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Capitalizing on Google’s Algorithm Adjustments for AI-Generated Content

In the early days of the internet, Google won the search engine wars against companies like AltaVista by developing more sophisticated algorithms rather than solely focusing on keyword matching. For example, Google’s PageRank algorithm incorporated authority, relevance, and keywords.

Since that time, Google has continued to provide search results based on user experience and search intent. At the same time, SEO strategists have continued to try to predict what the algorithm wants and create content that “hacks” the algorithm without violating Google’s guidelines.

In response to ChatGPT’s meteoric adoption rate, Google has significantly updated its algorithm and content guidelines in 2022 and 2023.

Google AI SEO

Source: The PHA Group

ChatGPT presents the first serious threat to Google’s dominance in many years. Google has been scrambling to adjust to the tidal wave of AI content that is just beginning to build. Google also recognizes that if users can get direct answers from a ChatGPT query, why would they still use Google? 

Like most technology earthquakes, the first big jolt has seen sharp aftershocks, such as copyright infringement lawsuits and questions about AI ethics. Predictions of Google’s demise are premature. The company is already responding to marketers about what generative AI means for content, SEO, and website traffic optimization. 

As AI transforms content creation strategies, CMOs want to leverage AI to meet Google’s standards. AI will continue to improve, but it’s still unable to do all the heavy lifting of a good marketing strategy. For content production, human supervision of AI content is vital. 

Google’s stance on quality content has stayed the same even with AI. Before AI, they punished keyword stuffing and other attempts to manipulate searches at the expense of quality information and user experience. In the AI era, they will do the same. 

Google continues to seek meaningful, informative, and engaging material that resonates with a target audience, whether the author is a human or a bot.

Let’s take a look. 

Google’s Algorithm Adjustments and Current Content Guidance

With some algorithm updates, Google releases additional content guidance. Google’s September 2023 Helpful Content Update modified its AI and third-party content guidelines. 

The update supports AI-generated content and emphasizes quality and user-centricity by removing “written by people.” Most experts interpreted this to mean Google would not penalize AI content simply because AI writes it. For Google, the main points are quality and user experience.

Google AI SEO

Source: Google

In Google’s view, helpful content should be high-quality. What do they mean by that? Let’s look at some additional content guidance.

E-E-A-T Content Framework

Google’s guidelines for evaluating quality content are known as the E-E-A-T framework. The acronym stands for Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trustworthiness. While E-E-A-T is not an algorithm, it is an SEO fundamental because it influences how Google assesses and ranks content.

Content that conforms to the framework is more likely to rank higher. Here is a bit more detail about what each term means: 

Experience: This evaluates the content creator’s experience and firsthand knowledge of the topic, ensuring the content uses practical, real-world understanding.

Expertise: Focuses on the content creator’s qualifications and knowledge in a specific field, particularly important for specialized or technical topics.

Authoritativeness: Measures the credibility and recognition of the content creator and the website in their field, assessed through credentials, external citations, and industry recognition.

Trustworthiness: Relates to the reliability and accuracy of the content and the website, ensuring the information is truthful, transparent, and dependable. Consistent posting also increases the trustworthiness score. 

The E-E-A-T framework is essential for Your Money or Your Life (YMYL) topics, where accurate and reliable information is crucial. It guides content creators in producing high-quality content that Google’s search algorithms favor.

You can refer to Google’s guidelines on E-E-A-T for a detailed understanding.

Hidden Gems

In November 2023, Google announced its “Hidden Gems” algorithm and ranking, separate from the Helpful Content algorithm. Hidden Gems aims to promote content based on personal insights, experiences, or deep expertise from forum posts, social media, and blog posts. 

Content Dont’s, According to Google

Finally, sometimes it’s easiest to know what to do by looking at what not to do. Google has clear guidelines on what qualifies as unhelpful content, whether the creators use AI or not. The overall situation Google is trying to avoid is rewarding a tidal wave of unhelpful content because AI makes it easier to produce it. The following list includes types of content to avoid.

  • Search engine-first content focused on keywords
  • Content with little to low-added value
  • Content repeating what other sources have already said
  • Content that makes false promises
  • Publishing content only on trending topics
  • Repetitive content to meet a specific word count

How Google’s AI Changes Affect SEO 

When you consistently produce high-quality E-E-A-T content, that makes Google’s algorithm happy. Will your website traffic likely increase?

Unfortunately, there is no guarantee. As you know, in the past, Google would offer up links to ranked content in response to a query. The user then would click through to the content source to gather more information.

In response to losing users to ChatGPT’s conversational searching style, Google is developing its own generative AI results format. They are changing the user experience on the search page. It’s like a search workspace, where users can get complete answers to their questions (with citations) and ask follow-up questions.

Google AI SEO

Image source: TechCrunch and Google

This new functionality likely means more users will get the answers they need directly from the Google page, resulting in lower click-through rates to source material (like websites). 

Optimize Landing Pages – Job One for Maintaining Conversion Rates

With the risk of lower traffic due to Google’s on-page search changes, optimizing your website content and landing pages is more important than ever to increase visitors’ conversion. 

The good news is that AI can be your friend in improving your site’s on-page experience and conversions. AI can personalize the visitor’s experience in engaging ways and simplify scaling A/B testing for dozens of landing pages. If you need help figuring out where to start, FunnelEnvy can help. 

AI Integration SEO Strategies

Besides optimizing landing pages, consider developing a plan to create more search-friendly content. Given the changing dynamics of search, here are some tips for search-friendly content that improve the odds of traffic coming to your site:

  1. Optimize your content brief and outline for SEO before you use AI. Then, edit the AI-generated content with original thought and research, brand voice, anecdotes, and expert insights.
  2. Keywords are still your friend; just don’t overuse them. Use the keyword phrase in the title, the first 100 words, and one header. 
  3. User experience is very important to Google. Format your post for easy reading and indexing. Use headers and bold emphasis. The post should have a logical flow. One of the telltale signs of a poorly edited AI article is that it is hard to follow. 
  4. Use internal and external links. 
  5. Create comprehensive content so users won’t click away to find more info elsewhere. 
  6. Content should be concise and not repetitive. Avoid passive verb tense. 
  7. Always check AI content for accuracy. Editors and SMEs can fact-check and improve AI-generated content.

You can check out SemRush’s Content Marketing Guide for more in-depth suggestions.

Moving Ahead with AI-Generated Content for Google

You are not alone if you feel overwhelmed with all the changes from AI’s transformation of SEO and content marketing. The good news is Google’s fundamental stance on quality content has not changed, even with the advent of AI. Level up your content with E-E-A-T, and focus on optimizing your landing pages. If you have questions about a strategy for maintaining search and conversion results amid the changes, reach out for a call today; we can help.

By |2024-01-11T02:05:26-08:00January 22nd, 2024|General B2B Funnel Advice|0 Comments
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2024 B2B SaaS Buyer Preferences: Human-Centric Digital Experiences over Sales Calls

Unsurprisingly, artificial intelligence is the big news for B2B SaaS marketing and sales in 2024. Yet while generative AI is transforming B2B SaaS marketing, the other big news is not about tech disruption but about people – specifically about the sales experience buyers want now.

The sales process, in particular, is undergoing a transformative shift. We’ll go over some research about what modern SaaS buyers are looking for in the sales experience. 

First of all, though, you should revisit the difference between sales and marketing before you revamp your strategies. Many teams understand this, but it can also be confusing because the rise of “growth marketing” may blur the line between marketing and sales.

B2B SaaS Marketing vs.Sales

Gary Vee, mega influencer and Vayner Media’s CEO has talked about authenticity and consistency as the key to audience engagement for several years. Digital super-marketer Neil Patel’s recent email to his million-plus subscribers said brand authenticity and consistency are critical for 2024. 

Forbes echoes these thoughts, pointing out that B2B brands create interconnected experiences to differentiate themselves in 2024. Experiences such as virtual reality product demos, interactive webinars, and personalized online journeys can enrich a digital-first sales process. 

