I’ve been a B2B marketer for almost 20 years. Times have changed. Back in the “old” days, B2B marketing was all about trade shows, advertising in trade magazines, direct mail marketing, placing ads in the yellow pages and purchasing indexes. Networking and direct selling were also great ways to get in front o f a customer. Many of these techniques have value still today. However, the biggest change in B2B marketing is the growth of Google and a new generation of internet savvy purchasing agents and buyers. The buyers today are more apt to “Google” your product or service, research a few alternatives and then pick a short list of people to call and inquire with. Many don’t even call, they just email you or fill out a reply device on the web and are expecting you to get back to them. You need to have a web marketing plan in place!
As a business owner, you need to have a web presence that not only gets found by your target market, but is engaging and does the selling for you. It has to turn your visitors into leads.
“60% of all organic clicks go to the top three organic search results,
and 75% of users never scroll past the first page of search results”.
Google is the new Yellow Pages, and if you’re not at the top of search, you’re missing a huge opportunity to drive visitors to your website where you have a chance to convert them into a lead. Web marketing is the process of optimizing your website for search engines so that your site gets found. Ideally, you’re on the first page of Google. However, driving traffic to an old, out dated website without any engaging content, calls to action, or reply devices isn’t going to help you. Web marketing is like a puzzle. You have to put all the pieces together to end up with a steady flow of qualified leads from your website.
According to a recent survey,
The average cost of an outbound lead was $373 vs. $143 per inbound lead from web marketing.
That’s 60% less!
Think about it. The cost to put a salesperson on the road. Salary, car allowance, training, benefits, commission. It all adds up. Then he/she is out prospecting by dropping of brochures and business cards, which aren’t cheap! It all adds up. What if you only sent out the sales reps to qualified leads who were interested in buying? That’s what happens with web marketing. The sales cost per lead and per sale is dramatically reduced.
If you want to learn more about web marketing and how my company can help you, please contact us.