Optimizing Your B2B Landing Pages to Generate More Leads

When marketers talk about landing pages and conversion rates, they often are referring to a B2C (Business-to-Consumer) environment. We frequently don't think about conversion in the B2B (Business-to-Business) world of marketing.

This type of marketing has some key differences from the B2C e-commerce world. But keep in mind that B2B marketers still needs landing pages, and they need to regularly focus on optimizing them.

If you are strictly a B2C marketer, keep reading anyway. A lot of the landing page optimization tips we talk about today will be directly applicable to your world and can help you enjoy a higher conversion rate.

If you are a B2B marketer, you face a lot of challenges. The sales process for your products is typically much more complex than it is for a typical B2C marketer. It usually takes longer, and there are almost always multiple decision makers involved.

And these decision makers often have motives and “emotional drivers” around the buying process that are in conflict with those of their colleagues.

In order to persuade these decision makers to enter your lead generation funnel and in order to nurture them once they are leads – that is to educate, guide and persuade them until they “raise their hand” and request to talk to a member of your sales team - you want to use the proven lead generation tool that is content marketing.

Depending on your situation, strategy and buyer persona, that might include white papers, case studies, webinars, videos and so on. It needs to include email marketing.

“Sell” Your Content

And even though the ultimate sale happens when the lead interacts with one of your sales reps, it is very important that you get content into the hands of those you want to become leads. So it's critical that you “sell” your content.

You need to conduct online marketing procedures that are very much like the ones you would do if you were running an e-commerce business. And to enjoy maximum success when it comes to getting searchers to become leads, and to get as many current leads as possible to accept your content offerings all the way until they say “YES” to talking to a sales rep, you need landing pages.

And you need your landing pages to be very highly optimized. Let's talk about some steps you can take to make them more B2B content marketing conversion-friendly.

1. Don't Miss This Important Distinction!

Here is a very important distinction between an e-commerce landing page and a B2B content conversion page: the e-commerce page sells the product. The content landing page “sells” the content. It does not sell the product. It's an integral part of the process of guiding leads through your funnel until they decide they want to talk to a sales rep.

Your landing page copywriting needs to reflect this reality. It needs to persuade the reader to accept the content. It needs to tell him how he stands to benefit when he does. And your B2B landing page message length needs to be different from that of a B2C landing page.

2. Stating Your Case

In an e-commerce sale, you are asking the reader to take his credit card out of his wallet and give you money. That can be a big commitment on his part. You want to include as much copywriting on your landing page as needed to “state your case” and convince him to buy.

The conversion in B2B content marketing is different. You aren't asking him to buy anything yet. You're trying to give him a compelling reason to take and read your latest piece of content.

Keeping in mind that he's probably somewhat overwhelmed with work, you want to keep your landing page copy brief and to the point. Use short sentences and bullet points. If you make your message too long, if you make it a tedious chore to read, you will most likely lose him and the chance to convert him into a lead.

3. Valuable Online “Real Estate”

Your B2B content lead generation landing page is an extremely valuable piece of online “real estate”. You need to optimize it very well. Every “piece of the puzzle” needs to be in place, and every landing page component matters; it needs to serve a specific purpose.

Your landing page design is critical to your conversion success. It's an essential element of gaining initial attention and building trust. Your goal here (as with everything else on your landing page) is to create an environment that leads to the maximum number of conversions possible. Do not make being clever, cute and “artsy” your landing page design goal!

4. Two Things to Keep in Mind Regarding Design

• “Less is more”. Don't clutter your landing page with too many design elements. Keep it simple

• Keeping this very important “less is more” rule in mind, use design elements known as “directional cues” to draw attention to your message and especially your call to action button.

Directional cues could include an arrow pointing to the call to action button. They could include the “flow” of the design elements that naturally draw attention to landing page features you most want to highlight. One potentially very effective directional cue is to have an image of a person looking in the direction of your call to action button.

One of the core, bottom line landing page ideas to keep in mind is that you want your visitors to feel a sense of clarity and order, not confusion. Confusion will destroy your conversion rate!

In a previous article we talked about how properly-chosen images can help you enjoy a higher conversion rate. This applies to B2B content marketing landing pages also.

We won't go into a lot of detail on this topic, because we just published another article on it, but here's a very important point to consider: the wrong images can hurt your landing page's conversion rate in a big way.

Don't make the mistake that so many B2B marketers make in their online campaigns. Don't use generic stock photos as “space fillers” on your landing pages, or anywhere in your online marketing.

Not only do these typically do nothing to help you win conversions, they have actually been show to drive 30% of visitors away from websites! So for the sake of your landing page conversion rates, please avoid them!

Want Maximum Online Lead Generation Success? You Need Landing Pages!

For many (perhaps even the vast majority of) B2B firms content marketing is very important to lead generation success. And landing pages are essential if you want to maximize the number of leads your content marketing campaigns receive.

You need clean, uncluttered, conversion-friendly design. You need a solid, compelling offer made more desirable by great copywriting. You need eye-catching images that are relevant to your message. And you need prominent call to action buttons that simply can't be ignored.

All of these used together can greatly boost your conversion success. But wouldn't it be wonderful if you could give your conversion results an even greater lift? An “unfair advantage”? Wouldn't it be great to have a landing page software platform engineered to help you enjoy a higher conversion rate?

Here's some wonderful news. You can! What's this online marketing “unfair advantage”? It's called Lander. And it's unlike any other landing page platform out there.

Here are just a few of the “goodies” Lander offers you:

• Advanced A/B testing capability
• Performance dashboard
• Prominent, colorful call to action buttons
• Built-in video support
• Built-in countdown timer
• Google Maps integration
• And on and on…

These wonderful features are designed to help you optimize your landing page’s performance and enjoy a higher conversion rate. And here's one “feature” you just might like the most: you can try any of Lander's very reasonable pricing plans free for 30 days.

So start your free trial of Lander's one-of-a-kind landing page platform today!

Happy Marketing!