Additional B2B Digital Marketing Trends for 2024 Include: 

  • Using artificial intelligence (AI)
  • Video marketing, especially short-form videos
  • Automation to speed up time-consuming tasks
  • Authentic marketing
  • Personalizing the audience’s experience
  • Focusing on sustainability marketing

How should brands hit the ground running with these trends? The first step is to clarify marketing vs. sales. A lot of content online offers tips on marketing strategy alongside sales advice without clarifying the difference. This lack of clarity can lead to feeling overwhelmed or pushing on the right actions at the wrong time.

Marketing creates awareness to attract and educate potential customers. The goal is to generate interest in the product through content marketing (like social media and blogs), SEO, and digital advertising.

Some B2B SaaS businesses contract with marketing agencies to create marketing strategies. To develop these marketing plans, the marketing agency focuses on SaaS trends and the customer journey. 

The sales function truly begins when the marketing funnel increases demand generation. Sales converts prospects to paying clients by understanding the prospect and personalizing their journey. Yet, regarding engaging in sales conversations, recent research shows that most buyers no longer want to talk to salespeople. 

This post focuses on solutions to help sales update SaaS sales processes and where to optimize to increase customer acquisition in a world where buyers prefer seamless digital experiences over in-person calls.

A Shift Towards Digital Engagement over Traditional Sales Interactions

Safe money suggests that AI and automation will scale the processes that fuel sales and revenue growth in the future.

2024 B2B SaaS Buyer Preferences

Source: Garnter, The Future of Sales: Digital-First Sales Transformation Strategies

Gartner’s B2B buyer preference research found that 75% of B2B buyers prefer a rep-free sales experience. Share on X

Buyers today prefer to explore options, compare solutions, and make decisions without engaging with a salesperson. This shift reflects a broader trend in the digital transformation of business operations and the growing comfort of buyers with online transactions.

Digital marketing funnels are second nature to the SaaS industry. SaaS products naturally lend themselves to a digital sales approach. The opportunity for developing a competitive advantage lies in Gartner’s finding that buyers purchasing via self-service channels are far more likely to regret the purchase.

Focusing on customer retention via optimizing human-centric digital experiences is critical. Let’s look at some practical steps teams can consider. 

How to Reduce B2B Sales Friction in the Digital Journey

In simplifying the digital sales process, the goal is a user experience that is as frictionless as possible, enabling buyers to find information, evaluate solutions, and make purchasing decisions easily. Here are three ways to do that:

Streamlined Website Navigation and User Interface

Design your website with straightforward, intuitive navigation and a user-friendly interface. Frustrating websites are an automatic turn-off. 

Responsive Websites

Invest in technology that helps you serve personalized content to visitors based on their actions. This content improves the user’s experience, increases conversions, and builds trust. If you have questions about how this works, we can help.

Interactive Chatbots 

AI-powered chatbots on your website that can provide immediate, 24/7 assistance to visitors. The key is to ensure a high-quality interaction. We’ve all had the experience where the chatbot was more frustrating than helpful.

Navigating this shift towards a more digital-centric sales process takes time and effort. It requires not only an understanding of technology but also of the changing dynamics of B2B buyer behavior. 

Creating Human-Centric Digital Experiences

As digital interactions become the norm, the challenge for B2B SaaS companies is to create interactions that mimic authentic and engaging in-person experiences. Designing digital touchpoints that resonate with emotions is a great start. 

It’s easy to see that social media is the perfect vehicle for emotionally resonant content. It’s about connecting with the buyer, understanding their needs, and building relationships. 

However, social media is usually more influential during awareness and discovery. For the sales funnel, here are some ways you can optimize content:

Personalized Video Messaging

A personalized video message can convey warmth, sincerity, and a genuine interest in solving the client’s problems.

Interactive Webinars and Virtual Product Demos 

Webinars can be an excellent stand-in for prospects who want to avoid 1:1 sales calls. Host webinars or virtual product demos that are informative and interactive, giving sales representatives a chance to talk with prospects and answer questions.

Tailored content and recommendations

Use data analytics and AI to understand your prospects’ interests and behaviors. 

Technology plays a pivotal role in crafting these human-centric digital experiences. You can use advanced analytics, AI, and machine learning to understand buyer behavior and preferences, allowing for more personalized and relevant interactions. 

Create a personalized website experience where visitors see content based on their customer journey. Not sure how you can make all that happen? No problem, we’re here to help. 

The Role of Self-Service in SaaS Sales

SaaS products have a natural alignment with self-service sales. From free trials to subscriptions, SaaS prospects often look for a quick way to try and purchase products. 

With buyers now looking for more self-service options, the information-gathering segment of their journey is a logical place to optimize and stand out. 

Here are two suggestions:

Comprehensive Knowledge Bases and Resource Centers

Develop a thorough knowledge base or resource center easily accessible on the website. This resource should include detailed FAQs, how-to guides, tutorials, and case studies.

Interactive Product Tours 

Interactive product tours allow prospects to explore the features and functionalities of the SaaS product at their own pace. These could include virtual walkthroughs, interactive demos, or customizable feature explorers.

Moving Ahead in 2024 with B2B SaaS Buyer Preferences

The future of B2B SaaS sales will reveal rich digital interactions, personalized experiences, emotional touchpoints, and seamless self-service options. Companies can increase profits by creating more effective, efficient, and customer-centric sales processes focusing on these areas.

We know that implementing a digital-first landscape can be challenging. Funnel Envy specializes in helping B2B SaaS companies adapt to these changes. We know you have unique concerns and are here to help you. Reach out today to get the conversation started.

By |2023-12-28T00:56:42-08:00January 8th, 2024|General B2B Funnel Advice|0 Comments
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Top Mistakes in B2B Lead Generation CRO and How to Fix Them

Conversion Rate Optimization (CRO) is one of the top goals for B2B marketers. Why? A significant reason is that improving CRO creates a beneficial ripple effect. It can lower customer acquisition costs by getting more ROI from existing visitors and users. Like a rising tide, when CRO goes up, it can influence other metrics and lead to higher revenue per visitor and more customers.

CRO is the art and science of making your website more effective at converting visitors into customers. Even for relatively simple business models, this process has many variables. It can feel overwhelming to keep track of everything, and even the most seasoned marketers fall prey to the top mistakes in B2B lead generation CRO. Helping simplify the overwhelm is where Funnel Envy can help.

The critical thing to remember is that it’s not just about driving traffic to your website; it’s about converting that traffic into meaningful leads. The overall goal is to understand your audience, tailor your digital marketing experiences to their needs, and continually adjust your strategies based on data-driven insights.

There is so much data to track in digital marketing, especially now with the release of a new AI tool almost weekly. Improving your conversion rate is a moving target.

Where to start? It depends on your business, of course. Organic search is most likely job 1. If budgets are tight, a synergistic combination of organic and smart blogging is an excellent place to start.

You can use this chart from Databox to give you an overview of ideas on where to put your efforts.

Top Mistakes in B2B CRO

Let’s look at some common mistakes, plus ways to fix them.

Audience, First and Always

The success of any lead generation strategy hinges on a deep understanding of the audience. Here are two common marketing mistakes related to audience targeting in B2B lead generation:

Not Defining Your Target Audience

Many B2B marketing strategies falter due to a need for more specific targeting. Not knowing who you are trying to reach with your content marketing, social media, and other efforts can lead to inefficiencies and wasted resources.

A well-defined audience is the foundation upon which marketers build successful lead-generation strategies. Defining the audience requires understanding demographics and your customer avatars’ unique challenges, interests, and behaviors.

Forgetting the Buyer’s Journey

Another frequent oversight is neglecting to factor in the buyer’s journey. The customer journey has multiple stages, from the initial awareness of a problem to the consideration of various solutions and the decision to purchase. Each phase requires different marketing approaches and content types.

For example, blog posts might be effective in the awareness stage, while detailed case studies and product demos are more suitable for the decision stage. Webinars can nudge prospects into decision mode, too. 

Aligning your content and strategies with the buyer’s mindset ensures that your efforts resonate with prospects at the right time and in the right way.

Failing to Optimize Your Website

Think of optimizing your website like a lever effect – a well-optimized website can simultaneously knock out several lead-generation mistakes. Search engine optimization is the essential starting point. 

