Welcome to the episode of The B2B Marketing Executive Show!
In this first podcast Episode, FunnelEnvy CEO Arun Sivashankaran sits down with CaliberMind VP of Sales and Marketing, Nic Zangre to talk B2B Marketing.
If you are a B2B SAAS business you should be spending a lot of time on your pricing page focused on iterative testing.
Pricing pages are vital for your bottom line. Those who end up there are late in the conversion funnel, and likely gathering the information to make a purchase decision, or at least consider that purchase.
Given its importance, you should be constantly A/B testing pricing pages, taking every incremental improvement as a win for your marketing department.
At a high level, pricing pages should be clear in terms of quickly getting users information to make a purchase decision and also not introduce additional points of friction. While simple in theory to follow, we see many of these fundamental rules not being followed here at FunnelEnvy.
As such, we have created a simple list of best practices you should follow to maximize conversions with your pricing pages.
The specific pricing tiers on a pricing page is often an acute area of focus for testing, and somewhere that you might want to spend lots of time on.
Here are 3 helpful steps to follow with your pricing page design.
I’m going to use two of the classic B2B examples for reference points here. The first one is from HubSpot, the second one is from Salesforce. They do a great job at high converting pricing tiers.
Hubspot Pricing Page
SalesForce pricing page
In both of the examples above, it’s very clear as to what you are getting with the different pricing tiers. The CTA’s are contrasting in color versus the rest of the page, and the prices are clearly stated.
If you’re looking for test ideas and you don’t think your design hits the mark there, you might want to test alternative designs.
The idea here is to articulate your pricing tiers in a way that resonates with the customer’s perception of their own business. For example, ‘professional’ and ‘enterprise’ are both terms that both HubSpot and Salesforce use, and it’s very infrequently that people arrive on either of these pricing pages and get confused between which one they have to pick.
The pricing tiers are articulated and match how the user perceives their business. This helps the user not get stuck trying to choose between options.
I recommend scaling your pricing tiers to a ‘single core value metric’. This is a single metric the user understands and reflects the value they get from the platform as they scale.
To take a HubSpot example, the pricing is based on a number of contacts, and the user intuitively understands that as they have more contacts in HubSpot, the pricing increases because the value to them increases as well.
So if you’re looking at your pricing pages and want to improve conversion there and find that your pricing tiers aren’t necessarily consistent with the buyer persona or you’re not clearly articulating a single core value metric, you may want to test reframing some of that pricing, rearticulating it, and comparing that to your current baseline.
Let’s take a look at the example above. Can you spot the problem?
Right here we’re looking at actually two different audiences being targeted, and two completely different buyer journeys being crammed into a single pricing page; a single web experience.
The basic and premium options are targeted towards small or medium-sized businesses and organizations, and the signup flow is self-registration; it occurs completely through the website.
But as you can see, they’re also trying to target enterprise customers through ‘request a demo’, and speaking to someone on the inside sales team that has a completely different experience and audience.
That should set off some alarms. If you’re in the business of driving conversions, competing calls to action, audiences, and buyer journeys on a single page does have a really negative impact on your conversion rate.
How can we improve the experience of a pricing page with multiple buyer personas?
If you are able to identify the nature of that account or traffic coming into the site, you can show a unique experience for that specific audience.
For example, target SMBs based on previous browsing behavior and highlight the self-signup flow. Alternatively, through firmographic third party integrations, identify if a visitor is coming from an Apple or Microsoft, and really highlight the enterprise plan and the benefits for that customer.
Through personalizing the experience, the decision-making process is simplified for the visitor, and you’ll see an increase in conversions.
It’s really important on pricing pages to set clear expectations on the call to action as to what happens when the user clicks a button. In the HubSpot example, somewhat non-traditionally, they use two calls to action.
But in this case, they are differentiated both in design as well as the expectations. One is about trying it, engaging in the free trial. One is about signing up.
Salesforce is very clear that when you click on that button, you start the free trial process.
So if the expectation isn’t clear in your call to action language, that might be something that you want to test.
Now even if you get all of this right, you’re going to run into times where the user is still stuck staring at the pricing page and can’t make a decision. If you do have that happening, again, that’s really high-value traffic that you don’t necessarily want to lose.
If it’s worth it to you, you might want to test intervening with human help.
Offer to intervene, give them whatever information they need to potentially get that conversion, get them across the line!
There are a couple of ways you can go about this. Salesforce, after a couple seconds, pops up a modal window offering to put you in front of a live agent.
Alternatively, if you have chat already on the site, certainly you could pop that chat window when the user’s stuck.
Try a chat window by Olark.
The reality is that people don’t read content, at best they skim. Furthurmore, no one wants to read a complicated piece of content.
The same concept goes for your pricing page. Keep it as simple and easy to understand as possible. You should be always asking your self ‘what can we do to simplify this page’.
Look at the HelpScout pricing page above. It’s a simple price and sign up box. There is no confusion for the customer, the action for them to take is right in front of them.
