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

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. Click To Tweet

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

How SaaS companies should approach pricing pages

Pricing can be controversial in many sectors of the business community, partly due to the general human attitude towards money. According to research by Wells Fargo, 44% of Americans find talking about money more difficult than other serious topics, including politics, religion, and even death. And while it’s easier to talk money in a business context, you’d be surprised how many people are still somewhat sensitive to budget discussions in the B2B realm.

That’s why it can be challenging for startups to address pricing pages properly. Your pricing page is like an online version of a conversation about cost with a sales rep. When done correctly, it can add value to the buyer’s journey and nurture clients toward choosing the most profitable options. Or it could repel prospects if the pricing page poorly conveys value.

Your pricing page is like an online version of a conversation about cost with a sales rep. Click To Tweet

Software pricing can be particularly complex because of its nature. There is no physical product or anything to put in a client’s hand. They don’t receive a box or envelope in the mail. Yet the right business software can be exponentially more valuable than any physical package or equipment.

If you’re a software company or similar startup looking to nail your pricing page, this post will provide some general strategies you can apply to your funnel, no matter what kind of service or product you offer.

Presentation is Key

The way you present different pricing options greatly influences how site visitors perceive your pricing. Consider how a restaurant might have prices on its drive-thru menu or a movie theater would set concession prices. These examples are consumer-based, but the lesson is the same: juxtaposing the cost of your desired option with more and less expensive options can help nudge prospects down the desired path.

Consider the movie theater example. You might be offered a small popcorn for $4.00, medium for $5.75, and large for $6.50. Even if you originally wanted a medium, looking at the relatively small cost difference between the large and medium, you’re more likely to spring for the large.

This hypothetical is just one example: we frequently see strategies involving color, shape, and page placement. Think about the many pricing or subscription pages you’ve viewed over time, and you’ll probably be able to come up with a few ideas or devices that worked exceptionally well. 

Another significant concern with the presentation on your pricing page is how you’ll discuss the particular features and benefits mentioned. Typically, this is where software companies might tout their most crucial features or ones that differentiate them from competitors in the field. You may also consider offering a different pricing structure for those companies willing to pay a larger percentage upfront using something like a quarterly payment plan. Remember the old marketing adage here: benefits are more important than features. It’s nice to say what something does, but it’s even better to say what kind of result it will create for the buyer or their organization.

Experiment With CTAs

Calls to action (or CTAs) are vital because they represent the bridge from your pricing page to a prospect converting into a client. You can change many different options here, including these:

  • Copy. The specific words you use for your CTA can have an impact on how well you’re able to convert page visitors into clients. Use specific action verbs whenever possible, but don’t make them too long.
  • CTA shapes. The classic option is a rectangular button – you’ve probably seen the type frequently. Some brands might incorporate ovals, squares, or a more uncommon shape to stand out and catch a visitor’s eye.
  • Colors. The colors you choose for the background, CTA elements, and text will always influence a visitor’s decision to convert. We’ve used color psychology for decades in pricing strategies for all different kinds of companies, both B2B and B2C. For example, blue is associated with trust and safety, while orange is considered aggressive and active.

Make sure that you track pricing page data as you experiment with different CTAs so that it’s clear which ones are moving the needle regarding conversions.

Lean Towards Simplicity

Many software startups provide a relatively complex digital tool for clients, whether because of regulatory concerns or industrial standards. For example, healthcare software companies may have to include an extra layer of security or encryption for HIPAA-related concerns. Manufacturing software providers might need to ensure their clients meet ISO or ANSI standards created for their field.

Even if your software falls into this category, distilling it into the simplest possible terms on your pricing page is meaningful. Whenever possible, have a bias towards fewer options and elements. This idea holds if you want to optimize your existing pricing page or alter your pricing strategy to include a new tier. Whatever new elements you are thinking about adding, be sure they are necessary to add more context to your page visitor or help get them closer to making the best decision for business purposes.

White space is a common design tool startups use in anything from pricing pages to content assets to landing pages. White space can help your pricing page maintain a smooth, clean look and contribute to improved readability – an important element to help visitors learn about your offering and understand why it’s worth the asking price.

Final Thoughts on Pricing Pages

You don’t want to take an “old school” approach to pricing where it’s hard to access or requires a visitor to offer their email address or phone number. Today’s buyer – especially in the B2B software field – is looking for valuable information as quickly as possible. 

On the other hand, you don’t want to provide pricing for your product or service immediately on your website before you can add sufficient context. Doing this may be just as off-putting to a visitor as excessively guarding your pricing tiers and strategies. 