Here are some other common pitfalls:

Focusing Too Much on Quantity Over Quality

One of the more common lead generation mistakes is that more leads always equal better results. However, the quality of leads is often more important than quantity. You want to optimize your website to attract, filter, and convert people with genuine interest and need for your product or service.

Poorly Designed Landing Pages

Landing pages play a vital role in converting visitors into leads. However, many B2B websites suffer from poorly designed landing pages. Poorly designed pages have unclear calls to action, lack relevant information, and are visually confusing. 

Optimizing your lead capture forms and content to appeal to your ideal customer profile is essential to attracting quality leads. Well-designed forms increase the chances of conversion and ensure better alignment between your marketing campaigns and sales efforts.

A well-designed landing page should be clear, concise, and compelling. It should provide visitors with exactly what they are looking for and guide them smoothly toward the desired action, whether filling out a form or signing up for a webinar.

Lack of Clear Goals and KPIs

Setting clear goals and Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) is essential for any successful lead-generation strategy. Goals guide your efforts and help you focus on what’s critical, and KPIs allow you to measure the effectiveness of your strategy. 

Common KPIs in B2B lead generation include conversion rates, click-through rates, and the cost per lead. Without these, it’s difficult to gauge the success of your campaigns and make informed decisions about where to allocate your resources for improving results.

Ignoring Data and A/B Testing

Data and testing are at the heart of effective CRO, yet it can be hard to know where to start. Here are some tips: 

Testing Without a Strategy

Random testing must have a clear strategy to avoid confusion and misinterpreting results. Each test should be designed with a specific goal, whether to improve the click-through rate on a call-to-action button or increase the number of form submissions. 

A strategic approach to testing ensures that you are always learning and improving your lead-generation efforts.

Pro-tip: Test Pages That Are Doing Well

While fixing broken pages is crucial, the low-hanging fruit is improving pages that are performing well. Regularly testing and optimizing all pages, including the high-performing ones, ensures you maximize your lead generation potential. 

Multiple Landing Pages: The More the Merrier

Hubspot reports that business websites with 10-15 landing pages increase conversions by 55% over those with less than 10 landing pages. And that’s not all. Increasing to over 40 landing pages improved results by an eye-popping 500%.

So, obviously, multiple landing pages can lead to a dramatic improvement in performance. That doesn’t mean it’s an easy fix. The more pages, the more complex tracking and reporting will be. If you have questions about how to scale your landing page program, we can help. 

Not Using Social Media Effectively

With appropriate strategies and implementation, social media is a powerful tool in the B2B marketer’s toolkit. Effective use of social media in B2B lead generation involves more than just posting regular updates. 

Like your website content, social content requires a strategic approach, with content tailored to the platform and the audience. LinkedIn is the go-to platform for B2B marketers, offering opportunities for targeted networking, content sharing, and ad campaigns. 

TikTok, which started as a trendy haven for GenZ self-expression, now has a rapidly growing B2B sector. Podcasts and YouTube are still the most powerful channels for teaching and trust-building. If your blog strategy is already solid, the next step could be to experiment with augmenting high-performing copy with podcast or video content. 

Moving Ahead to Avoid Top Mistakes in B2B Lead Generation CRO

When designing or optimizing complex processes, workflows, or SOPs, a simplified place to start is to be aware of typical mistakes and take preventive action. From optimizing your website’s user experience to fine-tuning your social strategy, optimizing CRO involves constant learning and testing.

AI tools will continue to up the ante for marketing performance. With the right approach and focus on critical areas, you can avoid common pitfalls and drive successful outcomes for your business. At Funnel Envy, we have the expertise and tools to help you dial in your website and landing page performance to increase CRO. Reach out today. We’re here to help.

By |2023-12-18T21:59:27-08:00December 26th, 2023|Conversion Rate Optimization|0 Comments
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The Power of Short B2B Videos for Marketing: Leveraging the TikTok Effect

Even before the internet, corporate video was a powerful (and expensive) tool in the marketing mix. During the 2000s, video production costs plummeted, bandwidth increased, and B2B videos quickly became a staple for online marketing.

After its 2005 launch, YouTube was the dominant video platform until TikTok’s meteoric rise in US popularity from 2018 to the present. Initially popular with mostly young viewers watching videos for entertainment, TikTok’s bite-sized videos offer an increasingly viable option for B2B marketing.

For example, after almost changing careers due to a lack of business traction on LinkedIn, B2B Marketing expert Jade Tambini now leverages 30,000 followers on TikTok and a growing YouTube presence. Only after she grew and monetized her TikTok following did she re-invest time into LinkedIn.

From B2B SaaS to high ticket sales, video is the perfect format for providing richer content to keep fans engaged. Share on X

Today’s B2B buyer wants as much self-service info as possible on their customer journey with brands. From B2B SaaS to high ticket sales, video is the perfect format for providing richer content to keep fans engaged.

B2B Video Marketing

Source: Sprout Social

Regardless of the platform, the versatility and accessibility of short videos make them a powerful option in the B2B marketer’s toolkit, providing opportunities to connect with audiences that increasingly prefer video.

How can your business tap into B2B video? Check out our tips and best practices in this post.

Planning B2B Short Video Campaigns  

Before you press Record, the first step is establishing clear, measurable video marketing campaign objectives. These goals include increasing brand awareness, generating leads, or boosting engagement. By setting specific targets, you can focus your efforts and measure the success of your video content more effectively.

Compelling videos share a few common traits. Let’s explore this a little further. 

Choose one key point: Simplicity is vital in short-form video content. Focusing on one core message per video is essential to avoid overwhelming your audience. This singular focus ensures that your message is clear, concise, and memorable, making it more likely for viewers to take the desired action.

Importance of the Hook: The opening seconds of your video are crucial. Captivating your audience right from the start is necessary to keep them engaged. The hook should be intriguing, relatable, and relevant to your audience, enticing them to watch the entire video.

What is the One Thing? Narrow down your key point even further – What is the one takeaway you want your audience to remember? Mention it early in the video and right before your CTA at the end. 

Always use captions: Most people watch videos with the sound off. Be sure to use captions for accessibility and a better user experience. 

Know Your Audience

Understanding your audience is crucial in creating impactful video content. Before you start brainstorming videos, check in with your marketing basics.

Buyer Personas for B2B videos

Now is the time to lean on your Buyer Persona. Relying on your buyer persona information helps you develop a personalized approach that ensures higher engagement and a deeper connection with your messaging. Here are three ways to leverage Buyer Personas for impactful B2B video content:

Addressing Specific Pain Points and Interests: Craft your video content to address your personas’ specific challenges or interests. For example, if your persona is a marketing executive concerned about ROI, create content demonstrating how your product or service can enhance marketing efficiency and profitability.

Using Appropriate Tone and Style: Align the tone, style, and language of your videos with the preferences of your personas. A more formal tone may suit C-level executives, while a casual and energetic style might appeal to creative professionals. 

Choosing Relevant Topics: Select topics for your videos that are relevant to your buyer personas’ industry and professional interests. For instance, IT professionals may appreciate videos on the latest tech trends or cybersecurity tips. 

Tailor B2B video content to the B2B funnel stage

Each stage of the buyer’s journey requires a different approach. You can customize short videos to address these various stages, from raising awareness to nurturing leads and closing sales. Here are some examples:

Awareness Stage

Educational videos, explainer videos, and brand videos

Interest Stage

Webinars, how-to videos, and product demos

Consideration Stage

Testimonials and case studies, detailed product demos, and comparison videos

Decision Stage

FAQ Videos, customized product demos, and consultation offers.

Retention Stage

Training and tutorial Videos, customer success stories, updates, and new features videos. 

Advocacy Stage

User-generated content (UGC), community-building videos, and referral program explainers

Videos that meet the needs and objectives of the respective stage in the sales funnel establish trust and help keep potential customers moving through your funnel. 

What Platform is the Best for B2B Videos – TikTok or YouTube?

When it comes to choosing the right platform for your short video content, there are several considerations. Both platforms offer unique advantages and cater to different audience behaviors and expectations. 

