WHAT IS B2B CONVERSION?
B2B stands for Business-to-business and it’s a form of e-commerce that focuses on the exchange of services, products or information between businesses opposed to a B2C, where the interaction is between businesses and consumers. Wholesalers and online retailers are the primary actors in B2B transactions. Tactically employing Search Engine Optimization (SEO) strategies in your website is essential as the B2B conversion funnels are long and unpredictable. A B2B SEO strategy must focus on both commercial and informational phrases as it takes several touchpoints for the consumers to make a buying decision.
One of the key differences between B2B and B2C conversion is that the former is almost never spontaneous. In B2B, several decision makers called a Decision-Making Unit or DMU evaluate the various available options and make a buying choice. Hence, a B2B shopping journey can be a time consuming, long process. Due to this, every B2B website should have a strong organic search optimisation strategy that is capable of addressing this challenge and ensuring that organic traffic on the website results in quality leads and sales.
Almost 90% of all B2B buyers make their buying decisions based on thorough internet search results. And for this reason, if you are a B2B company, working on boosting sales conversion rate on your website would be your top priority for achieving business growth. You would be devising various digital marketing strategies to grow your leads by causing many search-driven buying journeys and utilizing them to bring about additional revenue, all the while remaining as cost-effective as possible. The crucial difference in selling to a customer versus that to a business is that; businesses would be much more critical of any service or product that they are planning to invest their money in and at times you will need to reframe your B2B strategies according to their likes and wants.
The article will be looking at some useful B2B SEO strategies and customer trends that would help yield B2B conversions from organic website traffic.
1) Creating Search Engine Optimized (SEO) Landing pages for both MOFU and TOFU parts of the B2B sales funnel.
Basically, a B2B marketing funnel would consist of three stages, namely top, middle and bottom stages. The final sale happens in the end stage and may take around eight touchpoints for finalizing a purchasing decision. That is, right from the potential customer seeing or approaching the website, viewing the products or services to, making a feasible buying decision.
Usually, when it is the case of B2B SEO, businesses tend to give importance to landing pages that ignite direct sales. But this situation is close to impossible as consumers tend to make many branded search queries prior to the search driven-buying journeys. This is the primary reason why, informational search queries that drive B2B conversions to the top of the tunnel, are as essential as the commercial queries.
SEARCH QUERIES OR HOW-TO QUERIES
Out of the branded search queries, “how-to queries” stand as highly engaging as potential visitors will continue to stay on the page while following the steps in a tutorial. And if you manage to solve the customer’s issue, there can happen transactional queries that would drastically drive conversions.
Analyzing and filtering your keyword lists to befit how-to queries and inculcating apt B2B SEO strategies by providing beneficial instructions can help in driving conversions from organic traffic. One can make use of the Google Search Console to detect how-to queries that your website is already ranking.
GOOGLE’S PEOPLE ALSO ASK AND SUGGESTIONS
Google’s “people also ask” and “suggestions”, both have immense impact on the searching journeys and they show up at the crucial point when people carry out searches providing them with more insights into a topic, product or service.
Additionally, both are dynamic search phrases that alter depending on what people are searching for or what they choose to click on.
Since, both of these search terms can change the direction in which your customers are heading to, you need to have a close watch on these search features to strategically optimize them as per each search query that will show up.
Also ensure that you carry out a detailed search for each of the target keywords and prepare notes of the “people also ask results” and devise ways to address these branded search queries in the best possible ways. You can make use of your website’s current FAQs or Knowledge Base or compose detailed articles to answer queries, depending on how deeply you would like to answer them.
2) Closely watching yours as well as competitors’ branded Search Queries.
B2B consumers tend to carefully assess and compare all available options before finally making a buying decision, and this is because almost all kinds of B2B transactions require long-term commitment and investment. This indicates that your brand or business name would be searched extensively. They will also be searched alongside your competitor websites. This is the reason why the following search queries are always popular in B2B:
- “Brand name alternatives”
- “Brand name 1 vs Brand name 2”
Always ensure to treat your brand or business name as a keyword, and carryout necessary B2B Search Engine Optimization strategies on your site for it. It may appear like a never-ending process since your competitors would be carrying out the same drill, but your attempts may not go in vain.
Keep a pointer in mind that your brand or business driven search is the most crucial part of your consumer’s search-driven buying journeys.
3) Strategically plan and monitor your B2B’s search-driven buying journeys.
Proper Search engine optimization for informational-intent queries is important, but along with that planning different conversion trajectories from these informational pages down into your B2B sales funnel is also vital. Include a call-to-action button that invites people to sign up for a free trial, for a webinar or to schedule a free demo of the services offered. Ensure to take full advantage of your “lead-qualifying surveys and “lead magnets”. These immensely help in paving the best B2B conversion path from the informational pages, as they match the search intents and provide detailed answers to the raised queries. Lead-magnets function best when they are contextual. For instance, checklists, cheat sheets, flowcharts etc, makes it easier to execute the “how-to” content. A prime example of lead magnets and contextual CTA’s done right is HubSpot.
Also, ensure that all your business assets are visually branded. This is because your organic search driven visitors must be able to memorize you, so that your tools appear familiar to them during the next touchpoint.
Other points to focus include, using your brand logo as a watermark on all images used, keeping the colours of your website and social media channels similar and consistent, and ensuring that all your downloads like whitepapers, eBooks etc include your visual identity elements and backlinks to your website. Thereafter, ensure that you know the ways to monitor the B2B conversion paths. Google Analytics Behaviour Flow can be an ideal way to track where people are likely to go once they land on a certain webpage.
Also, Facebook pixel should be used extensively to retarget those search visitors on social media platforms in order to generate more touchpoints. Using retargeting while running YouTube ads can also prove to be a good method to increase conversions through organic traffic. Both these methods would remind your past website visitors about your business, its services and take them closer to a conversion.
Conclusion
Using organic traffic to boost B2B conversion rates can be a tedious task, especially in niches or categories where consumers are less likely to make a purchasing decision during the very first visit to your website. But that doesn’t mean, organic traffic cannot be used to drive B2B sales conversions. A Strategic B2B approach that is Search Engine Optimized, along with a clearer understanding of your website goals can gradually boost your conversions and contribute immensely to your lead generation efforts.
Our SEO marketing agency in Kochi is proficient at skilfully increasing B2B sales conversions via organic traffic. We devise the apt B2B SEO strategy to drive sales for your website, by utilizing the organic traffic; and all these in the most cost-effective manner.