Instead, your pricing page needs to land somewhere in the middle: you have to offer enough details to give visitors the information they need and allow them to determine whether or not their budget fits your asking price, but not so many details that it causes questions about the worth of what you’re offering.

Finding this balance between informative and simplistic can be tricky if you’ve never created one before. It will take a fair amount of trial and error to determine how exactly to seek this balance for your business, your specific offering, and the kind of people you want as clients.

One of the best ways to help speed up optimizing your pricing page is to seek help from experts who’ve done it before. Our team at FunnelEnvy has years of experience working with clients with all types of pricing pages, from complex tiered subscription models to straightforward lifetime license plans. We can help ensure your pricing page has all the elements needed to maximize conversions without any wasted space. Just fill out this quick form to make sure we are a good fit and learn more about what we offer.

By |2023-07-26T04:06:14-07:00August 7th, 2023|Conversion Rate Optimization|0 Comments

Pipeline acceleration: Why it matters and how to get started

When many people hear “pipeline acceleration,” they might initially think it’s strictly a sales term. We typically speak of pipelines as a sales concept. But pipeline acceleration is a critical business area requiring collaboration across departments for success. 

From Meta to Google to Coca-Cola, the most successful companies worldwide have a long history of creating disparate teams and putting them together to achieve important goals. In 2012, Google even conducted an internal study codenamed “Project Aristotle” to study the dynamics of groups within a larger company. Some of its most important inventions have come from unexpected teams or individuals working on something outside their main responsibility.

Pipeline acceleration is one of the most important collaborative projects any organization can take on. When done properly, it can help a business achieve its revenue goals more efficiently and help marketing and sales team members work together to create less waste and redundant work. 

What is Pipeline Acceleration?

To summarize, pipeline acceleration means moving prospects through the sales funnel more quickly. It’s sometimes called “sales acceleration” or “closing speed,” but the central idea is the same: getting a prospect from a qualified lead to a paying client faster. 

As we mentioned above, pipeline acceleration isn’t just something for your sales reps to be thinking about. Research firm Forrester says the intent is to improve lead management “from cold to close,” but also that it “demands full joint and sales and marketing involvement, commitment, alignment and participation from beginning to end.” That means your marketing team has to take ownership of pipeline acceleration, too, even if many elements are ultimately under the domain of the sales team. For example, the sales team is typically the only part of the company that holds direct meetings with prospects, even though many other people may be involved in helping to set the agenda for that meeting or creating assets for the salesperson to use at the meeting.

Should you even bother with pipeline acceleration? Yes – for several reasons.

The Benefits of Pipeline Acceleration

You don’t have to look hard to see the obvious benefits of moving prospects through a sales pipeline more quickly – when you start experiencing greater revenue and more satisfied customers, the advantages make themselves swiftly known! 

Beyond the obvious benefits of closing more deals faster, pipeline acceleration also helps create shared goals and outcomes for different team members at your company. Working towards the same goals builds a sense of unity in the organization, even if your team operates on different projects with various tasks.

Pipeline accelerations also create a deeper understanding of your ideal buyer persona. When you have people from diverse backgrounds and job functions looking to help a prospect reach a decision more quickly, it tends to create a deeper, more well-rounded understanding.

Finally, successful pipeline acceleration will increase communication in general among your firm. Since the process requires such a high degree of collaboration between departments and job functions, your team members will develop a natural rapport and working cadence with one another that will be easy to carry over to other projects. Understanding how coworkers collaborate is important for organizations of every size, even a small startup with only a few people. 

You might think communication is better at smaller companies, but counterintuitively there are many examples of large organizations communicating better than smaller ones. Bigger companies tend to have more streamlined processes and workflows that can naturally guide a team into successful collaboration.

Understanding how coworkers collaborate is important for organizations of every size, even a small startup with only a few people. Click To Tweet

These are just a few of the many reasons to implement pipeline acceleration. If you’re convinced it’s important but unfamiliar with how to get started, the next section is for you.

Implementing or Developing Your Pipeline Acceleration Program

Like any other initiative, the first step is taking inventory of where you are currently. What steps have your sales and marketing team taken to move prospects down the funnel faster? What about other departments? In this stage, try not to judge progress or worry about where you are. You want to get a sense of previous measures and their results.

If your audit has determined you are fairly early in the process of pipeline acceleration, that’s okay – it just means you may have to start with a more simplistic approach. Consider steps like holding joint meetings between departments, creating a few shared goals, or even producing an activity you can complete together. 

