Today if a customer is dissatisfied with your product or service, they have many ways to vent their frustrations. The old adage that a satisfied customer will tell one person and a dissatisfied one will tell ten, needs to be revised in the age of Yelp and City Search. Today a dissatisfied customer will tell hundreds if not thousands of people about poor service at the click of mouse or a swipe on an iPhone.
Everything You Need to Know About Building a B2B Website
From selecting a content management system to SEO.
In today’s highly competitive business-to-business (B2B) marketplace, having an effective website is a foundational part of any marketing program. Out with the old-school brochure-ware sites and in with the modern web platform that connects all aspects of your business.
Are you looking to attract the right traffic to your biotech website? Do you want to recruit the top scientists and engineers to work for your life sciences company? Looking for that next round of venture capital and need to stay visible in the VC community? Or maybe you need more leads for your newest bioinformatics tool.
Are you looking to drive more traffic to your bank's or credit union's website? Need more loan applicants? The most cost-effective way to accomplish this is to fully optimize your website for organic search.
Here are ten excellent examples of great B2B websites, 2011. If you thought B2B sites had to be ugly, boring and utilitarian, think again. The Top 10 B2B Websites listed here pack a punch by following many of the Web 2.0 design principles. Simply put, the basics are:
A business to business (B2B) website is a website that is designed for the explicit purpose of selling products and services to businesses and not retail consumers. The sites www.oracle.com, www.cat.com and www.uline.com are good examples of B2B websites.
The content management system is the foundation of an effective B2B website ecosystem. Selecting the right CMS system is not a decision that is to be taken lightly.
If you want your brand to be successful in social media, think about starting a conversation.
When you Google the term “social media audit” you will get over three million hits. If you take the time to drill into the recommendations of the top 10 results, you will see the same blather being proffered by various so-called social media experts and agencies.
Build trust with your B2B prospects by sending them a monthly email newsletter
One of the most cost effective ways to stay in touch with customers and prospects is with a monthly email newsletter. For companies that cannot afford the expense of a marketing automation solution, a monthly newsletter is good low budget alternative. If you are already sending out printed newsletters, STOP!
Think of a B2B blog as a modern replacement for your newsletter.
If you read the leading inbound marketing blogs you’ll notice that content is king when it comes to optimizing your B2B website for organic search (SEO). Consequently, the expert inbound marketing bloggers state that a blog is foundational.
Create custom landing pages to target specific keywords.
Are you still using the plain vanilla “Contact Us” forms on your website to capturing leads? If so, it's time to consider creating custom landing pages for specific search terms.
Thinking about using Google AdWords to generate B2B leads? Test the waters first.
While generating leads from organic SEO is preferred since it is free, spending money on pay per click (PPC) advertising like Google AdWords is unavoidable for most B2B Marketers.
Looking to engage your B2B website visitors? Then you will need to take usability into consideration.
The key to website usability is to do all the thinking for the visitor. As usability guru Steve Krug likes to say, “Don’t make me think.” So what does that mean for you as a B2B website owner? It means you need to do the hard work.
When you use a CMS as the foundation of your website, you need to select a user interface (UI) template for the site design. Most of the CMS platforms have bare bones templates that you can use.
Looking to build a state of the art B2b website? You'll need the right technology.
Today, best-of-breed B2B websites use open source content management systems (CMS). These systems allow non-technical staff to easily update content and add new functionality without writing a line of HTML code.
In the old dot com days, companies selected web designers by the size of their nose ring and the color of their hair. The more wild the better.
Today if you want to build a website without a lot of pain, you need a designer who truly understands web development with a Content Management System (CMS). They need to know CSS cold. They must know PHP in their sleep. Templates are their life.
If you read any of the leading inbound marketing blogs you’ll see that content is king when it comes to optimizing your website for organic search a.k.a SEO.
First and foremost, the leading inbound marketing bloggers state that a blog is a must have item. Not only do you need to blog, you need to publish articles regularly.
Are you looking to show up on page one of Google search results? Then you will need to make sure your website is fully optimized for organic search.
Follow the best practices below and you will begin to improve your search engine results page rankings. Keep in mind, search engine optimization is not rocket science and you don't need a PhD do to it effectively.
