We’re always looking for new and interesting ways to compete and increase B2B technology sales. In order to keep up to date with the latest marketing advancements and technological capabilities, the 2015; Unbounce Conversion Road Trip in Toronto was a must-attend.
Speakers included some of the world’s leading optimization experts, Ryan Engley and Oli Gardener of Unbounce, Nemo Chu of KISSmetrics, Hana Abaza of Uberflip, and Karl Gilis of AGConsult.Check out the following highlights for some fantastic conversion and optimization secrets, to really increase your technology sales.
1. Support Your Campaign With the Best Marketing Tools
The resources and applications you use in order to create, curate, distribute, promote and analyze your content can be what makes or breaks a campaign. The platforms that you include in your marketing stack should be easy to use on the back end, and visually appealing on the front end, in order to effectively compete with your competition. Additionally, your platforms need to be able to communicate easily with one another in order for you to have a successful 360 degree view of your customer with robust analytics.
While there are many amazing marketing tools out there, the keynote speakers at the Unbounce Converstion Roadtrip in Toronto suggested the following, which are definitely worth taking note of:
- Salesforce for CRM
- HubSpot for nurturing and marketing automation (at GamePlan, we’re huge HubSpot fans!)
- Unbounce for landing pages
- KISSmetrics for daily analytic metrics
- Google Adwords or Bing for analytic metrics and optimizing Quality Score
More tools that can be useful:
- MailChimp for emails
- Marketo for nurturing and marketing automation
- Wistia for video hosting and analytics
- Zapier for app integration
- Aweber for automated emails
- Retargeter for retargeting (advertising to contacts that have already visited your site)
2. Create A Relevant Keyword Database
Whether you are creating content internally, or you have a B2B technology marketing company working for you, make sure your copywriters always reference some type of keyword assessment database prior to/during the creation process. This is one of the most important optimization secrets to take note of, since many companies are still not using a keyword assessment database. Incorporating this tactic into your campaign can really give you an advantage over your competition.
HubSpot has a great keyworder tool that you can check out, as does Bing and Google. It can be especially effective to choose a few long-tail keywords that are particularly relevant to your persona, and create content around them. This way, you can increase B2B technology sales by attracting the most appropriate prospects to your niche content.
3. Assess Your Webpage's Quality Score
Always use a diagnostic tool such as Bing or Google Adwords to determine your website's quality score. Your quality score is determined by keywords, ad copy, landing pages, and a multitude of other factors based on Google’s algorithms. Quality score is so important because it is a directional guide for account optimization, and it puts users first. As a general frame of reference, scoring can go from 1-10, and most lead generation companies average out at a score of 6. You want to be higher than 6.
*Quick Tip:The higher your quality score, the less CPC on ad campaigns in Google Adwords
4. A/B Test Like An Expert
The following best practices are great starting points for you or your outsourced B2B technology marketing company to work with.
- In line offers are always better than pop ups. Make it top of page, spanning the full width of the browser, distraction free
- You generally need at least 100-400 (minimum) conversions in a business cycle, to have a successful A/B test
- Use bullet lists
- Put a reassuring message near your CTA
- Use green check marks (for subliminal reassurance)
- Use uneven numbers (in blog titles, # of bullets, etc)
- Tell prospects what you want them to do very clearly in your CTA
- Create a sense of urgency. (For example, if your goal is to migrate your customer base to the latest operating system, offer up a time-sensitive discount for early adopters)
Once you incorporate these best practices on your landing pages, microsites and website, you can even use eye tracking research, user session recordings, scrolling heat maps, and clicking heat maps to track engagement levels and optimize further.
5. Learn From Past Results:
Every once in awhile, a marketing campaign just won’t perform as well as anticipated. In this situation, don’t fret – the last of our optimization secrets involves just taking a step back to analyze the campaign from a broader perspective.
- If campaigns consistently flop, than this is a good indication that perhaps the market you’re in currently is not such a good fit for your product or service. Assess your product or service to see if it might be applicable in multiple markets.
- Make sure you are positioning yourself properly. However you market yourself, there will be expected strengths and expected weaknesses from your audience. To put it very basically, if you are known for being experts at handling large-scale data storage deployments, than don’t try to sell a calendaring application on the side – people will automatically assume it sucks because it’s not your specialty and it’s unrelated to IT data management!
- Interview competitors and clients: what sets you apart, what do they think you’re amazing at?
- Consider your value proposition, key benefit, primary differentiator, competitive alternatives, target segment and marketing category
GamePlan Marketing is a Full-Service Creative & Digital Agency located in the Oakville, Greater Toronto Area in Canada. We Specialize in Digital Marketing for B2B Technology Companies.
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