If you’re a bit further along your journey to implement pipeline acceleration at your company, consider the tips below:

  • Create a living set of guidelines shared across the appropriate departments. Doing this is relatively easy nowadays with the several collaborative team platforms available, from Notion to Slack to Sharepoint. This compilation of guidelines and processes can serve as an internal wiki, helping your team document the pipeline acceleration processes but also allowing them to improve their written communication skills.
  • Pay close attention to metrics before and after implementing various initiatives to help promote pipeline acceleration. The numbers and data you gather should come from the same places so you can understand how it has changed based on the steps you took. This clues you into the results of your pipeline acceleration so you can better understand what is and isn’t working.
  •  It’s about the client first. Much of the advice in this article has been about what to do from an internal perspective. In analyzing these ideas, it can be easy to lose the forest for the trees can be easy. You must always consider your understanding and communication with prospects and clients. All of the pipeline acceleration work you do should focus on learning how to better meet prospects’ needs, thereby getting them to a sales decision more quickly.

Final Thoughts on Pipeline Acceleration for Companies

It’s easy to come across an idea like “pipeline acceleration” and assume that it’s too complicated for your organization to implement or something that you’ll get to eventually but don’t have the time to focus on. 

But even if you’re a relatively small company in the earliest stages of your growth journey, closing deals more quickly is critical. It will help your business get closer to meeting tangible business goals and establish a culture of communication and collaboration. That’s a worthy goal to pursue, even if your business is only a handful of people – small companies often lack the formal guidelines around communication and business initiatives that are present at larger organizations.

Looking to learn more about pipeline acceleration or get some expert help with incorporating it into your business? Our team at FunnelEnvy is ready to help. We’ve got many years of combined experience with funnel optimization, CRO, and other important elements of pipeline acceleration across several industries, from tech to healthcare to manufacturing.

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

By |2023-07-13T06:39:58-07:00July 24th, 2023|Conversion Rate Optimization|0 Comments

4 Strategies for Upgrading Your Content Marketing in 2023

In the middle of 2023, it’s safe to say content marketing is no longer the innovative, groundbreaking strategy it was ten or even five years ago. According to recent research, nearly 70% of companies plan to increase their content marketing budgets this year.

And while it’s likely too late to win the first-mover advantage in content marketing (unless your industry is very niche or specialized), producing higher-quality content is arguably more lucrative than ever. 

That’s because the massive increase in spending and strategy on content marketing has come partially as a response to the jump in buyers consuming content to help them along the buyer’s journey. From blog posts to industry publications and media properties, business buyers in almost every field are using content to help them evaluate options and better understand their needs.

The secret to success for marketers is to focus on the needs of your audience. Too many businesses treat content marketing like an obligation, churning out four blog posts a month because they have to. If you want to make your content better resonate with the right people, start with the steps below.

Too many businesses treat content marketing like an obligation, churning out four blog posts a month because they have to. Click To Tweet

Assess Platform Choices

Most companies that engage with content marketing follow a similar pattern: they choose one or two platforms to create and publish content, then never think about them again. It’s easy to get caught into this day-to-day routine, but it’s vital to continually think about the places your company is leveraging content marketing.

New social media platforms and communication tools release every day. And while not all of them will be worth the time and effort, some might be. For example: when TikTok first launched, many companies doubted whether or not short-form videos featuring lots of music and dancing would be effective for marketing – especially those in B2B industries. But years later, TikTok is a popular place for all kinds of content, from the consumer ads you might expect to advice for CPAs and accounting firms.

We’re not suggesting you add new platforms to your marketing once a month or once a quarter. We recommend you keep an ear to the ground so you know about new media that might fit your content marketing well before your competitors.

Consider the Human Element

We’ve used people, emotions, and other parts of the human experience in marketing for centuries – remember the famous carousel scene from the TV show “Mad Men”? In it, a team of executives from Kodak suggests naming their new slide projector “the wheel” because of its shape. But Don Draper looks deeper to understand that consumers don’t care about the product’s shape; they care about the nostalgia it creates upon viewing old photos.

We often get objections from clients and prospects that sell to other businesses: “Nostalgia is great, but I’m selling software for specialized manufacturers. What does that have to do with humans?” Remember that no matter how dry or industrial your product seems, there’s always a way to connect to humans because they’re the ones ultimately making the buying decision.

