SEO is one of the most common marketing tactics for e-commerce and consumer sales. Still, it is useful for B2B lead generation as well. B2B companies experience long and complex sales cycles. Their products and services tend to be niche and expensive. Your SEO strategy must be adapted to suit a B2B purchasing audience. Here are three tips to generate more B2B leads with SEO!
Keep it ToFu
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In digital marketing, “ToFu” means “Top of Funnel.” The marketing funnel is a concept for organizing content into different categories. At the top of the funnel, we have informational content used to influence customers as they research and consider a purchase. Things like blog posts and infographics may be top of the funnel. Middle-of-funnel content is more sales-driven or “pushy.” It might include product comparisons and general case studies demonstrating your company’s value. Bottom-of-funnel content is more specific, highly sales-driven content like pricing pages, free trials and demos, and webinars.
An e-commerce store may want their bottom of funnel content to rank highly in Google. Users who search “red men’s tennis shoes” will respond well to a shop page featuring red men’s tennis shoes. B2B purchasers need more warming up than that. Rarely does a B2B purchase happen in a single day? Instead, it’s often a collaborative or consultative sales process spanning weeks or months.
Rather than forcing users down the funnel too quickly, emphasize great top-of-funnel content. It will help you establish trust and authority in your industry while delivering plentiful traffic to your website. You can refine this top-of-funnel traffic through remarketing campaigns and lead capture features like gated content pop-ups.
Write for both technical personnel and business leadership
When businesses make important purchases, we must consider who is involved in purchasing. We mentioned earlier that B2B purchases are often collaborative or consultative. Multiple stakeholders will be involved, including technical experts that can vet and confirm the product or service suits the needs of the business. Ultimately, large B2B purchases will be finalized by company leaders — managers, owners, and executives.
Many content pieces you produce will be “one size fits all.” This means they apply equally well to all audiences. However, you will find that some messages resonate with a technical audience but not with leadership or vice versa. A department head may not understand the particular technical features of your product the way his head of engineering would. In contrast, the head of engineering may not be persuaded by the financial or business case for purchasing your product.
When we recognize multiple stakeholders in a purchasing process, we can plan for content to address the needs of each. For example, in an article about how your product can reduce overhead costs for your customers, you may feature a call to action to download product data sheets outlining its technical features and dimensions. This way, your business-focused article includes content to influence technical stakeholders.
Focus on conversion rate optimization
Qualified B2B leads are worth a lot of money, which means it is worth the effort to sift through thousands of prospects to find a handful of good leads. SEO does a good job of delivering many users to a website. The website’s job is to turn as many visitors into customers as possible.
SEO goes hand-in-hand with CRO or Conversion Rate Optimization. CRO focuses on improving an app or website's design and user experience to capture leads better. Even a very small improvement in conversion rate can fuel a big improvement in sales.
A good B2B website will receive anywhere from thousands to millions of users per month. Think of the impact of improving your website conversion rate from 1% to 1.5% — dozens or even hundreds of additional leads per month. Improving a website conversion rate by just 0.5% delivers as much potential revenue growth as improving the sales closing rate from 50% to 75%:
Website Conversion Rate | Sales Close Rate | #of website users | Closed sales |
---|---|---|---|
1% | 50% | 10,000 | 75 |
1.5% | 75% | 10,000 | 75 |
Using techniques like gated content, webinars, and online events to capture contact details, remarketing campaigns to send users deeper into your funnel, and value adds like calculators, estimators, and other useful tools can all contribute to improved conversion rates and revenue growth.