the NJAdClub, moderates an online B2B forum for the American Marketing Association, and is a member of MENG. These are great resources for marketing professionals!

Salesforce confounds me. It’s too much, too soon. Zoho must be appealing to those who are looking for a cheap alternative to Salesforce (but not me). Though I love Basecamp for project management, I find Highrise too pared down. I’m currently checking out Pipeline Deals based on a recommendation I received on Twitter.

My biggest peeve with all of the services I’ve tried to date is that they force the user to enter a single dollar amount for a deal. In our industry, deals just aren’t that linear, especially when we’re talking about retainers that may have known, planned-for dollar fluctuations from month to month. Seeing that single field staring back at me is frustrating. Why can’t I specify the length of the deal, and enter estimated dollar amounts at the time frame that I choose? Or is the answer creating individual “mini-deals” for every month of the relationship? That seems like a possible, if time-consuming, workaround. This alone makes me want to go running back into the arms of my friend Excel.

Are you a power CRM user with an easy hack around this limitation? Or is there a better CRM tool out there that agencies live by that I just haven’t heard of yet? I’d love to hear from you.