One of the best ways to help you incorporate more of a human touch into your content marketing is to interview previous clients and ask them how their situation changed. Your product or service likely had a quantifiable impact on their business, affecting the people working there. Depending on your relationship with the clients you speak with and the nature of the conversation, you could publish the conversation as a case study in audio or video format.

Plan a Pivot Away From Personal Data Marketing

Over the last decade or so, the world of digital advertising has followed a relatively straightforward model. Advertising platforms like Google and Facebook collect data about the people using their platforms, then sell companies on the ability to use that data to maximize profits. While this model raked in billions of dollars in advertising money, it also created an unpleasant situation where companies needed to lean on an intimate knowledge of search and social media users to sell to them more effectively.

In the last three or four years, signs have emerged that this model is starting to disappear. In late 2021, Facebook (now Meta) announced they would no longer offer “sensitive” ad targeting categories like race, health conditions, and specific political ideas. Similarly, in a major iOS update from 2021, Apple required apps to ask permission to track user data, a request many users denied.

The writing is on the wall: in the coming years, third-party personal data collected by advertisers will no longer be the gold mine of advertising it might have been in the early 2010s. If you’ve been relying a lot on advertising data or a similar source, you need to consider how to pivot your strategy away from this resource. User data will always be available, and this shift won’t happen overnight, but it’s still critical to prepare now so you aren’t caught off-guard by something accelerating this trend.

Think About User Intent

One trend in the current era of content marketing is optimizing for user intent. In 2023, there’s so much content out there for almost every industry that the biggest challenge for both B2B and B2C buyers is finding out which kinds of content will help them meet their professional needs. It’s fantastic if your site has a great content library, but it isn’t living up to its potential if you don’t organize it well.

In a recent article for the Content Marketing Institute, strategy chief Robert Rose points out that organizing content by “e-books, white papers, videos, etc.” asks them to choose the kind of experience they want before knowing the topic. Instead of this traditional method of organization that often results in challenges for first-time users, take a deeper approach to your content’s organization and accessibility by grouping it by customer intent.

And if you’re unsure where to start when grouping content by intent, try applying the pillar strategy to content you create for two or three of your most common buyer scenarios – copy them exactly from an existing client, if you need. Start with the buyer’s situation as your pillar foundation, and expand from there.

Last Word on Updating Your Content Marketing Plans 

Even in the buttoned-up industrial sector, today’s internet is noisier than ever. Your content marketing strategy of producing a set number of monthly posts is a great start, but it’s not enough to help you reach the top of your field regarding content. To truly reach your intended audience, your content has to focus on their needs and meet them on the platforms they’re already comfortable with.

Are you interested in expert advice on improving your content marketing plan or developing a new one? Our team at FunnelEnvy is ready to help. Just click here to fill out a short quiz so we can learn more about how we might be able to help take your content game – and other elements of your digital marketing – to the next level.

By |2023-06-14T07:58:04-07:00June 26th, 2023|Conversion Rate Optimization|0 Comments

The 4 Top CRO Tips For 2023

It may have taken a couple of decades to perfect the modern internet, but nowadays, technology is getting more advanced by the day. Recently, we’ve been hearing a lot about how AI and blockchain will revolutionize how we do business. It’s critical to stay current on these developments as they relate to your business.

But at the same time, many of the strategies doled out on how to respond to advancing technology look surprisingly similar to “the old way.” Often, tech just asks us to use existing principles of sales, marketing, and business with a new platform or tool.

In this article, we’re diving into four ways to think about conversion rate optimization (CRO) given everything we know about how technology is advancing this year – and beyond.

Revisit Your SEO Practices

We don’t always associate search engine optimization (SEO) with conversion rate optimization. The premise of SEO is getting new traffic to your site, after all. Smart marketers know they should consider user intent long before someone even lands on their page.

Smart marketers know they should consider user intent long before someone even lands on their page. Click To Tweet

That’s because the more people who get to your page, the better – as long as they have the right intentions. Having good enough SEO to attract visitors who aren’t interested in your offering might produce some good vanity metrics but ultimately won’t help you drive business goals. To rectify this issue, you need to consider SEO to attract the right traffic.

You can assess the way you incorporate keywords on different kinds of pages to see if it still makes sense for your intended audience. Don’t forget to examine your fundamental keyword strategy, too. Since most SEO success often comes from going for longtail keywords, if your target audience has changed, your longtail keywords may also change.