Here’s some info to consider to determine which platform aligns best with your B2B marketing goals:

TikTok: Known for its virality and creative content, TikTok is ideal for reaching a younger demographic. The platform’s algorithm is excellent for discoverability, making it easier for new audiences to find your content.

YouTube Shorts: As an extension of YouTube, Shorts allows you to leverage the platform’s vast audience. It’s well-suited for longer-form content edited to shorter clips. YouTube’s detailed analytics can be invaluable for understanding audience engagement and refining your strategy.

Audience Demographics: Evaluate where your target audience spends their time. If your buyer personas skew younger or are more engaged with trendy, fast-paced content, TikTok might be the better choice, although, as we’ve seen with Jade’s example, TikTok can also work to reach the Millennial B2B audience. For a more diverse age range and a preference for informative, detailed content, consider YouTube Shorts.

Integration with Existing Marketing Channels: YouTube’s strength lies in its seamless integration with Google’s ecosystem, offering advantages in SEO and content discoverability. TikTok is growing fast and offers unique social sharing and engagement opportunities. If Facebook is critical to your brand, then Instagram reels can have a ripple effect on your Meta outreach strategy. 

Choosing between TikTok and YouTube for your short video B2B marketing efforts hinges on understanding your audience, content style, and marketing goals. By aligning your platform choice with these factors, you can create more effective and engaging video content that resonates with your target audience.

Maximizing LinkedIn for B2B Short Video Marketing

LinkedIn holds a unique position for B2B video marketing, and it’s not entirely positive. LinkedIn’s process for uploading videos is not seamless, and they gatekeep who can go live on the platform.

The good news is that a LinkedIn video can be valuable for targeted outreach if you put in some extra effort. LinkedIn videos get 3x more engagement than text posts. Members also reshare B2B short videos more than other types of content. 

Use LinkedIn’s networking capabilities to amplify your video content. Engage with comments, share your videos in relevant groups, and tag industry influencers or partners to expand your reach. 

Ideas for video content on LinkedIn include industry trends, thought leadership, case studies, webinars, and how-to guides. Be sure to keep them concise and informative. Well-done videos have a higher value than most written content, so sharing a video as part of a LinkedIn messaging outreach can also be an effective tactic.

Moving Ahead with B2B Short Video

Video for B2B marketing is a valuable tool, but it takes extra work. Creating the content is only half the story. Planning, testing, integrating analytics, and tracking the results of your video marketing efforts can be complex and time-consuming. These steps are critical in understanding your campaigns’ effectiveness and making data-driven decisions for future strategies.

FunnelEnvy has helped many clients across diverse sectors better understand the impact of their video content. If you’re interested in discovering how our services can align with your needs and to get more information on our pricing, we invite you to fill out a brief questionnaire. Click here to get started and see if we’re the right fit for your needs.

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By |2023-11-29T00:43:00-08:00December 11th, 2023|General B2B Funnel Advice|0 Comments
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Two Keys to Unlock B2B Landing Page Performance – Customer Journey and Intent

Who hasn’t had the experience of being chased out of a showroom by a pushy salesperson? Those experiences are tiresome because they don’t respect where we are in our customer journey. 

We see this mirrored in B2B landing page performance with annoying popups and premature calls to action (CTAs) that don’t offer prospects what they need when we need it. 

For digital marketing, integrating customer journey and intent into landing page design is essential for its success. You can reverse engineer a path to higher engagement and conversion rates by mapping out the customer journey and intent across all stages.

What Is Intent in the B2B Customer Journey?

The customer journey is like a timeline of their experience with your brand, from initial awareness to the final decision to purchase. At each journey stage, prospects have a specific intent for their goals. 

Intent refers to what the customer wants to achieve at each journey stage – and this also speaks to their underlying motivation. 

Remember that customer intent is almost always very different based on price. For example, in high ticket sales, customers rarely intend to purchase the first time they engage with a brand. 

Prospects may value their time more than shopping around for small, low-risk purchases. In this instance, the landing page may look like a traditional sales page, hosting the entire funnel content from awareness to consideration to a “buy now” button. 

Understanding intent can help businesses create targeted, intentional marketing strategies that align with the customer’s journey phase. This awareness is essential to creating an excellent customer experience. From the customer’s perspective, the wrong offers at the wrong time are confusing or irrelevant at best and annoying at worst.

Why B2B Landing Page Performance is More Important Than Ever

Recent research shows that most post-pandemic B2B buyers prefer a self-service customer journey over “booking a call” to speak to a salesperson or company representative. 

Gartner predicts that by 2025, 80% of B2B sales interactions will occur in digital channels, making landing pages more crucial to lead gen and conversion than ever. 

It’s also excellent news for companies that fully embrace digital marketing. Landing pages allow for a precision-tailored approach to marketing. Optimizing landing pages can result in more effective lead generation, higher conversion rates, and better customer retention.

Successful conversion rates for landing page forms vary across industries but tend to hover around 2 to 3%.

B2B Landing Page Performance with Customer Journey and Intent

Source: Ruler Analytics

When you consider landing page content for each stage of the journey, a good starting place is to ask what kinds of questions your prospects have at each phase.  That question can help you tailor content that anticipates their needs.

Optimizing CTAs for B2B Landing Page Performance

What makes a landing page a landing page? It’s the Call to Action (CTA). The most important predictor of landing page success is how well the content and the CTA align with the customer journey. 

For example, a prospect at the awareness stage of a high-ticket purchase will likely not click “buy now” but may respond to a CTA for an educational webinar. A typical conversion CTA is a free trial requiring credit card information with lower-cost products and services.

Now, let’s look at some landing page tips for each step of the customer journey. 

B2B Landing Page Tips for the Customer Journey Awareness Phase

In the awareness stage, the customer is just getting to know the brand. Common questions include “What solutions or options can address my business problem? Who provides these solutions?”

Their intent likely includes narrowing their options. Here are some key considerations to increase B2B landing page performance in this phase:

  • Content: Landing page content at the awareness stage should seek to move prospects further into the consideration funnel. For lower-cost purchases with minimal risk, like a SaaS subscription, the funnel is relatively short, so the landing page includes consideration information and a “sign up now” button.  

For higher ticket items, you can use “top of funnel” (TOFU) content like blog posts, whitepapers, and industry reports to cover the most common questions and challenges your prospects face to drive organic traffic to your landing page. 

  • SEO Optimization: Conduct keyword research to understand what your target audience is searching for and optimize your landing page content to increase visibility in search engine results.
  • Retargeting: Only some visitors will convert on the first visit. Showing targeted ads to visitors who didn’t initially convert keeps your brand top-of-mind and provides multiple touchpoints along the customer journey. With dynamic retargeting, these ads can showcase products or services they viewed, reminding them of their interest and your value proposition.

B2B Landing Page Tips for the Customer Journey Consideration Phase

In the consideration stage, you now have something precious and rare – your prospect’s attention. Gary Vaynerchuk goes so far as to say that attention is the number one asset in the business world today.

In this stage, simply providing more information about your product is not enough to engage and nurture leads. The CX during this phase builds trust. Trust is essential because people rarely buy from companies they don’t trust.

So, how do you keep the audience’s attention and build trust with B2B prospects? Here are some ideas.

  • Personalized messaging and experiences. Consumers now expect personalized experiences across all their customer journeys. Let your prospects know you understand where they are in their customer journey by providing appropriate content. For example, 

consumers looking for in-depth information will be annoyed by constant “buy now” pop-ups or repeated offers for the same lead magnet they just downloaded.

  • Personalize the viewer experience. Implement dynamic content on your landing pages, meaning integrate that content changes based on visitor demographics, industry, or behavior on your site. 
  • AI for landing pages. As you might expect, AI tools are taking landing page personalization options to the next level. At Funnel Envy, we leverage AI and manage the added complexity of multiple landing pages to help our clients optimize results.  
  • Lead magnets. Customer preference for self-service info is good news for lead magnets if done correctly. Instead of making “book a call today” the only option for moving ahead, offer valuable resources like webinars or downloads appropriate for the consideration phase in exchange for contact information. 

