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Practical Online Marketing Tips From MarketingSherpa’s Research

April 23rd, 2008 Posted by: Bill Gadless

In his posting “What Works in B2B Technology Marketing”, Tom Pick over at WebMarketCentral has provided a nice summary of Marketing Sherpa’s free whitepaper, Business Technology Marketing Benchmark Guide 2007-08: Practical Data for B2B Software, Hardware & Services Marketers. (The whitepaper itself distills the complete Benchmark Guide, which is available for a fee at the SherpaStore.)

As Tom says, truly experienced B2B IT marketers won’t find any shocking revelations here; but there are a few surprises, and the confirmatory data also make it well worth the read. We honed in on just three of Tom’s major takeaways…

Low conversion rates are (unfortunately) the norm…
“Fewer than 10% of visitors who click to your offer page for a white paper, webinar or online ‘education’ (case studies, tech specs, etc.) actually wind up registering to use these resources.” (We agree with Tom that 10% would seem stellar to most B2B marketers.)

…but several tactics can be employed to improve conversion:

Repeat important words throughout the copy. “Don’t assume that prospects carefully read everything on the page from start to finish … Make sure relevant keywords are present no matter where the eye flickers.” (Not to mention that repeating keywords does good things for your SEO, too…)
“Landing pages with fewer click options, fewer path decisions, nearly always get far higher response rates.”
“Bullet points work. Bullet points often blow paragraph-style copy (with nearly the exact same words) out of the water.”
“Add immediate calls to action, such as a large ‘Sign up Today!’ and a bold ‘Register Now’, even when you think it’s self evident. Being politely pushy can pay off.”

Buyers find vendors – not the other way around.
75% of influencers (80% of decision-makers!) said that they found vendors through research, rather than responding to a vendor’s campaign. Says Sherpa, “The key increasingly lies not in blasting out your message via a marketing megaphone, but rather in placing yourself where you can and will be found when prospects are looking … That means the following marketing tactics become more critical to your mix:

White paper syndication (e.g., TechTarget, KnowledgeStorm, FindWhitePapers)
SEO
Paid search advertising
PR (including speeches, blogs, awards and technical articles)
Consistent brand-awareness advertising
Existing customer referrals.”

The most significant challenge identified by B2B technology marketers is now the ever-growing committee.
For 5-figure purchases, the average buying committee size in 100-500 employee companies is six people; in large companies, it’s 21! “Given the shift to mega-committees, marketing will have to expand their prospecting databases and outreach activities on a per-account basis.”

In sum: make your company easy to find when prospects are looking, with compelling and educational content readily available; do some testing to help you sharpen up those landing pages for improved conversion; and take a vow to nurture all of those committee members, not just your chief proponent or “inside salesperson”. Your Web marketing consultants can provide you with additional guidance, too.