Audit the Forms in Your Funnel

Form optimization is a long, dynamic subject matter that could fill up its own blog post (or a whole series). But the foundation of it is the same as it’s always been: go through all appropriate forms and make sure there are no obstacles, distractions, or errors that arise. Ideally, you can break this down into two parts: first, audit your forms internally from a technical perspective, making sure they work with the right software and functions in your business – like a CRM or marketing automation tool.

The second part of the audit is about your users’ perspective. If possible, try to get a person outside your internal marketing team, preferably a prospective customer or someone with similar characteristics. You’ll typically get more cooperation with this form testing when you offer to compensate participants, even if it’s a simple thing like a small discount or virtual gift card.

Here are a few questions to keep in mind as you go through the testing process:

  • Are people completing your forms in the amount of time you expected?
  • Is relevant information on form pages easy enough to find?
  • Are any parts of the form unclear or confusing?
  • Does the form’s language resonate with users?

Test Load Times and Technical Elements 

Load time is a significant factor in getting people to visit your site and convincing them to convert. According to statistics by Google, an increase in load time from 1 second to 5 seconds can increase a page’s bounce rate by 90%. If a critical page of your funnel is loading slowly, it can hinder your marketing efforts.

There are plenty of tools available that can help marketers improve load speed and related technical slowdowns. Google’s PageSpeed test is a good starting point – based on your results there, you’ll either want to develop a plan to cut down on elements slowing down your page or ensure protocols are in place to keep the page loading at optimal speed. 

Depending on the nature of the technical challenges you’re running into, you may require outside help. Certain changes to your domain settings may need to be handled by your hosting provider, while more advanced changes to the site itself could require specialized help from a developer.

Diversify Funnel Media Types

Are you using  only long-form content and headers on every page throughout your funnel? Does your main landing page use the same video you’ve had for years? Unless your forms and funnel elements are already converting at a very high level, it’s always valuable to improve your content by diversifying its delivery. While prospects in certain industries may be more predisposed to specific kinds of content, no rule says you can’t switch it up. 

Video content is becoming increasingly popular in many industries, particularly with the rise in popularity of platforms like TikTok and Instagram Reels. There are also infographics, audio presentations, photos, etc. You might even want to consider the presentation of your content with elements like parallax scrolling and carousels. Even if you aren’t drastically changing the information you include when you make these adjustments, you’ll find it could still add a significant bump to your conversion rate – especially on pages and funnel elements that may have been struggling previously.

As you look to add new kinds of media to your mix, remember that you’ll need to track everything in some way. If you’re adding a new kind of video, for example, be sure you have the right software tools to track important metrics and incorporate them into the rest of your analytics.

Last Thoughts on CRO for 2023 and Beyond

The tools we use to conduct business have come a long way from the pen, paper, and snail mail days. Startups can access a wealth of information about people they’ve never met or interacted with. Technology is capable of helping a company achieve some truly inspiring things today.

Yet despite all the advancements, many of the fundamentals about selling remain strong; possibly even strongerr than in the pre-internet days. When you receive messages, emails, and notifications at every turn, the fundamentals stand out as even more important now. The core tenet of conversion rate optimization is getting more people to raise their hands and signify interest in your product or service. To do that, you need to attract more of the right people, remove technical blocks that prevent them from converting, and experiment with different types of content that can better educate them on why they need your offering.

Looking for some help implementing these or other CRO tips into your existing marketing campaigns? At FunnelEnvy, our optimization specialists have spent years studying what it takes to get people interested in our clients’ products and services. We’ll bring an objective eye to your digital marketing efforts while using our decades of combined experience to help you overcome any challenges you may be facing.

To get started, just click here to fill out a short quiz that will help us learn more about your organization and how we may be able to help you meet your marketing goals.

By |2023-05-03T22:23:27-07:00May 15th, 2023|Conversion Rate Optimization|0 Comments

How to Incorporate UX Principles into B2B Funnels

There’s something of a paradox happening in many business marketing circles today: everyone wants to ensure their funnels are well-optimized for the user experience, but relatively few marketers can tell you what user experience (UX) actually means!

The truth is, there’s a good reason for this paradox: UX is a huge umbrella term that can encompass several different things to many other groups and individuals. This article will focus on some of the UX concepts most relevant to B2B marketing funnels. The key to successfully incorporating these ideas is thinking about how they may apply to your funnels and marketing campaigns.

Let’s dive in.

Incorporate as Much Feedback as Possible

According to their definition, The Norman Nielsen Group says user experience “encompasses all aspects of the end-user’s interaction with the company, its services, and its products.” The key term there is “user.” Some misguided or inexperienced marketers might believe they can optimize their user experience without input from their prospects. This approach simply isn’t possible if you want to maximize the improvement of your funnel UX.