B2B Landing Page Tips for the Customer Journey Conversion Phase

By this time, your prospect has gotten to know and trust you. Landing pages for sales are both an art and a science. Here are some tips:

  • Testimonials and Case Studies: Provide social proof through testimonials, reviews, and case studies. Real-world success stories can significantly influence decision-making.
  • Live Demos or Consultations: Now is the time for in-person contact for high-ticket items. Offer live demonstrations or free consultations to prospects who have shown a high level of engagement. This direct interaction can be the final nudge they need to convert.

AI for Continuous B2B Landing Page Improvement 

Continuous improvement in B2B landing page performance is a crucial goal. With AI, A/B testing is evolving rapidly. AI can now manage dozens of split tests of landing page elements, such as headlines, images, and CTAs, and even automate optimization based on the results. 

This development has significant implications for improving lead gen because studies show that the more landing pages companies run, the better. The study revealed that 31 to 40 landing pages generate five times more leads than 1 to 5 landing pages, and over 40 pages generate 12x the leads. 

Moving Ahead

Optimizing even five to ten landing pages can be a lot to manage in-house. From testing to reporting, Funnel Envy can help you with the complexity of scaling your landing page strategy. We specialize in optimizing B2B landing pages to drive conversion and boost sales.

We understand the complexities and have the tools and expertise to help you take your landing page performance to the next level. Reach out today to get started.

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By |2023-11-16T08:44:13-08:00November 27th, 2023|Landing Pages|0 Comments
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Optimizing B2B Customer Journey with Paid Ads

B2B buyers don’t want to talk to salespeople anymore. Paid B2B ad spend is way down. 

These two converging trends create a window of opportunity to increase sales and market share via B2B paid ads. 

What does optimizing the customer journey with paid ads have to do with these trends?

Two converging trends create a window of opportunity to increase sales and market share via B2B paid ads. Share on X

The first trend is that B2B buyers now prefer a self-serve, DIY approach to buying. Gartner’s 2023 research shows that by 2025, a whopping 80% of B2B sales transactions will occur through online platforms. 

Not only that, 33% of all buyers prefer a sales experience without a seller, with 44% of millennials being the most allergic to interacting with salespeople. 

The second trend is that B2B spending on paid ads has dropped considerably since pre-pandemic levels, and the recovery is uneven. This drop may signal that companies are still grappling with recovery and resetting strategies. Their hesitation means a window of opportunity for proactive fast movers to grab market share.

B2B Customer Journey with Paid Ads

How can you capitalize on these trends? 

One idea is to drive paid traffic to a customer journey optimized for what customers want – frictionless digital interactions, especially on mobile devices. 

A place to start is by optimizing the B2B customer journey with paid ads to capitalize on buyers’ preference for using digital channels. At the same time, competitors in your industry may be waffling on paid ad strategy. 

This post will guide you through the key strategies for using paid ads to optimize your B2B customer journey.

When to Consider Paid Ads for B2B

In the B2B customer journey, timing is everything. Paid ads can be beneficial at various stages and critical touchpoints in the customer journey, but the key is understanding the customer’s journey and their stages—Awareness, Consideration, and Decision— so you can pinpoint when to deploy paid advertising for maximum impact.

Awareness Stage: Getting on the Radar

At the awareness stage, potential customers recognize that they have a problem that needs solving but may not know the available solutions yet. This stage is an excellent time to use paid ads to create brand visibility. 

Examples of content: Blog posts, videos, or infographics can attract prospects and introduce them to your brand.

Consideration Stage: Nurturing Leads

During the consideration stage, prospects actively seek solutions and evaluate options. They are reading reviews, comparing features, and asking their network for opinions. 

Examples of content: Paid ads at this stage can drive traffic to more detailed content like webinars, whitepapers, or case studies that position your product or service as the solution to their problem. 

Remember that you can use retargeting strategies to keep your brand top of mind with prospects at this stage. 

Decision Stage: Encouraging Conversions

At this point, prospects are ready to make a decision. They’ve done their research and are leaning towards a solution. The goal of paid ads here is to get the prospect to take that final step. 

Types of content matter. Paid ads should lead to landing pages with apparent calls to action, leading them to convert—whether purchasing, signing up for a service, or contacting your sales team. Consider running tests with promotions, discounts, or exclusive features to lure them to the close. 

Ongoing Relationship: Upselling and Cross-Selling

Even after a sale, the customer journey is still ongoing. Existing customers can be even more lucrative than new prospects. Target paid ads to upsell or cross-sell additional products or services or introduce new features that benefit the customer to increase the lifetime value and retain customers for the long term.

By understanding when to leverage paid ads at various customer journey stages, B2B companies can make smarter advertising decisions that yield better results. But the buyer stage is only one part of the puzzle. You need to consider segmenting the audience, too. 

Audience Segmentation and Targeting in Paid Ads

Audience segmentation and targeting are crucial for the success of any paid advertising campaign, especially in a B2B context where the decision-making process is often more complex. 

Below is a more in-depth exploration of how to implement these strategies for your paid ads.

Understand Your Audience’s Pain Points and Goals

Before you start any campaign, review your understanding of the audience’s needs, pain points, and objectives. A deep understanding informs your segmentation strategy and helps you tailor your ads to resonate with each group. In a B2B setting, consider variables like industry, company size, and job roles as basic segmentation criteria.

Types of Segmentation in Paid B2B Advertising

Generally speaking, the more specific your segment, the better your ad results. If you haven’t revisited your customer personas in a few months, it’s a good idea to review and optimize them for the persona in the context of the ad campaign. Other things you can consider are: 

  • Firmographic: Business entity characteristics, for example, industry, company size, and revenue
  • Technographic: Technology stacks used by the company
  • Demographic: For example, age, gender, education
  • Geographic: Location-based targeting
  • Psychographic: Interests, opinions, and lifestyle
  • Behavioral: Previous interactions with your website or app or purchasing behavior

Remember that as you test your ads, the successful ads can also be a feedback loop, giving you more accurate information about your personas. 

Tailoring Creative and Messaging

Once you’ve segmented your audience, tailor your ad creative to each group’s unique needs and challenges. For example, a healthcare SaaS company could target hospital administrators with ads focusing on operational efficiency while targeting physicians with messages about patient care and workflow.

A/B Testing B2B Ads for Continuous Refinement

A/B testing allows you to test different versions of your ads to see which performs best for each segment. You can try anything from headlines and calls to action to images and overall layout.

Remarketing and Retargeting Ads in B2B

These strategies involve showing ads to people who have previously interacted with your brand. In B2B, retargeting can be incredibly practical to stay top-of-mind during a long sales cycle.

Implementing Multi-Channel Marketing

Implementing a multi-channel marketing strategy involves deploying your advertising and content across multiple platforms to engage your audience wherever they are. The key to success lies in maintaining a consistent brand message while tailoring the delivery format to suit each channel’s unique characteristics. 

Whether using search engines, social media, or email, the goal is coordinating efforts to provide a seamless customer journey. Leveraging data analytics is crucial; it allows you to monitor performance across channels and refine your approach for better ROI. 

By embracing a multi-channel strategy, B2B businesses can increase touchpoints, enhance customer engagement, and drive more conversions.

Conversion-Driven Landing Pages

Conversion-driven landing pages are the crucial link between your paid ads and the desired action you want the visitor to take, whether signing up for a webinar, purchasing, or contacting sales. These landing pages should offer a seamless experience that aligns with the messaging and visuals of the ads that led the user there. 

Elements like compelling headlines, concise copy, and clear calls to action are essential. Utilizing A/B testing can help you refine these elements for optimal performance. You can also consider dynamic landing pages, where the system uses different landing pages based on a visitor’s journey.

In the B2B context, where sales cycles can be lengthy and complex, a well-crafted landing page can be a powerful lever for business growth, effectively turning prospects into customers.

Moving Ahead 

Even with more automation and AI-driven data integration tools, B2B marketing complexity is increasing. Coordinating paid ads, audience segmentation, and conversion-driven landing pages can seem overwhelming.

