5 Marketing Tips to Boost Your B2B Lead Conversion

When it comes to ecommerce marketing tips that drive conversion, what really impacts the bottom line?

In this article, we will talk about how despite spending huge amount of time optimizing your social media, email, PPC, and other marketing strategies, you are still not seeing a decent lift in conversions. What you should do instead?

But before we dive straight into discussing the specific strategies, it’s crucial to get the foundations right besides ensuring that not only you get a decent amount of leads but a large percentage of these leads from your campaigns gets converted too.

Understanding the basics of B2B sales

You cannot hope to orchestrate a successful customer journey if you are not familiar with the landscape. Are we right?

First of all, unlike B2C marketing, you will not be convincing just one person. The Business to Business sales cycle involves many stakeholders and decision-makers, the type of people you need to consider and persuade. And every single one of them. Because if you fail to convince even one, you will have to start all over again.

Second thing, unlike B2C decisions which can easily be made within a few days, a normal B2B purchasing decision can sometimes take months to bear any fruit. This is because taking Business to Business decisions is a lengthy process which requires going through so many different stages. The longer the better, right?

What, you don’t agree?

Well, think of this lengthy process as an opportunity to exploit personalization and retargeting tactics. But, then again, don’t entirely count on it as sometimes, longer durations can mess things up.

While we are discussing the basics of ecommerce marketing sales, let’s bust one of the most prevalent myths surrounding this Business to Business purchase. You too, at one point or another, must have heard that emotion plays no role in influencing the buyer’s decision. These prospects, unlike their B2C counterparts, are focused entirely on facts and can only be wooed with reason and logic.

But it is what it is; a simple myth.

Now we are not saying that emotion is one of the primary driving forces behind B2B decisions but we are not contradicting the fact either. Studies suggest that emotions can strongly influence the B2B purchasing decision. Don’t you think its reason enough not to overlook it while planning your conversion strategy?

Ok, that’s enough basics for today. Let’s move on. 

The thing is if you have failed to connect with your business customers, it means you have missed something important. Perhaps you have missed the mark with your content, or your web design discourages people from filling out that contact form? Or might be your contact form isn’t optimized as per the conversion metrics?

Whatever the case, since you are reading this article, it means you are ready to transform your website into a lean, mean ecommerce marketing machine. So, let’s hop on.

What marketing tips to implement in order to increase Business to Business conversions?

1. Website design

Believe us, business websites are a far better investment when it comes to earning new customers online. And it doesn’t require anything extraordinary, just a simple, intuitive, and convincing website will do the trick just fine. How? Let’s find out.

• To begin with, you need a responsive web design that can work the same way on any mobile and computer devices. So, regardless of how someone accesses your B2B website, they will all get the same great experience.
• Next, you need to focus on graphics i.e. using high-quality images on your site. Why? Because humans process images much more quickly than text. And that is what makes images a valuable part of the conversion process since they show information in a snap.(source)
• Another key element that helps with conversion is the use of call to action at appropriate places. These are brief, concise sentences that encourage people to take action. Also, make it look like a button, they are great at converting. You know why? Because they are fun to press and also because they stand out to the readers.
• Provide your buyers with easy access to 3d models, date sheets, or any technical information they might need to evaluate your products or services.
• Create high-quality ecommerce marketing content for prospects early in their exploration. Developing this type of authoritative content can really help your business website earn quality inbound links and organic traffic leading to increased brand exposure.

Some of the top-of-the-funnel gated content types include:

• eBooks
• Blog articles
• Advice articles
• How-to videos
• Quizzes 
• Pricing sheets
• Webinars
• Company overviews

However, with StoreHippo, you don’t need to worry about these features ever.  This is because our feature-rich platform allows you to develop and manage all the above mentioned content strategies from blogs to graphics and video to SEO and much more.

2. Use the power of reviews

UGC or User Generated Content is an extremely powerful tool that can turn even the most sceptical consumers into loyal customers. Many consumers also agree that UGC is way more influential and trustworthy in making purchasing decisions than your typical branded content.

You will be amazed to know that websites that incorporate UGC into their marketing strategies have reported an incredible hike in their conversion rates.

Unfortunately, many B2B businesses also make the same mistake of following into the footsteps of their counterpart B2C companies, i.e. customer testimonials. What they don’t realize is, what worked best for most B2C consumers might not bear the same results for business to business customers.

The thing is when retail buyers consider a company, they are looking for a little bit more information than your average star rating. In that case, simply offering them video clips and snippets of the reviews (though may be helpful) but is not sufficient to your prospects.

What you can do instead is to create case studies that contain actual statistical data from your ecommerce marketing survey proving to your viewers how your products and services have helped other businesses so far. Showcase the success stories of your past or existing customers. And while at it, encourage them to offer real, measurable results in terms of numbers, rather than simple praise of your business.

StoreHippo allows you to add a customer review feature to your business website. This feature not only allows your clients to engage with you but also to engage with each other in order to encourage them to take action.

3. Marketing funnel

Think of creating a marketing funnel for better conversions. Don’t know what that is? Well, it is basically a set of stages that map the B2B customer journey.

But why name it a funnel?

