In B2B internet marketing landing page could be compared to well-prepared meeting with the client. What ensures that a personal meeting will end with signing a contract?
exactly defined topic
individual offer, based on customer’s business peculiarities and wishes
discussing all controversial points and contract details
real possibility to start the project implementation
B2B landing pages are just the same – they allow to solve similar tasks via internet marketing tools.
B2B landing pages: principal questions
In fact, when we create landing pages we ask ourselves the same questions as when we are preparing for the meeting:
Who is our client? What position does he occupy? What authority does he have to influence on decision making? A proper answer to these questions is client segmentation and analyzing customer type at which landing page is targeted.
What problem is customer going to solve? Customers arrive at the landing page through ads, banners, referral links, etc. So if the clicked them, they have some kind of problem which they are aimed to solve.
What solution do we offer? If we know the customer needs, we can make the standard product more individual: give reasons and show advantages, offer guarantees.
What results are we going to receive (in the best and in the worst case)? Visiting landing page may result into sales, contact requests, leads. We should select one target action which we expect customer to make in the end.
Landing pages should be as many as it is needed – for different products, customer segments, different marketing campaigns. Minor changes in the ad may require new landing page creation. If you know that customers may choose your product for different reasons, create landing pages with various persuasion schemes.
For example, after our company has finished one large project for bank institution, we have come to the conclusion that:
а) we have several products which interest banks;
b) we know financial services market and clients needs, we detected the best promotion channels and we know how to make effective loan forms, mortgage calculators and so on, so our standard offer has quite essential advantages for the banks specifically;
c) it is necessary to create a separate target page.
How to create landing pages on B2B website?
Model landing page can be created at once. You will necessary have to test different variations, analyze the conversion and customers’ behavior, study attention points. However, there are several principles which will help you avoid serious mistakes.
1. Content is King. It is wise to start working on landing page with creation of persuasion path, information selection, gathering convincing factors and writing proper selling texts. Design and technical implementation are secondary matters; their function is rather to facilitate the sale. Persuasion role takes the content.
Prepare the page content in the form of presentation or text document. Check whether you have answered all the questions and whether the customer will be able to find all the information they need without leaving the page.
2. Make sure you give enough information. You may a lot of articles on landing pages today. Many of them advise to write in simple words and do not make customers to think. However, we understand that in B2B sphere reading a bullet point list and beautiful heading will be not enough to make the decision. Look for a happy medium between simplicity and information sufficiency. If your offer has interested the visitor, they will read almost everything.
3. Change “I-approach” to “you- approach” and “you-offer”. Modern marketing has one rule. Many of us know that is selling texts it is important to highlight not the product characteristics, but benefits the customer will receive. Now we make a little addition: benefits you are talking about should be essential for the customer. For example, saying something like “it will solve your problems” will not work.
To formulate an effective persuasion for each customer type, create a list of criteria by which they evaluate a business partner or offer. Best of all is to ask the sales managers what interest customers in the first place, what questions they ask during the first contact. Write down words and phrases which customers use when talk about your product and incorporate them in the texts.
Landing pages for B2B websites: important details
So we have defined the landing pages purpose, how many of them we need and who they will target. We have also created the persuasion path and have chosen the content.
Sketch is ready and we are proceeding to the details.
Copywriting:
maximum attention should be paid to the heading. The visitor will decide whether or not to stay on your page within 5-6 seconds, and the heading should play a leading role here. The offer contained in the heading should correspond to the keyword which brought the user to this page;
main benefit of the offer in the first place. Your customer should get interested in what you are going to offer, then he will read on;
call to action. Clearly state what you expect the user to do by using effective verbiage.
Design:
page elements should facilitate the target action. Visual elements can attract the user attention to the necessary page part. Make the use of icons, images and arrows;
the most important elements should stand out from the rest, but not more than one or two accents per display;
not overloaded. White background, minimum of images from photostocks which do not facilitate the key message are standards of good landing pages.
Navigation.
A point of consideration for each particular case. Many think that in order to better focus on key message the main navigation of the website should be removed with only home page and contact us links left. Although online B2B marketing information about the supplier is vital for decision making. The single landing page is not enough to get an idea of the company. Consider your customer needs when he makes a decision when create navigation for landing pages.
Forms:
as low number of fields as possible. Another standard. Stick to the balance between action required from the user and its usefulness for you. If the result of filling in the 10-field form will be a file “3 reasons to buy our product”, you may not expect a good conversion;
best of all, if the form is seen in the first window and at the end of the page.
Buttons:
button should look like a button, be easily to spot, attractive and correlate well with the target action;
there are two approaches to the button text. The first – the button describes and action performed by the user (“send”, “find”, ‘order’). The second – text on the button indicates what result will the user get (“get material to email”, “receive the answer to the question”). The second variant is more complicated, harder to formulate, but at the same time is better perceived by the potential customer. Typically, to understand which option will work for your case, you will have to run a test.
Thank you page.
After the target action completion the user should be taken to the Thank you page. On this page you can express your gratitude, inform about the next steps (request processing, sending documents to email, etc.). In addition, if you have such page, it will be easier to set the goals in analytics tools.
A final note
Every your potential customer is just like when you are a buyer – they have their own needs, emotional reactions and particular logic when deciding about making a purchase. Note what pages caught your attention on the Internet, what pages made you buy something (not those which just seemed beautiful to you). Make screenshots of forms which you have filled in. What has made you leave your personal information here? What benefits did you see and what reasons made you think that the website is safe?
Try to figure out the key point of the offer, after which you decided not to continue the search and do a target action? Generally, aside from rational reasons you will find well elaborated B2B promotion tips, which you will be able to apply for your own website too.
The post Landing pages for B2B websites – unclassified rules appeared first on - Promodo Blog.