While it may seem daunting, you don’t have to go it alone. FunnelEnvy can help you set up a system to track and test results at every stage of the customer journey. We work with clients in many industries, from consumer healthcare to industrial equipment. We provide customized assistance to our clients with all elements of their landing page design, from technical aspects like page speed and caching to form fields and CTA design.

Are you interested in finding out more? Just click here to complete a short quiz that we’ve created to help us learn more about your needs and how we may be able to help.

By |2023-11-01T01:47:19-07:00November 13th, 2023|General B2B Funnel Advice|0 Comments
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How AI Improves A/B Testing

Advertisers have been trying to divine what people will buy for decades. Marketers began taking a data-driven approach in the 1920s, testing the performance of different paper coupons. Today’s marketers rely on A/B testing of digital advertising assets. Trying different ad asset versions has been the cornerstone of data-driven decision-making for years.

A/B testing is powerful because it gives marketers unbiased data from real customers, not survey panels. As the online audience grew, digital marketers could run more tests faster while targeting audiences in unprecedented ways. 

Artificial Intelligence (AI) is now emerging as another game-changer for marketers. For context, AI uses algorithms and machine learning to analyze data, recognize patterns, and make decisions.

Read on for an overview of how AI is revolutionizing A/B testing, making it faster, eliminating more guesswork, and ultimately improving results.

How AI is Changing Traditional A/B Testing 

Today’s digital marketers are familiar with comparing two variations of an ad asset, such as a webpage, email campaign, app interface, or any other marketing asset. The goal is to determine which version performs better regarding a specific metric, such as click-through rates, conversion rates, or revenue. 

A/B testing provides several of the following key benefits:

  • Data-Driven Decision Making: A/B testing provides empirical data, allowing businesses to make decisions based on real user interactions rather than assumptions or intuition.
  • Optimizing User Experience: By comparing different versions, businesses can identify elements that resonate better with users, improving user experience and customer satisfaction.
  • Increasing Conversion Rates: A/B testing helps identify the most effective strategies to increase conversion rates, such as optimizing call-to-action buttons, form layouts, or product descriptions.

The chart below shows the most commonly tested assets.

How AI is Revolutionizing A/B Testing

Source: Truelist and VWO

Overall, AI enhances A/B testing automation, personalization, instant optimization, and the ability to juggle dozens of variables simultaneously. Here are some more details about how AI and A/B testing work together: 

  • Automated A/B Testing: AI algorithms can automate the process of A/B testing by continuously testing multiple variants in real time. Machine learning models can analyze vast amounts of data quickly, allowing businesses to adapt their strategies dynamically based on user responses.
  • Personalized A/B Testing: AI enables personalized A/B testing by analyzing individual user preferences and behavior patterns. It can customize website content, product recommendations, or email campaigns for different segments of users, ensuring a tailored user experience that leads to higher conversion rates.
  • Predictive Analytics: AI algorithms can predict which variations are likely to perform best based on historical data and user behavior patterns. This predictive capability helps businesses focus their A/B testing efforts on the most promising variations, saving time and resources.
  • Real-time Optimization: AI systems can analyze user interactions in real time and optimize the user experience on the fly. For example, AI can adjust website layouts, modify content, or change product recommendations based on user behavior, ensuring continuous optimization without manual intervention.
  • Advanced Multivariate Testing: AI can handle complex multivariate testing scenarios involving multiple variables and interactions. It can identify intricate patterns and correlations between elements, providing businesses with deep insights into user behavior and preferences.

By leveraging AI capabilities, businesses can optimize their marketing strategies and deliver highly personalized and engaging customer experiences, ultimately leading to improved conversion rates and overall business growth.

AI enhances A/B testing automation, personalization, instant optimization, and the ability to juggle dozens of variables simultaneously. Share on X

AI shines in data analysis, personalization, and adaptive responses, so let’s look closer. 

Faster and More Accurate Data Analysis

Before digital marketing, marketers struggled to get sufficient data for high-quality samples. Now, the problem is the opposite. A significant challenge in traditional A/B testing is the sheer volume of online user behavior data marketers need to analyze to make good decisions.

AI excels at processing large volumes of data quickly and accurately. Machine learning algorithms can sift through massive datasets, identifying meaningful patterns humans might miss. 

AI can also speed up real-time campaign decisions by generating variations. Take headlines, for example. In traditional A/B testing, marketing teams have to brainstorm and develop all the different headlines to test. 

Today, AI can generate a set of headlines based on massive amounts of historical data in less than a few seconds. 

Not only that, but marketers can set up all the variations they want to test simultaneously. AI will run tests and keep track of feedback on several variations at once. 

AI algorithms can analyze incoming data in real-time, enabling marketers to adjust their campaigns on the fly. This agility ensures that marketing efforts align more closely with variations such as current trends and customer preferences.

Personalization and Targeting

Personalization is the key to capturing customer attention and securing repeat business for a healthy Customer Lifetime Value (CLV). A Salesforce study found that 70% of consumers say that “how well a company understands their individual needs impacts their loyalty.”

It turns out all that granular data from social media data mining is a double-edged sword. Yes, it allows marketers to create refined target audiences, but it also means that consumers are now used to seeing relevant content. Brands that can’t deliver personalized content risk looking out of touch. 

The good news is that AI takes possibilities for personalization to the next level. AI algorithms can identify individual preferences and tailor content by analyzing user behavior. 

AI-enabled personalization goes beyond addressing the user by their first name or simple demographics. It extends to adapting in real-time to deliver content and experiences that resonate with specific interests and needs. AI results should improve over time in the best algorithms as they continuously learn from user feedback during A/B testing.

AI also improves segmentation, allowing marketers to categorize their audience based on various parameters such as demographics, behavior, and preferences. One example is Sentiment Analysis, where AI analyzes social media posts, reviews, and customer feedback to gauge public sentiment. Refined segmentation creates a more personalized experience, enabling marketers to create highly targeted A/B tests. 

By tailoring experiments to specific segments, marketers can optimize their campaigns for maximum impact, increasing the likelihood of conversions.

Adaptive Testing and Continuous Learning

Traditional A/B testing follows a linear process: create variations, conduct the test, analyze the results, and implement changes. AI allows marketers to test many variations simultaneously while tracking test results in real time. This dramatically speeds up the testing process and introduces the concept of adaptive testing and continuous learning.

Instead of static experiments, AI-driven A/B testing involves a continuous learning approach. Machine learning algorithms analyze ongoing traffic to the website, identifying emerging trends and patterns. This iterative process allows marketers to adapt their strategies in real-time, ensuring their campaigns are optimized continuously for the best results.

Automation also plays a crucial role in adaptive testing. Based on tests, AI algorithms can automate traffic allocation, ensuring the right audience is exposed to suitable variants. Intelligent traffic allocation optimizes the testing process, maximizing the impact of each experiment. Marketers can focus on analyzing results and deriving insights, leaving the repetitive and time-consuming tasks to AI-powered automation.

Moving Ahead

By leveraging the power of AI, marketers can gain a competitive edge, reaching their audience with personalized, targeted campaigns that deliver results. As you embark on your A/B testing journey, focus on understanding your audience, harnessing the capabilities of AI, and embracing continuous learning.

At Funnel Envy, we know that even though the promise of AI is promising. We also know the actual implementation raises the bar for complexity in tracking and reporting. Our FunnelEnvy customer data platform enables you to create a personalized experience that responds to your website visitors within milliseconds. Reach out today to get the conversation started.

By |2023-10-19T09:42:08-07:00October 30th, 2023|A/B Testing|0 Comments
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Softening the Ask – How to Improve Opt-in Form Conversions

The internet triggered a revolution in most fields, and marketing is no exception. The ability to track people’s online behavior gave marketers critical new data and insights into consumer behavior. 

Capturing information via online forms added additional value—for example, email addresses. Unlike traditional mail, email was relatively free. While free can be great for a business, it also lowers the barrier to entry. Users’ email accounts soon became swamped with spam. 

Eventually, the FTC regulated email standards, but people today still face crowded inboxes and are more concerned with privacy than in the past. Many are wary of filling out forms and sharing their information on websites.