Because this strategy is akin to panning for gold. You need to funnel out all the impurities such as stones, dirt, etc. to get to the gold lying amidst them. Similarly, you need to identify those golden buyers that can drive your business forward from the crowd of prospects that aren’t just right for your business.

So, how can you build this marketing funnel for your Business to Business website? Let’s find out.

• Your first step involves attracting those interested prospects via ecommerce marketing to your site. Here a basic SEO (or Search Engine Optimization) strategy can help you out. You can create SEO-optimized content, besides using PPC or social media advertising to gain a higher amount of targeted visitors. Besides, you can guest post on industry sites can attract even more audience.
• The second step involves engaging the prospects in finding relevant information and helping them reach out to their goals. It could be anything from a blog post to the FAQ section, to the tutorials to product sheets to even just a calculator. Just make sure you offer something of value to keep them on the page.
• The third step is to nurture the B2B leads by offering something of value in exchange for your buyer’s email address, be it a downloadable worksheet, a free consultation or ebook, or something else. Once you receive the emails, you can focus on working your way up the conversion ladder.
• Lastly, at the end of your marketing campaign, you can forward your offer. This offer could be a demo, a free trial period, or some other thing that might land the sale.

StoreHippo platforms are designed using the latest tools and technologies to help promote your business. Some of these tools include Catalog Promotional Pricing, Bundled Products, Flexible Coupons, Landing page tools for campaigns, etc.

4. Conversational selling

In the good old days before the era of the internet, the things were simple when sellers used to have one-on-one interaction with the buyers? The merchants talk to their prospects, understand what they want, and deliver a solution, now what’s more simple than this?

Unfortunately, for modern ecommerce marketing buyers and sellers, this type of personal interaction wasn’t a scalable option. This is because nurturing relationships and acquiring customers via conversational selling proves to be a costly venture for most businesses.

Until now.

With the widespread use of the latest technologies at our disposal, businesses can use various live chat and certain messaging apps such as Facebook Messenger, Whatsapp, etc. to apply conversational selling strategies at scale without having to spend a huge amount on hiring and maintaining a large sales team.

Applying this strategy, you can not only attract visitors to your B2B website but also convert them to leads. How?

By following up on previous interactions, use targeted content to nurture relationships besides connecting prospects with your sales team in real-time and improving customer retention by providing timely customer support.

Just focus on having the interactions that are relevant and contextual in nature. You can ensure this by providing helpful information via real-time notifications to your prospects.

Using a robust customer data management platform might be a good option here. It will allow your ecommerce marketing team to access all customer data in one centralized location which, in turn, will help them effectively personalise these conversations.

The key to delivering the most relevant experience to each individual buyer lies in combining customer information (such as purchasing history etc.) and preferences with real-time interactions, ultimately leading to the increase in conversion rate.

StoreHippo offers you the facility of having interactions with your customers in real-time. Now, you can not only assist your customers during the buying journey but also the customer related information can be accessed quickly in order to better understand their requirements.

And lastly, but most importantly,

5. Steer clear from the leaky bucket

Metaphorically speaking, many of the Business to Business marketers spend a lot of time pouring water into leaky buckets. Instead, they should aim at fixing the bucket (or the e-commerce-marketing funnel), rather than pouring more water (or the web traffic) into the bucket trying to keep it full. Because this, my friends. is the recipe for below average results.

If you are looking to blame something, blame the landing pages, they are the real culprits here, more particularly, the conversion forms. Here, we would recommend you to optimize your forms, if you haven’t already done so, thereby ensuring that you are not leaving any prospects behind from your marketing campaigns.

For example, let’s suppose every visit that you send to your B2B landing pages costs you around 100/- per visit. On any given day, you sent a total of 1000 forms. Now, if your forms convert at  1%, you will get 10 leads at a cost of 100/-. But if they get converted at 3%, those 100/- would have bought you 3 leads.

Now, that’s 3 times more leads for one-third of the cost per leads without you having to spend extra amount on anything. How you managed it? Just by improving your lead conversion form.

Just remember, once you have optimized your funnel and are confident that there is nothing more you can do to improve your landing pages, it's time to move on to implementing the other ecommerce marketing tips mentioned above and improve the conversion rates of your business website.

Fortunately, all the websites powered by StoreHippo offer dynamic and customizable forms to its users for better conversions. Apart from this, you will find inbuilt forms for regular features as well. And don’t worry, all our forms are optimized to help you capture the majority of visitors to your site.

These five marketing tips to drive conversion are not a one-time thing but rather an ongoing strategy that is helping successful marketers across the globe improve their ROI and contribute to the company’s growth.

So, what are you waiting for? Implement this strategy and join the elite group of successful marketers too. What? Seems too much to begin with? 

Don’t worry, StoreHippo has a solution for everything. Ours is an ecommerce platform that has in-built features and tools to help you implement all these strategies with ease. For example, 

We offer tons of themes to choose from which are not only mobile-friendly and search engine-friendly but has a unique way of blending right in with your business. 

Besides, this, we have tools for everything including the ones to make your marketing funnel work more effectively and your reviews to shine more brightly. Plus, we already told you about our lead conversion forms, didn’t we? 

So, don’t wait longer.

Book a free demo with us to know more about our features!