Searching for B2B Leads in Your Web Analytics
The objective of B2B search marketing is often to capture lead information through registrations for white papers, case studies, newsletters, free trials, research data, etc. But what about site visitors that don’t take the bait? Does that mean they’re not serious prospects? Of course not. It would be arrogant to assume that any prospect worth their salt would be downloading your stuff. You can be certain that somewhere in all those non-registering visitors are many high-value prospects. And if you’re selling big ticket items, it may be worth it to dig a little deeper to find them.
How to find them
B2B Search Marketing: Loose the Lingo, Remember the Buyer
If you’re not in sync with how your potential prospects look for your type of products and services via the search engines, it can absolutely kill your chances of getting found in the organic searches results. There are two key factors B2B marketers must consider when developing keyword search strategies for optimized websites.
First, remember you’re usually not talking to one buyer. A typical B2B purchase involves four, five, or more different people who ultimately influence the purchase decision. Sure, they share common organizational objectives—but they have unique perspectives, interests, agendas, and needs. The “technology” buyer may base their search on product and performance attributes, while influential “end-users” considers ease of operation, and the “economic buyer” looks at ROI. All use the web to research, evaluate, or vet business purchase decisions, and yet they may use completely different search terms relevant to their individual interests and concerns. An effective B2B keyword strategy considers varying search strategies.
The second force
B2B Search Marketing: What to Do When Abandonment Rates Continue to be High
B2B marketers use paid and organic search to get visitors to their sites. Once a visitor is on the site, the objective is to capture and evaluate lead information. This lead information is often generated through registrations for white papers, case studies, newsletters, free trials, research data, etc.
But what happens if there aren’t many registrations? You need to look at your web analytics to determine whether the cause is lack of traffic or lack of conversion. You may find that you have lots of visitors who are interested in downloading something from your site (they go to the download page), but few people complete the registration form. Perhaps you’re asking for too much information too soon. Perhaps the perceived value of the download information isn’t commensurate with visitors’ willingness to provide registration information. If this is the case, you need to ask for less information or increase the perceived value of the information being offered to the visitor.
But what if you’ve already done this? You may need to strip it down to the minimum. Perhaps only name and email address. However, here are a couple things to keep in mind.