The challenge for marketers is that forms are still essential to lead generation and sales. From landing pages to websites, Hubspot reported in 2020 that 83 (48%) of 173 study respondents say forms are their highest converting tool.

How to Improve Opt-in Form Conversions

Source: HubSpot

Whether it’s a sign-up form for a newsletter or a contact form for inquiries, how you frame these forms can significantly impact conversion rates. In an era where people are increasingly cautious about sharing their personal information online, the art of “softening the ask” becomes crucial.

Let’s look at a few steps marketers can take to encourage web visitors to complete an online form.

Create a Form Audit

Before you dive into tweaking your forms, it can be helpful to know where to start. “Create a form” audit for your forms is a valuable tool. Here are some characteristics of high-performing forms to get you started. 

  1. Is the form context distraction-free? 
  2. Is there a compelling benefit to filling out the form?
  3. Is the first step effortless?
  4. Do the instructions offer clear guidance? 
  5. Do error messages do more than just point out errors? Do they help the user fix the error? 
  6. Does the password input field give an option to see the password? 
  7. Are you using drop-down menus for lengthy lists? (Hint – you want to avoid drop downs because they can introduce decision fatigue)
  8. Does the form leverage microcopy to guide users? 
  9. Does the form validate responses in the field? 
  10. Do you have relevant social proof?
  11. Do longer forms have multiple steps and progress indicators?
  12. Is the submit/CTA button optimized? 
  13. If there are any next steps after filling out the form, are they clear? 

You can also incorporate some of the following ideas into your audit to improve your opt-in form conversion rate. 

Build Trust

“Softening the ask” boils down to building trust. Asking users to provide their information is a matter of timing. People are protective of their personal data, and their experience on the website needs to inspire trust. 

Walk In Their Shoes – The Buyer’s Journey

Understand where your visitors are in their buyer’s journey. When they feel they are in the right place, they are more likely to see filling out a form as the natural next step. 

Are they in the early research phase or signaling intent to purchase? Tailor your content and benefits accordingly. For those in the early stages, offer educational resources. Quizzes are a way to gamify forms and work well for some audiences. Prospects closer to a decision may appreciate a free trial or a personalized demo.

Gartner reports that B2B prospects’ behavior is changing. They prefer a digital-first approach and spend up to half their discovery phase in DIY research. 33% would rather not talk to a salesperson to complete a sale. That means forms leading to a direct sales contact or call back aren’t likely to convert as many as forms offering deeper dive information, like webinars or research studies. 

Points for Professionalism 

Make sure the form looks professional. You want to serve up something other than an equivalent of a used car salesman cliche experience. A poorly designed form doesn’t inspire trust. A visually noisy popup that keeps interrupting them feels intrusive and can cause prospects to click away. 

Visual Cues – Logos and Badges

Visual cues such as trust badges, security logos, and affiliations with respected organizations can convey a sense of trustworthiness. Users who see these symbols on your website are likelier to believe you’ll handle their information responsibly.

Testimonials

Sharing testimonials from satisfied customers can have a profound impact on form conversion. Testimonials are the equivalent of online word-of-mouth recommendations. Real-life success stories and endorsements help potential leads see your value and encourage them to take the next step. 

Be strategic about testimonials. Generalized kudos pack a weak punch. Tailor testimonials to highlight your USP and answer your buyers’ conscious and subconscious objections.

Privacy Transparency

Be transparent about how you intend to use the information collected. A clear privacy policy is a legal requirement and can also be a selling point. Your statement should outline how you use, store, and protect their data. Make sure users know that you respect their privacy and are committed to safeguarding their data. You can also reinforce this point in the confirmation email with a link to your privacy statement.  

User Experience – Keep It Simple

Various studies have shown that the more fields there are to fill out, the higher the abandonment rate. So, one of the easiest ways to increase conversions is to decrease the number of required fields on the form to no more than three. 

Some B2B companies get around this by offering a valuable lead magnet for free, like original research or detailed templates. They use multistep opt-in forms to segment and gain more information about leads, such as company size and occupation. 

Placement and Pacing Matters 

Try to position opt-in forms toward the top of the page, above the fold. Even for mobile phones and tablets, devices that don’t have a “fold” per se, presenting the form sooner rather than later is a best practice. The idea is to capture their attention so you don’t have to rely on them scrolling down to encounter the form. 

That only gives you a little time to make a compelling case for why they should convert, so be clear about your unique value proposition (UVP), what benefit they will receive, and what will happen next. 

Consider breaking the form into multiple steps for longer forms, like payment forms or intake questionnaires. Venture Harbour reported that breaking the form into multiple steps improved conversions by 300%. If it works for your audience, try quizzes, which are multiple-step forms in disguise. 

Variety and Personalization

Bombarding users with the exact offers repeatedly feels like an annoying buzzing fly. If they’ve already received a whitepaper download offer, don’t present it to them again on the same page, especially if they opted in. Instead, track their progress and personalize the experience by showing them responsive content or offers that align with their behavior signals. 

Moving Ahead

Fine-tuning website form performance can be challenging. Create forms that build trust and encourage user engagement by addressing emotional considerations, displaying trust signals, considering context, and tailoring content.

The good news is that form performance is easy to test. The more challenging part is the tech behind the analytics for form optimization. At Funnel Envy, we have the expertise and tools to help you dial in your website form performance and increase conversions. Give us a call today.

By |2023-09-21T07:10:26-07:00October 2nd, 2023|Analytics, A/B Testing|0 Comments
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Beyond the Obvious – Drilling Down on B2B Buyer Personas

From the time of Don Draper in the hit show Mad Men to mega Super Bowl ad spends in the 1980s, marketers traditionally relied on demographics and social trends to target and segment broad audiences. In the 2000s, digital marketing revolutionized marketers’ ability to reach more specific segments. 

One risk of data is losing sight of the real people behind the numbers. Without analytics, we know nothing about the prospects behind the clicks. In 1985, a software designer named Alan Cooper invented a user persona named Kathy to add human context to the development process. 

Over the years, marketers built on that idea to develop buyer personas – profiles of fictional people that embody several ideal client characteristics. Creating buyer personas is a subjective and analytical process based on data and actual customers or prospects.

The idea is to translate the raw traffic like this:

AI and ABM are driving the evolution of buyer personas

Into information to help you fill out a buyer persona template, like this:

AI and ABM are driving the evolution of buyer personas

Source: Hubspot

Why Buyer Personas Work

The buyer persona helps craft tailor-made experiences for every buyer category. In a time when empathy and personalization are more crucial than ever for funnel performance, teams must develop a granular view of the buyer’s points and journey through touchpoints to a sale.

A well-defined buyer persona can improve demand gen by filtering traffic for top-quality leads exhibiting strong buyer intent. While companies should tailor their personas to their industry and other factors, here are some basics all personas should include:

  • Demographics: Age, gender, location, income, etc.
  • Psychographics: Interests, values, lifestyle, personality traits.
  • Goals: What they want to achieve using your product or service. What are their motivations for considering your product or service? 
  • Challenges: Pain points and obstacles they face in reaching their goals.
  • Buying Behavior: Is this a B2B or B2C customer? How do they make purchasing decisions?
  • Preferred Channels: Where they gather information and engage online.
A well-defined buyer persona can improve demand gen by filtering traffic for top-quality leads exhibiting strong buyer intent. Share on X

Behavioral Analysis and Intent Data for Buyer Personas

Effective buyer personas use quantitative and qualitative data to segment data about existing customers, website visitors, and leads. This data may include information from website analytics tools, interviews, social media insights, and customer interactions. 

Customer surveys are also helpful in fine-tuning segments and gauging customer intent. Human nature means people don’t always do what they say they might. Analytics data combined with surveys help marketers see how well what people say correlates with the actual behavior of the website traffic. 

Analyze data for visitor browsing behavior patterns, content consumption, engagement levels, and purchasing history. This analysis will help you understand their preferences, pain points, and motivations.