Some companies need tiered pricing given the complexity of their offerings. Yet, if some A/B tests support increased conversions and your bottom line is not affected, consider dropping the multiple price points.
Many times users are comparing various vendors for a specific product across some specific criteria. Once you know that specific criteria for your product, make it very obvious. If you know
If you know price is a big factor, you should it as the first thing people see on the page. If you are a storage company like Box, make the storage limits one of the first things people see.
Box pricing page
In many instances people don’t even know what they want. In the classic marketing book ‘Predictably Irrational’ by Dan Ariely he states, “Most people don’t know what they want unless they see it in context”. For example, people don’t know what basketball shoe they should buy until they see it on a professional.
Same goes for marketing a pricing page. Many people won’t know what are the important factors to consider. It’s up to you spell it out for your customers and make the most important features front and center.
It can often times be beneficial to push users towards a certain plan. By doing so you are reducing purchase friction and making it easy for users to make a decision.
Spotify pricing page
Now the question becomes which plan to recommend. There is no clear cut answer to this question, but here are a few things to consider.
In the world of sales there is the concept of FUD. This stands for fear, uncertainties, and doubts. These FUDs come out when a customer is making a purchase, the bigger the purchase the greater opportunity for it to arise.
The best way to address FUD is to address it up front on the pricing page. To get started, write down all the possible fears, uncertainties, and doubts that people might have. Then write down your response to how to handle the FUD.
Here are some examples.
See how the customer will feel much more at ease after their fears are addressed.
SumoLogic Pricing Table
See how SumoLogic offers a free trial to reduce fears that users won’t get any value back from signing up.
It’s important that customers know other companies use and have success with your software. This validation helps to reduce fear for the customer about spending their money.
The easiest way to show validation is through quotes. See below how SumoLogic reduces fear that users won’t be able to get the software into production by showing a quote.
Customer Quote from SumoLogic
If you want to have the most relevant quote for a particular visitor, we recommend using personalization to show a quote based on a user industry. For example, if you know a visitor works in the travel industry, you could show a quote from someone at AirBnB.
It’s always beneficial to have customers pay for year-long commitments up front. This keeps them locked in for longer, and make it impossible to stop after only a month. While there might be some conversion drop-off for those who don’t want to pay at once, the overall benefit to your business will be tremendous.
Let’s take a look at some examples.
In this example from Dropbox, you can see that the pricing defaults to annual billing.
Dropbox Annual Billing
However, you can also switch to monthly billing, although it costs more per month.
Dropbox Monthly Billing
The goal here is to push people into the yearly billing and longer commitment.
Below is a similar example from Sumo. In this pricing page, they subtly say “paid annually” under the monthly price. While it can be construed as a ‘dirty trick’ to make someone think they are paying a monthly rate, this practice is quite common with pricing pages.
AppSumo Pricing Page
Conclusion
I hope you can use some of these tips in your own pricing pages. If you have any questions about how to best optimize your pricing page, please let us know in the comments, and we’ll be sure to give you some tailored suggestions.
Casting a wide net in search of business-to-business (B2B) customers isn’t the right strategy for every company. Rather than spending resources on a larger market, find out why a personalized approach that targets specific accounts could better help your business achieve its sales goals.
If you’ve never used account-based marketing (ABM) before, there’s never been a better time to start. B2B companies with highly targeted audiences use ABM to create effective sales funnels that drive results. Find out how to take this marketing strategy to the next level with account-based personalization, and learn how it can help you meet high-reaching objectives.
Image via Bigstock
One of the key differences between traditional digital marketing and digital ABM is that the former casts a wide net, while the latter considers individual accounts to be their own markets. To make the most of ABM, you’ll need to break your pool of both current and prospective clients into individual markets.
Doing this offers ample opportunity for personalization. Since you’ll work to build a marketing strategy for each client individually, you’ll customize digital campaigns, sales goals, and even relationship structures. Do the necessary research for each major account you want to win, and you can easily define and optimize your market.
For example, email marketing company Strongview used account-based personalization to define its target market and provide custom content with different greetings and unique images for each industry targeted.. As a result, the company experienced a 42 percent increase in web traffic, 29 percent increase in conversions from previously inactive accounts, and a 42 percent increase in engagement from target accounts.
With ABM software, you can even personalize website content for each account you’re targeting.
Easy-to-use personalization features track IP addresses for your target customers and enable your website to serve custom content to users from these select IP addresses. Doing this increases the chances that you’ll give representatives from each account exactly what they want to see, whether they’re searching for an answer to a question or they’re ready to make a purchase.
Integrate your ABM initiatives with marketing automation and sales platforms so you can easily follow up with the clients you want to land. Most ABM platforms offer seamless integrations with select platforms. Doing this automatically incorporates your target customers into each step of your marketing strategy, so you won’t miss the opportunity to follow up at key intervals.
