8 Ways to Ensure Business Success Through Strong Digital Presence

Are your website and marketing efforts working for you? We’ve compiled an expert roundup of eight tips to guide your digital transformation to success.

Tip 1:  Your Website Matters Most

Many businesses underestimate the potential of their website and its influence on the B2B sales process. Most industrial companies consider their website to simply be an online brochure to showcase their products and services, when in fact, your website has the potential to be your best sales representative. As we know, first impressions are everything and your website is often the first impression you give potential customers. An optimized, efficient and well-designed website structured specifically for your target audience is the most critical part of any marketing strategy. So, make sure to take the time and make a smart investment in your website before you move onto any advertising, because the last thing you want to do is put more advertising dollars towards a poor representation of your company. Simply put your website is the most important marketing tool you have. It is the core of all your marketing efforts and sets the path for what will be a marketing success or failure.

Tip 2: Be Found.

On Average, B2B buyers and decision makers perform 12 searches before reaching out to a particular company.  Additionally, over 70% of those B2B searches begin with a generic search for a product or service with no specific brand mentioned at all. Will your company be found? Paid and Organic Search are equally important to an effective search marketing strategy. By utilizing a combined approach, integrating SEO and PPC campaigns, you will be better equipped to reach your audience during those initial 12 searches. Hard truth: If you are not investing in SEO and PPC, you are falling further and further behind your competition.

Tip 3: Know Your ROI

One of the top pain points is knowing whether the money you spend on digital marketing actually generates income. So before investing in digital marketing, you will need to answer the most important question of all. How will you judge the success of a digital marketing program? Over the years we’ve found that many organizations don’t track the ROI of their marketing efforts at the level that they should. These are the same individuals who don’t feel the effects of their digital marketing efforts. How will you know you’re getting results if you don’t have a plan for measurement? The first part to tracking the success is making sure your Google Analytics is set up and ready to integrate will all your campaigns. This includes setting up goals to track items like RQFs, phone calls, and contact forms as well as making sure that you are tagging all your online campaigns for Google to track the visit through to the conversion point. By making sure to have this in-depth conversion data, you will be able to attribute certain efforts down to specific sales opportunities and adjust your efforts based on what is working best.

Tip 4: Create Content That Speaks to Your Audience

With the endless avenues to share information online these days, making sure your content is focused and creative is very important. People want something more interesting and worthwhile that stands apart from the sea of other content. Make sure you do your research, find out who your customer is, what they are looking for and what are their pain points. From there, find out how your products and services will help with their issues and focus on that. If you use focused content, it will give the users a better understanding of your company and your approach, which will help them to qualify themselves before they reach out to you.

Tip 5: Get Social

You may initially think social media doesn’t belong in the B2B Industry, but that’s where you might be mistaken.  Oftentimes B2B purchases tend to be more expensive and there are fewer options for buyers to choose from. This is why social media is so incredibly important in helping your company stand out against the competition. One specific way that social media is very effective in B2B is by using LinkedIn advertising. The biggest benefit of using LinkedIn is that it is a way for you to share about your company on a business platform. You are able to target a very specific audience by filtering through a large array of options that LinkedIn provides for you. You can target down to specific job titles, industries, interests and more.

Tip 6: Don’t Ignore the Importance of Creative

How your business appears to the customer is just as important as the products or services you offer. We are all visual creatures and we can process visual information almost instantly. Imagery and design can be a powerful way to capture your audience, as well as differentiate your product from the competition. A single design or image can convey so much more than a block of text can. It can help explain a complex concept, making it so much more valuable to your users. When it comes to creative, make sure every element in the design reflects the brand – everything from the shape of the buttons to the fonts and colors chosen throughout. Whatever elements you adopt, they should be applied consistently across your different marketing materials. Creating a consistent brand message will encourage a higher rate of recognition and increase awareness. Think of companies like FedEx or Microsoft – they’ve created extremely specific brand messages using colors and slogans that people immediately recognize. This type of recognition and top of mind strategy can even lead to an increase in conversions because people will think of you versus other companies who may not have as focused of a brand strategy.

Tip 7:  The Right and Wrong Keywords

We all know how competitive search engine results are and what the value of using the right keywords is, but the fact of the matter is that having a keyword strategy is vital to a website’s success and this goes for both B2B & B2C. Really think about your products and services and how you believe your customers are finding you online. The more specific you can be with your keywords, the better – by doing this, you will see that you get more quality leads. From there, taking the time to create unique content using those keywords and inserting them into every part of your website in an organic way is a great first step. Take it even further by utilizing tools like Google Auto-Complete to see what suggestions people are typing in following your broad keywords. These are typically going to be likely keywords to create conversions, which is the optimal goal to capturing your audience through all phases of the buying cycle.

Tip 8: It’s About More Than Just Traffic

Gaining traffic to your website is great, but it’s not everything.  It seems obvious right? When you’re planning for your website, or creating your marketing strategy – take time to figure out what your primary goals are going to be. Maybe you get a lot of traffic to your website, but you are not getting the conversions you’re looking for. There are many ways you can make small tweaks with your marketing strategy to help drive home conversions and bring in more leads. Utilizing a comprehensive marketing strategy can really have a big impact. Take advantage of as many pieces in the puzzle as you can: SEO, PPC, content creation and social media. Do the legwork and find out where your audience is and focus there first. If you take a broader approach, you are more likely to find more leads and conversions.

Is your website helping or hurting your marketing efforts? We’re offering a free website and marketing analysis. Contact us and someone from Top Floor will be in touch with you!