Building Better Landing Pages for B2B Campaigns
Monday, July 12th 2010
Many business-to-business (B2B) marketers see landing page optimization as a business-to-consumer (B2C) tactic, but that's a mistake, according to Lance Loveday, CEO of Closed Loop Marketing.
"We have several B2B case studies that show a quantitative impact from qualitative changes," he said. He shared some of those case studies at the B2B Search Strategy Summit in Los Angeles last month.
We shared some of Loveday's advice in a post to the PPC Summit blog, "Building Better Landing Pages." But there are some challenges that are unique to B2B buying behavior that need to be addressed when building a landing page for a B2B campaign.
Many of these B2B buyer behavior challenges are illustrated in the BuyerSphere Project research from Enquiro, which Enquiro CEO Gord Hotchkiss also shared at last month's B2B Search Strategy Summit.
For instance, understanding that much of B2B buying is about mitigating risk, a marketer needs to ensure that all elements of the page -- from strategy to design to messaging -- address those risks clearly and effectively.
"You need to be sure the conscious and unconscious impressions of your visitors match the way you want to be perceived," Loveday said.
Emotion trumps rationality, even in B2B buying, according to the BuyerSphere research. So paying attention to elements of the page that convey professionalism, security, and credibility can influence buyer behavior dramatically, Loveday said.
"You need to instantly reassure them that they've come to a 'clean, well lighted place,'" he said.
A third concept illustrated in the BuyerSphere research that applies to landing pages is knowing your audience. In B2B buying, it's common for the person who will use the product to be different from the person who will make the purchase. Ensuring that a landing page has information for both roles will help move the buyer along a purchase path, and eventually close the sale.
And knowing whether users in each role generally fall into the "digital native" category (those under 25 who have grown up with technology) or the "digital immigrant" category (those over 25 who have come to technology later in life) will impact how you speak to those buyers, what the design of a landing page looks like, and what kind of a message you need to get across.
If you missed the B2B Search Summit, check out the upcoming PPC Summit Presents…Search Marketing and Social Media Success, coming to Los Angeles in September 2010 -- learn more about this comprehensive search marketing training event at PPCSummit.com.
| | | Share |