As you begin to develop an ABM strategy, it’s important to remember that each account or market consists of several key players. After all, most companies seek a consensus before reaching a decision, and not every person at the table will respond to marketing messages in the same way. That’s why it’s essential to identify the key decision-makers for each account and understand how best to get through to each one.
For instance, the marketing director, project manager, and CEO will each analyze your sales pitch from a different perspective. If you need all of these major players to sign off before greenlighting your project, then you need to tailor your messages to each one with headers, pictures, and white papers.
Find out who the key players are by doing basic research on the company’s website or on LinkedIn. As you shape each personalized account, review the key players with your team during internal meetings and redraft your list of target employees as necessary.
Just because you don’t generate warm leads the first time you get the attention of prospective clients doesn’t mean you should cross them off your list. Instead of abandoning hard-to-get clients, retarget them instead.
Retargeting is a key component of ABM, as it identifies clients who have engaged with your content previously and then works to place your content in front of their eyes again. Many ABM platforms utilize ad-based retargeting strategies that serve ads to users who have previously visited your website or clicked on your content.
Some platforms even automatically provide personalized content that prompts conversions and drives sales after detecting buying signals. With this kind of personalized power, you can strike while the iron is hot and land the clients you’ve been pursuing at the precise moment they’re ready to buy.
When you use a marketing platform like Funnel Envy, Google Analytics, or a combination of both, you can easily measure the results of your ABM strategy. Social tracking tools like Kissmetrics also enable you to monitor engagement across platforms to ensure that you’ve targeted the right players.
In addition, you can quickly collect metrics that help you determine the return on investment (ROI) for each campaign. Since you’ve already done research to determine how much each account is worth to your business, you can easily do the math to calculate your return. As Alterra Group states, most executives look for revenue growth over any other measure of ROI.
By knowing campaign ROI, you’ll reduce risk and wasted resources. Don’t let a generic marketing strategy deliver results that are less than optimal. Take advantage of FunnelEnvy’s account-based personalization tool, and find out for yourself how this strategy can help you take your B2B sales to the next level.
B2B marketing is undergoing huge changes.
Thanks to the developments in marketing technology B2B strategies have had to adapt to evolving purchaser desires. The traditional approach to B2B marketing is, if we’re being honest, dry and dull. It’s always aimed at the professional, who apparently is a very boring person.
There seems to be an unwritten rule in traditional B2B that dictates the message to every person needs be delivered with professional courtesy that ultimately robs it of anything resembling personality.
But the times, they are a-changing. What you’ve got to remember is, while your primary B2B prospects are being approached in their professional capacity, they’re still a consumer. And thanks to the popularisation of channels including social media these B2B buyers expect a ‘consumer-like’ experience to the marketing materials they receive.
It’s something the B2B world is catching on to. If you take a look at the developing budgetary trends, you’ll see that while marketing campaign budgets are set to rise by 5% over the next year, those for digital marketing are projected to increase three times as fast.
That budget is largely going to be funneled into your content marketing strategy; the production of blog posts, white papers, eBooks, etc. However, the shift in buyer expectations has an increasing number of business recognizing the importance of social media content.
How well do you understand your prospect’s behavior and expectations?
Do you know and understand the difference in behavior between your top and bottom funnel prospects? Can you accurately describe how to align your marketing for those different stages of desire and when to shift from your marketing phase into your sales phase?
I ask because a lot of marketing managers can’t. They’re not fully aware of each stage within their funnel and how it affects behavior and expectations.
Too many marketing managers take an overly simplistic view of funnel progression and prospect expectations. They attract prospects with top funnel campaigns and shift immediately into pushing for the sale. This rarely works. (more…)
Is traditional advertising dead?
That’s the question I’ve been asking myself recently.
For years, marketers have been relying on the exposure approach. It was all about getting your message and product out there and in front of as many pairs of eyes as possible.
But, as with any business practice, things change.
There’s been a slow but deliberate shift away from traditional advertising. Results consistently show that this quantity over quality approach isn’t all that effective. (more…)
You probably don’t have a shortage of data about your customers.
If anything, the challenge is organizing and interpreting it well enough to pull out valuable insights.
How can you turn huge chunks of information into concrete action to better serve your customers and improve your business?
Businesses who do this have a tremendous advantage over their competitors. They make more sales because they do a better job delivering exactly what their customers want: a seamless, user-friendly experience.
Analytics tools tell you where customers come from, their demographics, and what they do on your website. Other technologies, such as marketing automation, layer this data to spot valuable trends.
But there are still plenty of unknowns in how people make the journey all the way from first-time visitors to loyal customers and brand advocates.
What are they thinking along the way?
What information do they need at critical times?
What could you do to make the process smoother?
These are key gaps in the analytics landscapes. Hidden inside those gaps is the story of how people start as strangers and end up as customers – and all their motivations and emotional triggers along the way.
Mapping your customers’ journey can reveal that story…
And there’s no better time to start than now.
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