Category: Website Design & Development

  • Inbound Marketing Tactics to Get Bulk of B2B Marketing Budgets in 2011

    As we head into November and the start of the Holiday Season, B2B marketers are getting into their budgeting mode. With the cloud of economic uncertainty still hanging over many industries, it is not surprising that B2B marketers are shifting their 2011 budgets more towards lower-cost inbound eMarketing tactics.

    MarketingSherpa asked more than 900 B2B marketers how they expected their marketing budgets to change for 2011. The chart below shows the breakdown between different marketing tactics and the projected increase/decrease for the next year. (more…)

  • Is Your Industrial Website Still Just a Business Card?

    Unless you’ve been on a very long sabbatical from industrial and manufacturing marketing, you very well know that your website should be the hub of your online marketing.

    Why should you care about your company’s website? Probably the best reason I’ve read is by Linda Rigano, Executive Director of Strategic Services at ThomasNet. She said,

    “Treat your website as if you were hiring a six-figure salesperson. If you were going to put them on the street, what would you do? You’d arm them with information about the marketplace. You’d arm them with information about your products and how people use them. Then you’d put that person in front of the audience and check with them.”

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  • 5 Rules of Website Redesign for Engaging Engineers and Industrial Buyers

    If you are a manufacturer or a provider of technical services, your website needs to be aligned with the buying process of your prospects and customers. Today, technical buyers and engineers expect suppliers to have a substantial online presence with a website packed with relevant content in a variety of formats and easily searchable. Is your site ready for this shift in expectations or do you need a website redesign?

    I’m sure you’ve read many times that engineers hate marketing/marketers and they want only the facts. Those punch lines and stereotypes may be amusing but they won’t really help you come up with an effective site redesign. How do you engage engineers and technical buyers on your website and build deeper relationships and achieve higher conversion rates?

    Rule #1: Natural or organic search engine optimization (SEO)

    In the research phase of the industrial buying cycle, engineers and industrial buyers tend to use broad keywords and phrases that describe their current problem. Unless your website shows up in the initial phases, you are probably not going to be considered in the next step, which is the comparison stage.

    It shouldn’t be an afterthought because retrofitting SEO after the redesign is typically not very effective and usually costs more. (more…)

  • Successful Industrial Websites Require Part DiY and Part Professional Help

    One trend that I have noticed lately with my industrial and engineering clients is that they want to take more of the work in-house. I am referring to updating, maintaining and sometimes marketing their industrial websites. Is that a good thing?

    My opinion is somewhat biased because I am an industrial and B2B marketing consultant. I make my living providing marketing services including designing and marketing industrial websites. However, I think it is a new and permanent reality of the current economy and have learned to adjust my business model accordingly.

    Adding value to industrial website development and marketing

    I am going to illustrate my point about part DiY and part professional help by using three real-life examples from my own industrial marketing business.

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  • B2B Websites: To Publish Prices, Or Not To Publish…That Is The Question

    Do you show prices on your B2B website? Have you struggled to answer that question? You are not alone, most business purchases, especially industrial products don’t lend themselves to a simple Manufacturer’s Suggested Retail Price (MSRP). It becomes even more complicated if you sell through channel partners and there are different pricing structures in place.

    This is not a new problem; business marketers have been debating the pros and cons of publishing prices on their websites for several years now. I found a series of blog posts on pricing on your website at Dave Jung’s B2B Blog, some of those articles date back to 2006.

    Why do we need prices on B2B websites?

    There have been many studies done over the years that indicate that price information is the very reason why most B2B buyers visit a vendor’s website. (more…)

  • Shortening the Industrial Buy Cycle in 5 Simple Steps

    The other day I read an interesting article titled “5 Steps To Shorten The B2B Buying Cycle” by Kerry Spellman, Client Relationship Manager at iProspect. Even though her article is about the B2B buy cycle in general, it is a perfect follow up to my earlier post “Deconstructing the Four Stages of the Industrial Buy Cycle.”

    The most frequent complaint that I have heard in the past year from my industrial clients is that their sales cycle has become longer, more complex and increasingly difficult to get on the buyer’s radar screen until it is too late. Any help that I can provide to my clients to alleviate the problem is greatly appreciated and rewarding for my business.

    That’s precisely why Kerry’s article caught my attention. She has focused on identifying the problem and providing a 5-step solution to shorten the buy cycle. I have summarized here my takeaways on her five steps.

    What is the key to shortening the buy cycle?

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  • How Lack of Marketing Content Can Derail Your Website Redesign Project

    What comes first – site content or site design? In the words of Jeffrey Zeldman, the renowned web designer, blogger, independent publisher and the king of Web standards according to Business Week, “Content precedes design. Design in the absence of content is not design, it’s decoration.”

    Are you involved in or responsible for redesigning your company’s website? Is your website redesign project on hold waiting for marketing to deliver content? If so, you know the frustration.

    It doesn’t matter whether you work for a corporate marketing department or the owner of a small business website. You spend countless hours, weeks and months working with the site designers developing site maps, wireframes and mock ups – but content? It is relegated to the bottom of the totem pole of deliverables. As a result, your dream web redesign project comes to a screeching halt. (more…)

  • The 6 essential rules of a website redesign – Ignore them at your peril

    Is you current website an asset or a liability? Is it so outdated that you avoid sending prospects and customers to your site? It may be time to invest in your online presence.

    The one thing that this recession has taught B2B marketers is to do more with less. This trend towards lower-cost content marketing is likely to continue well into 2010. It goes well beyond just cutting costs, today, it is more about accountability, analytics and engaging customers and prospects by using free or inexpensive social media tactics.

    So, what should you do to revamp or redesign your current website? I’m not talking about a cosmetic facelift but turning it into a marketing powerhouse as you position your company for the recovery. Here are six essential rules that you should follow:

    1. Optimize, optimize, optimize: That’s the golden rule of online marketing as is location, location, location in real estate. Unless your prospects can find your site when searching in major search engines, you are dead in the water. It is possible to do search engine optimization (SEO) by yourself but allow yourself time and there is a learning curve. Consider hiring a coach or an SEO expert to work up a strategic plan that you can execute.

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  • Driving Traffic to Your Homepage All the Time May Be a Big Mistake

    You’ve read up on all the traffic generation tactics and optimized your site to rank high on major search engines.

    You begin to see great results with hundreds of new visitors coming to your site everyday. You are excited until you see two key site statistics that burst your bubble. They are:

    1. High bounce rate — is the percentage of single-page visits or visits in which the person left your site from the entry page. A high bounce rate generally indicates that site entrance pages aren't relevant to your visitors.

    2. Low conversion rate — is the percent of site visitors who take a desired and measurable action. For example, fill out a form to download a white paper, register for a webinar, submit an order etc.

    The above two web analytics are not mere statistics for your webmaster. They have a direct impact on your bottom line.

    Why? Hordes of traffic that convert poorly are useless for generating qualified leads that convert well into paying customers.

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