Buyer intent refers to prospects’ actions or expected behaviors before purchasing. Analyze the keywords they use in searches, the content they engage with, and their actions on your website. Are they looking for information, comparing products, or ready to purchase? Intent analysis identifies which actions signal intent to buy as they move through the funnel. 

AI-Driven Personalization Engines for Buyer Personas

AI-powered personalization is providing new tools to elevate customer experiences. By harnessing artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning, enterprises can delve deep into extensive customer datasets about online behaviors, transaction history, social media engagements, and demographic insights.

Implementing AI personalization includes:

  • Data collection and integration into customer data platform (CDP).
  • Using AI algorithms to segment customers.
  • Automating marketing messages and content tailored to each customer persona, such as personalized email campaigns.

AI algorithms enable the personalization of the customer journey in real-time, detecting shifts in customer behavior and updating personas. Dynamic content generation can match snippets of content that resonate with specific personas, offering responsive options and recommendations that adjust for buyer personas.

Keeping up with prospects across channels has long been a challenge for marketers. AI can help synchronize personalization efforts and create more of an omnichannel user experience.

AI is rapidly evolving and still very early. Companies need to watch for bias in AI that could have unintended results. Consumers are more sensitive about their data than in the past. Governments are stepping in with privacy and data protection regulations. Companies that adopt transparency and ethical guidelines around the use of data and AI will maintain customer trust. 

Account-Based Marketing Personas 

Account-based marketing (ABM) is a B2B model that adapts the persona concept to create personalized experiences for entire target accounts rather than individual prospects. 

While regular customer personas offer valuable insights into your customer base as a whole, account-based customer personas are laser-focused on a select few high-priority accounts. 

This approach aims to develop hyper-personalized strategies that lead to more effective engagement and conversion within these critical accounts. 

ABM marketing typically targets large accounts where a buying group decides over an extended period. Account-based customer personas dive into the specific organizational structure, key decision-makers, pain points, objectives, challenges, and opportunities within the target account. 

The goal is to gather in-depth insights that you can use to create personalized and highly relevant strategies. For a deep dive into ABM personalization in action, check out our video, The Secret to Making Your ABM Personalization Campaign a Success. 

In crafting ABM buyer personas, sales teams should realize that B2B prospects want a DIY discovery process. More than that, 33% would rather not talk to another human to complete the sale. (source: Gartner Sales). 

Increasingly, sales will be won or lost by depending on getting the right content at the right time to the prospect via dynamic content generation and B2C UX. B2B prospects also appreciate experiences that “feel” more B2C, such as virtual tours or shopping cart-like check-out processes. 

Moving Ahead

Every innovation disrupts the status quo, but eventually, the entire sector smooths into the next level. The 1990s transition from analog marketing to digital is a great example. Today, AI and other innovations are revolutionizing marketing with more personalization and precise buyer persona targeting.

All of these changes may improve results, but they also increase complexity. If you need help figuring out where to start, we can help. Our FunnelEnvy customer data platform enables you to create a personalized experience that responds to your website visitors within milliseconds. Reach out today to get the conversation started.

By |2023-09-08T11:10:03-07:00September 18th, 2023|Conversion Rate Optimization|0 Comments
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Top 3 Demand Gen Strategies of 2023 and Beyond

In the fast-moving landscape of B2B marketing, demand generation isn’t just a buzzword; it’s the backbone of success. You may have the best product or service in the marketplace, but growth will be challenging if your target audience doesn’t know about you. 

This gap is where the power of demand generation comes into play; the art and science of creating awareness, interest, and desire among your potential customers. This blog post will review three tried and true strategies to improve your demand generation.

As a backdrop, let’s review the difference between lead and demand generation. They sound similar, but they are very different.

Remember, demand generation is for the top of your funnel, where people notice and interact with your content. Share on X

Remember, demand generation is for the top of your funnel, where people notice and interact with your content.  This chart from Gartner will help you clarify and create content for your demand gen phase.

Top 3 Demand Gen Strategies of 2023

The information in the chart speaks to implementation. Let’s look at the strategies to boost your demand gen efforts. 

Clarify Your Unique Selling Point (USP)

Before diving headfirst into demand generation, it’s crucial to answer one fundamental question: What sets your business apart? Your Unique Selling Point (USP) is your competitive edge, differentiating you from the competition. It should be something that you could sum up in a short statement. 

Your USP isn’t always the same as a company slogan or tagline, although it could be. For example: 

“Fast, efficient deliveries” is not unique to one company.  That is a tagline. 

“Overnight or it’s free” – that’s a USP.  

To pinpoint your USP, look for a corner of the market where you can establish dominance. Take a fresh look at your industry to uncover gaps, unmet audience needs, or underserved niches. 

Study what your competitors offer, not to copy them but to identify the untapped potential your business can uniquely fulfill. The book Blue Ocean Strategy is one resource to help you think outside the box and craft a strong USP. 

The authors include many examples of how some companies have created new markets with few or no competitors. One technique is to reconstruct an existing market’s boundaries. 

With an emphasis on carving out unique market space, Blue Ocean Strategy is a toolkit for taking advantage of untapped market space in almost any industry, including tech, healthcare, and manufacturing.

Create a Targeted Social Media Plan

Social media can be a potent tool for B2B demand generation. However, social media creation and distribution are resource-intensive and time-consuming. It’s essential to have a content strategy in place before you begin ramping up your socials.

Tailor your tactics to match your goals. An organic growth strategy is the long game of consistently posting free content and sharing or commenting on others’ posts. Paid strategies are usually part of a strategic funnel, with content focused around a specific outcome, like driving traffic to a landing page or freebie.

Once you have your content strategy in place, here are some tips.

Tip 1 – Repurpose Your Blog. 

To increase efficiency, use your blog as the foundation of your content. Doing this makes it easy to repurpose snippets from blog posts for social. 

Tip 2: Create a Social Metrics Dashboard

Be sure you have a dashboard for capturing metrics on your posts to help you avoid the trap of posting just to put some content out there, aka “spray and pray.”

Tip 3: Be Choosy About Platforms.

Remember, you don’t have to be on every social platform.

To decide where to post, check out where your prospects are spending time on social. For most B2B companies, LinkedIn is the obvious choice. X (as in ex-Twitter) is also a popular B2B and B2C channel.  X has an informal chat format with more flexibility than Linkedin for interacting with people.

Tip 4: Consider TikTok

Finally, don’t discount TikTok as a source of leads. Successful B2B marketer Jade Tambini says most of her leads come from TikTok.

Top 3 Demand Gen Strategies of 2023

Source: DataAI via HootSuite

TikTok is the current growth metrics winner for both B2B and B2C. In 2022, people averaged more time spent per month on TikTok than every other platform except YouTube.

Tip 5: Link to Your Website Early and Often.

While not every social post has to include a link back to your site, the overall goal of social media should be to drive traffic to your website. That’s because when prospects visit the website, you can track their progress through the conversion funnel. 

Incorporate Data into Decision-Making

The best part of marketing today is the data it provides versus the pre-internet era. Data is the compass that helps cut through insider bias and assumptions that may or may not be on track. 

An important step to remember is to ensure you have a good sample size before drawing significant conclusions. Small sample sizes can lead to skewed insights and misguided decisions. 

Also, remember that not all metrics are critical. Ensure your dashboard tracks the correct numbers, not just vanity metrics. If you need clarification about what to track and why, Funnel Envy can help. 

Moving Ahead

Demand generation is like the broader net for your lead generation that can also be an accelerator for your lead gen efforts. Improving demand gen can create a ripple effect that enhances results through the rest of your funnel and organization. The flip side is also true. A weak demand generation strategy wastes resources and undermines sales from the top to the bottom of the funnel.

Interested in learning more about leveraging demand gen and getting expert help optimizing your results? Our team at FunnelEnvy is ready to help. We’ve got many years of combined experience with funnel optimization, CRO, and other vital elements of demand gen across several industries, from tech to healthcare to manufacturing.

To learn more about working with us and see if we’re a good fit, fill out this short quiz.

By |2023-08-24T03:21:34-07:00September 4th, 2023|General B2B Funnel Advice|0 Comments
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