Can you lose a sale simply by having a bad Web offer?
I think we’ve all had the experience of following a link someone sent us on Twitter or Facebook only to discover that it’s just another poorly disguised attempt at hucksterism.
You land on the page and get bombarded by a long, endless page of marketing drivel, punctuated with flashing neon sign graphics, and a late-night infomercial vibe.
While most B2B Web marketers are much more professional in their approach than this, it doesn’t mean that the concept of “the Bad Offer” can’t apply.
No matter the context, a Bad Web Conversion Offer slows down the sale, gives potential buyers a bad taste, puts them off, or even sends a good buyer to a competitor.
So what makes a Bad Web Offer?
- It doesn’t provide any value to the visitor.
- The process to get the perceived value (the whitepaper, webinar, free trial) takes too long, or requires too much user input.
- There’s no compelling difference between your offer and what they could get elsewhere.
- The presentation is sub-par, unprofessional, difficult to navigate, or just plain boring . . . .
Lots of great resources have addressed the question,”What, if any differences exist between the style and content of an SEO versus a PPC landing page?”
SEO.com states that a typical SEO and PPC landing page should serve the appropriate purpose, contain the right mix between content and call-to-action, and provide links to outside information and to the main home page of your Web site.
SEOBook.com says the only major difference between an SEO and PPC page is that the call to action should come early, and much more often on a PPC page— but that otherwise the concept is the same.
But how does this formula change from a B2C site, where the goal is typically an instant transaction, to a B2B company site, where a prospect’s buying decision may still be weeks or months away?
An outstanding article by Proteus B2B states that B2B decisions are “driven by risk and the avoidance thereof.” As a result, a B2B landing page must be more complete, holistically-oriented, and must present a clear, competitive, consistent message through content, style, and feel . . . .
I’m going to share a little secret about a mistake we made about a year and a half ago when we redesigned our Web site.
On the surface it was a beautiful redesign. Oh, so very beautiful.
Slick, shiny, “the new hotness,” slick, and slick (did I mention it was slick?).
And it killed our Web site conversion rate.
After two months of awful performance, we finally bit the bullet and furiously rolled the old site back out, and started from scratch . . . .
Sales 2.0 – Psychology, Self-Selection, and “Getting There First”
19 July 2010 — Steve Watts
2 Comments
I’ve read, heard, and studied lots of talk about the psychology of sales and marketing.
What makes buyers tick.
How decisions are made.
Prestige, Pleasure, Pain (relief), Profits, or Preservation.
But I was reminded today of another key psychological aspect of sales:
Get there first.
“Getting there first” is a simple rule that Paul Castain’s Sales Playbook talks about.
Want to be a budding (sales) rock star?
Get there first.
When it comes to lead management and generating new sales, showing up last is often worse than not showing up at all . . . .
I came across a great article by Stoney deGeyter that states when it comes to SEO Web content, there’s really no such thing as “perfect.”
There’s no “perfect” content page, no “perfect” landing page, no “perfect” fix for a Web site that turns it from a bland SEO performer into a conversion gem.
Other than split testing, “targeted tinkering,” and adapting a site as new technologies, audiences, and ideas show up, there’s no perfect way to do SEO.
And being what I consider to be a fairly proficient writer, I was both intrigued and disturbed by the proposition . . . .
If 100 people go to your website, how many of them fill out a form or buy something? If 2 out of 100 fill out a form, then you have a 2% conversion rate. This is slightly better than the average for most corporate websites. We were lucky (or blessed) to get the name InsideSales.com and tap into a large flow of web traffic from our very first day. In fact, we got 8 leads their first day we turned up our website.
The process of converting visitors to leads or sales is the process of website conversion. And designing your website to do this well is called conversion design. Most companies make a fancy website that looks like a nice electronic brochure but hardly generates any leads at all.
I just spent an hour on the phone with Tim Ash, the founder of http://www.sitetuners.com as he walked me through an express review of the home page of InsideSales.com.
The good news is that we have lot’s of room for improvement. We convert leads at 3-4 times better than the average. The sad news is that our previous website, though not nearly as good looking, converted somewhat better than this one does. Hmmm, look or […]
I just got back this afternoon from a great workshop on SEO techniques by one of our favorite partners on the topic, www.SEO.com. I have tweeted a bunch of the epiphanies I gathered but one that came up that I get asked a lot about is the topic of this post:
How to get the most for your money with a SEO-optimized press release.
You may not know about how frugal InsideSales.com is; we have built our company without ever taking venture capital and we were recently ranked by Utah Business as #10 in Utah for growth (See September Issue of Utah Business). I bring this up because we did it organically by scrimping and saving yet keeping one foot on the gas pedal when everyone else in our industry is just trying to find ways to spend their venture money (rather than their own earnings.) Not us, this is our money and we are very careful with it. Or, to put it another way; we are very “fiscally efficient,” and proud of it.
Why is SEO important? The best leads that close into the biggest deals.
Why is PR important? The 2nd or 3rd best way to improve SEO.
The players in the market for SEO optimized […]
How do we get people to engage in a discussion, to write comments on our blog?
We honestly didn’t know.
So we asked our friends at SEO.com, the experts.