So you have a blog, a Facebook fan page and a customized corporate Twitter page. You even have a few videos posted to YouTube.
So where is the ROI?
The answer lies in the type of engagement you are fostering. If customers are not posting comments on your blog and they are not embedding links to your videos in their Facebook wall and they are not even tagging your content with Facebook LIKES (thumbs up), the answer is:
If you are interested in social media strategy, this video from Brian Solis is required viewing. Brian does a deep dive into the true meaning of social capital. Brian Solis content is always worthwile.
Welcome to the brave new world of the socially engaged and connected consumer. Inbound Marketing 2.0 fully acknowledges the customer is in control. It takes the approach of pulling prospects to you instead of chasing after them.
According to an eVoc Insights study, 48 percent of consumers need to consult reviews before making an online purchase. Today, many consumers are turning to YouTube and other social media channels to find reviews.
In October 2009, there were more than 3.7 billion search queries on YouTube according to comScore.
Today I spent some time trolling through Marketing Director Job postings on Monster.com in the Boston area. It’s one my new business development activities. It’s absolutely amazing what you can learn from these job postings.
Most of the job posts focus on brand building, creating collateral and attending trade shows. Many also talk about the requirement of having a dynamic and fun personality.
You can learn a lot about how to use social media for your company by studying a company’s use of social media during a crisis.
The current PR crisis that BP is experiencing is a great example of both how to use social media and how not to use it. While there are numerous blog articles on the PR gaffes of BP and their clumsy use of social media, few drill into the details of what you need to do to avoid becoming another BP.
Today if you flip on the TV or have kids, you can’t avoid being bombarded by messages about social media. You’ll see anchors on CNN plugging their Twitter pages and ads for Tempur-Pedic mattresses pushing their Facebook page.
Just about every night CNN anchor Anderson Cooper mentions you can follow him on Twitter, news stories break about Sara Palin’s latest Facebook post or Lady Gaga’s latest outlandish publicity stunt.
One of the most productive sources of revenue for B2B marketers is their prospect and lead database. If it costs you $20 to acquire each prospect in your database and you have 50,000 names in your database, the value of this data is 1 Million dollars or more!
According to research from Brian Carol the author of “Lead Generation for the Complex Sale”, 70% of the visitors to your website researching your product will eventually buy a product from you or your competitors. Yet salespeople do not fully pursue around 70% of leads generated by marketing.
Often there are many reasons for the sales team to criticize the quality of the leads generated by the website. If you're lucky, they may openly criticize the quality of the leads to management. On the other hand, they may do it covertly by not following up on the leads provided.
Today if a customer is dissatisfied with your product or service, they have many ways to vent their frustrations. The old adage that a satisfied customer will tell one person and a dissatisfied one will tell ten, needs to be revised in the age of Yelp and City Search. Today a dissatisfied customer will tell hundreds if not thousands of people about poor service at the click of mouse or a swipe on an iPhone.
Think you know everything about SEO and Google's Ranking Algorithm?
Are you looking to attract the right traffic to your biotech website? Do you want to recruit the top scientists and engineers to work for your life sciences company? Looking for that next round of venture capital and need to stay visible in the VC community? Or maybe you need more leads for your newest bioinformatics tool.
A business to business (B2B) website is a website that is designed for the explicit purpose of selling products and services to businesses and not retail consumers. The sites 
When you use a CMS as the foundation of your website, you need to select a user interface (UI) template for the site design. Most of the CMS platforms have bare bones templates that you can use.
Looking to build a great B2B website? The foundation of an effective B2B Website has five key components.
If you read any of the leading inbound marketing blogs you’ll see that content is king when it comes to optimizing your website for organic search a.k.a SEO.
Are you looking to show up on page one of Google search results? Then you will need to make sure your website is fully optimized for organic search.
So you have a blog, a Facebook fan page and a customized corporate Twitter page. You even have a few videos posted to YouTube.
Welcome to the brave new world of the socially engaged and connected consumer. Inbound Marketing 2.0 fully acknowledges the customer is in control. It takes the approach of pulling prospects to you instead of chasing after them.
