One fact of life for most B2B companies is that their customers and potential customers are now firmly in control of the buying process. From a marketing perspective, "buyer control" means that prospective customers now have the ability to determine when and how they will access and obtain information about the products and services they may be interested in purchasing. The Internet has put an enormous amount of information about almost every product and service at the fingertips of prospective buyers on a 24-7-365 basis. This means that B2B buyers no longer need to depend primarily on salespeople for product/service information.
And it's becoming more and more clear that business buyers are taking advantange of their growing independence and power. Several recent research studies have demonstrated that the Internet has arguably become the single most important source of information for business executives and managers when considering potential purchases.
In today's environment, your company's website becomes an absolutely critical component of your marketing and sales effort. Prospective customers are probably visiting your website almost every day. If they're not, well, that's a subject for another post. These prospects may visit your site because they heard about your company from a colleague, or because they met one of your managers at a social function, or because they found you via a Google search. Many of these prospects know little, if anything, about your company, and you don't know who most of these potential customers are. But they are forming an impression of your company - and making at least a preliminary decision about whether you're worth talking to - based on the content they see on your website. So, the content of your website will either help you sell . . . or not.
If you are repositioning your printing company as a marketing services firm, an effective website is especially critical. For one thing, you are building a new "brand identity" for your company, and your website will play a huge role in defining that new identity. In addition, this repositioning almost certainly means that you are trying to attract customers that you have not worked with in the past, and these are the kinds of prospects who are most likely to visit your website to learn more about your company.
So, what does it take to make your website an effective selling tool? Well, obviously, the website needs to function correctly. If I click on a "Contact Us" button, I need to be taken to a page with contact information/functionality. Your website also needs to employ reasonably good design principles and ideas. Beyond these basics, though, the effectiveness of your website as a selling tool depends mostly on the content. There are several ways to talk about content, but I'll focus on three.
First, does your website describe the business you are becoming or the business you used to be. If you are making the "printer to MSP" transition, your website should emphasize the marketing services you provide. I've had several managers tell me that they had transformed their printing company into a marketing service provider. But when I visit their website, the overall impression I come away with is "printing company" or perhaps "direct mail company."
The second important characteristic of website content is that it must "speak" from the customer's perspective. By this I mean that your content needs to make it easy for your target prospects to identify with your company. How do you do that? By having your content talk about how your work with businesses like theirs to solve the problems they must deal with.
My final point is that your website should provide content that has inherent value to prospective customers. For example, you can provide white papers or recorded webinars or webcasts that address the marketing issues that your prospects are facing. This kind of content helps to establish the credibility and expertise of your company and provides site visitors a reason to engage with you further.
The right content can turn your website into a powerful selling tool. And if you are a marketing services firm, the good news is that these same ideas also apply to your prospective clients. In other words, you can help your clients implement these ideas and get paid in the process. Just make sure that you're eating your own dog food.
Discussion
By Frank Nardi on Aug 11, 2009
The better we are at marketing ourselves, the better we can become at marketing our clients.
By Printing company on Aug 11, 2009
I couldn't agree more with this article. So many websites out there aren't fully maximising their potential to turn visitors into customers. Great advice.
By Grover Daniels on Aug 11, 2009
Excellent Blog David. One additional idea for all the CEO's out there, read, read, and read about "free Search", "paid Search", "affiliate programs", and "links".
As the Internet buyers have evolved, so has a higher degree on internet search sophistication, and the primary Search companies, (Yahoo, Google, Bing, and MSN) always change how they "rank" content on a website.
For example, type the Keyword "Business Cards" in Google, and look at what a GREAT job VistaPrint has done keeping their name up front.
This takes time and MONEY.
Affiliates,(Performance based-marketing) is also an interesting sales dynamic that has emerged. They get paid a commission when a customer links from their site to yours, and "convert" an order. BUT Goggle hates them, and they hurt a ranking in the world of free Search,(Organic). So all the hard work you do in content generation will get you a bad mark from Google if they detect you are using affiliates.
Finally, with Google AdWords (PPC), a marketing budget can eaten up in 1 day, I know.
This pay-per-click approach gets your site "hits" via well placed banner ads, but no "buys", unless you have an active tracking and buying mechanism in place.
My advise to all of us is to learn about B2B thru B2C sites that are selling their products and services everyday with great content and web design.
As David states, it's all about great content..but content that is not viewed easily by your "prospect" may hurt your companies objective, and waste valuable $$$.
gbd2
By Jeff Hines on Aug 11, 2009
I would add one important thing here: The need for one or multiple calls to action. All of the things mentioned in the article are true. But how are you going to get these visitors to become leads? You need to have something for them to do...i.e. download something, register for something, or try something. There needs to be an interaction. All the great content and massive traffic is only useful if that traffic converts to leads.
The best marketers use very specific landing pages for each of their campaigns and offers. Lead capture forms are critical...they should be easy to find and fill out...without requiring too much information. They are relentless about monitoring traffic and conversion rates. They are forever tweaking the offers and copy in order to increase conversions.
Don't rely on someone to read your content and then somehow stumble to the "contact us" page, where they'll hopefully request to speak to a salesperson. It's not likely to happen.
A/B testing is a must in order to determine which offers/copy works best for a given audience or product. Conversions rule the day.
By gordon p on Aug 11, 2009
If the printing company is repositioning itself as a marketing services firm it should already understand the points made in this article.
The experience you had with the managers that told you that they had transformed their printing companies into marketing service providers -but when you visited their website, you came away with the impression that they were a “printing company” or perhaps “direct mail company” are very good examples of how really effective their websites were at reflecting their competency as MSPs.
By Lou Berceli on Aug 13, 2009
Great topic and input from everyone.
A few years ago I joined a compnay that was evolving from a successful pre-press trade shop into a sheetfed litho printer then adding color digital presses and reaching for the goal to become a successful Marketing Services Provider.
Upon joining the company I was not impressed with their web site at all and being new to the organization did not want to rock the boat commenting that the exisiting web site was hurting not helping our business.
As the saying goes "A photograph is worth a thousand words" I spent several hours seeking out the very best U.S. web sites (in our marketplace) that would help our senior management to see what the best of the best looked like.
I listed the Top 30 sites and made note as to what the best features were of each of the sites. Without commenting on how poor our old web site was, senior management took the ball and ran with it.
It paid off big since our new and improved web site was much better than 95% of the best national web sites.
By Ryan Lou on Aug 17, 2009
This advice is relevant not just for printers/Marketing service providers.
In fact, a lot of businesses in the industry rebranding themselves to fulfil a great need in the market place.
As a software provider serving printers/agencies/ marketing service providers, we too have taken a lead to 'raise the bar' with a complete redesign of our websites/blogs/ marketing.
By Larry Bauer on Aug 19, 2009
Your article makes good fundamental points often overlooked by printers who then wonder why they aren't perceived as they wish by the marketplace. I would add that the website content needs to change. Too many sites are virtually static (not something liked by the search engines)and give people no reason to return to the site.
Discussion
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