The thought of improving your business-to-business marketing might be daunting to you. It can conjure up images of intense user research, constant split testing, and endless ad campaign variations. While these things are all valuable in their own right, you don’t need to dive deep down a rabbit hole to see your digital marketing improve.
Many B2B companies have seen improvements to their engagement and conversion rates through something as simple as tweaking colors, images, or messaging. These quick wins can create a marked improvement in your digital marketing and take very little time or resources.
Try testing out these three quick improvements to see what effect they have on your marketing. Showing the results of small tweaks can also get your leadership excited about online marketing and help you get support for even bigger initiatives.
Create a consistent look-and-feel for your imagery
Creating a consistent look-and-feel should be a given when a site is designed, however, staying consistent with new content that is added to the site can elevate your site and brand in the minds of prospects. The challenge is that many marketers use generic stock images instead of choosing digital media that fits their brand story and identity. Try following some of these tips to improve the look-and-feel of your site:
- Think about subject matter: Your images should reflect the actual benefits your clients receive. For example, if you were in real estate you wouldn’t use pictures of empty rooms as your featured images, instead you would show furnished, livable environments. If you provide a product, show customers using and benefiting from that product.
- Use custom images when possible: Having actual pictures of your products, office, and team can go a long way toward creating an authentic brand. If you have the budget, bring in a professional photographer to help you stage, take, and edit the pictures. This can have a very positive effect on your site and create a truly custom look.
- Use professionally-selected stock images: Designers have an eye for what works and what doesn’t; simple things like crops, camera angles, and the positioning of the people in the photo can make the difference between something looking like “generic stock image people” or not. Asking for help from a designer or taking a little more time to learn about image choices will help you find the right images for your site. Use a paid service stock photo service if possible; this will ensure you get higher quality images and that you won’t be using the same free ones as everybody else. There are many cost-effective options out there. If your products and services are custom, you’ll get much more mileage out of showing professional renderings, or photos that your marketing team has taken themselves, rather than stock images or going without.
- Improve your site’s typography and iconography: A custom icon set, or leveraging an existing icon font such as Black Tie, along with consistent typographical choices will make your site look professional and carefully crafted. This is another way to improve your look-and-feel with just a few quick changes to your site’s code or CMS.
Test your site speed
Studies show that faster site load times produce better results, as well as help your site rank better in search engines. One study found that a one second improvement in page load time can increase sales by 7% in the ecommerce space. Whether or not your site has an online store, it can still benefit from faster load times.
To check your site speed and understand what things might be limiting it, start by using a free tool like the one provided by Pingdom or Google. While these aren’t the end all be all of speed tests, they can help you quickly identify issues with your site.
For example, these tests may show that your images are not optimized or too large. This can seriously slow down your load time and is something you can easily fix. Or, these tests may show that your site is loading fonts and plugins that you don’t even use. Removing these is another quick way to improve your page load time.
In addition to these smaller tweaks, you should also consider switching to an advanced business-class hosting provider like WP Engine. This will allow you to leverage caching solutions, such as a CDN. WPengine also provides a number of tools and services that can boost your site speed with very little effort on your part.
Create a secondary CTA (call-to-action)
Marketing is closely related to relationship building. That’s how Donald Miller, author of Building a StoryBrand, explains it. When you think of your site today, does it only sell or is it also building relationships?
Most sites only have a single, direct call-to-action. Something that prospects will easily scroll past if they’re not ready to buy. In order to capture their interest, you need to create a secondary call-to-action. Something that will be appealing to them whether they’re ready to buy or not.
For example, if your business provides financial consulting services to small businesses, then your primary CTA might be “schedule a consultation.” While your secondary CTA could be for a free download that provides financial tips for lowering your company spending. This secondary CTA will allow you to capture the information of those who aren’t ready to buy and keep the relationship going through email marketing. With time your pool of prospects will grow and as their situation changes they’ll reach out to you first.
Can you see the difference?
After implementing these techniques, let a few weeks go by and check your engagement and conversion rates. Have you seen an increase in time-on page or a decrease in bounces? Has there been an uptick in contact form submissions or email subscribers? These are all positive signs that you’ve improved your B2B marketing.
If you’re ready to try making even bigger improvements, here are some great marketing strategies for increasing B2B conversion rates.