For the best results, remember the idea of a specific audience and diverse methodology. In other words, you should have a highly detailed target persona already mapped out before you seek feedback from anyone – otherwise, you’re just wasting everyone’s time. Be as specific as possible about the kind of people you want to take UX information from because this data will ultimately shape your product or service’s development.

Once you’ve settled on a specific type of audience, do your best to offer them several methods of providing input on your funnel and other marketing elements. In an ideal situation, you can build intimate relationships with prospects by creating a community centered around their characteristics and business objectives. Think about what HubSpot did to grow its Inbound.org community, a forum for marketers to share experiences and tactics for the inbound methodology. At its peak, the site was bringing in over 300,000 visitors per month.

Consider building a community within your customer group, even if it’s on a smaller scale. In the era of remote work, plenty of tools are available to bring people together, including Slack and Discord. You can use a more traditional forum-based system for your community – whatever fits best into your operating methods and your customers’ preferred ways of learning about potential business solutions.

Consider building a community within your customer group, even if it’s on a smaller scale. Click To Tweet

Think About Your Microcopy

Adobe defines “microcopy” as “tiny tidbits of copy found on websites, applications, and products.” You probably run into dozens of examples of microcopy every day – think about form fields, button text, disclaimers at the bottom of a page, headlines on popular articles, etc. Even the captions on your images can technically be considered microcopy.

These items may seem pretty small individually, but taken together, they can have a severe impact on the perception of your funnel by users. We already know headlines are important, given statistics indicating that an average user only reads about 20% of the content on any given website. You can find similar studies on the importance of key microcopy within your funnel, such as the call to action found on a button at the end of a form.

While your specific approach may vary depending on the type of microcopy you’re looking to optimize, generally speaking, it’s wise to eliminate as much as possible: the shorter, the better. Most of your prospects don’t have time for unclear or lengthy instructions. Be concise and direct with your microcopy.

Review Your Funnel for Unnecessary Elements

As marketers, there tends to be an obsession with adding the next “thing” that will make your stack even better. In describing his 1980 Los Angeles Lakers team that failed to defend its championship, the legendary coach and executive Pat Riley coined the term “disease of more.” Each player wanted more accolades, money, and playing time, to the point where it started harming the collective team.

Thinking about this in a marketing context, we see parallels to software, email scripts, video courses, new form options, etc. There are lots of shiny “widgets” we can add or tweak with the idea that it will improve our funnel. In reality, several of these add-ons may not be necessary to make prospects convert. Some of them may even negatively impact your funnel’s conversion rate.  

One of the best things you can do to optimize your funnel’s UX is to go through the entire thing (start to finish) and see if you can identify unnecessary things. Do your best to put yourself in the shoes of a prospect, trying not to think of it as a marketer. Think about forms, text, images, menu items, footers, headers – anything and everything should be considered. The fewer elements you have on the page, the more likely it will push visitors to the result you desire.

Even with this mental exercise, fully adopting your prospect’s mindset may be challenging. It may be better to ask a trusted customer or outside consultant to give you accurate insights. 

Test Constantly and Seek Outside Perspective

Whether you incorporate these or other tactics to improve user experience, it’s important to remember the fundamental tenet of conversion rate optimization (CRO): always test your changes. Collecting data that shows the performance of a new strategy or idea in your funnel builds a concrete foundation from which you can understand what’s working and what isn’t. UX ideas can change quickly, but data will ground your funnel in the specific concepts that get results.

We also suggest that you seek perspective beyond yourself and, if possible, beyond your entire organization. As much as you can try to embody the mindset of your ideal prospect, you’ll never fully be able to get there simply because you aren’t that person. Even if you are a doctor-turned-marketer offering a product or service to the same kind of doctors, you still have the mental experience of developing and selling that offering, which colors your judgment and beliefs.

The best way to overcome this challenge is to get outside help with your UX optimization. Even if you don’t have the means (or desire) to hire an outside contractor to help you, there are options to get an external opinion. You might consider reaching out to a loyal customer, as well as some newer customers, for help evaluating the current elements in your funnel and any ideas you are thinking about implementing.

Of course, working with a group of experts with years of collective experience working on UX improvements for clients can also be helpful. We’ve helped startups and software companies in several industries increase their conversion rates by making their funnels more user-friendly and accessible so that prospects only see what they need.

If you’re interested in getting some UX assistance from the FunnelEnvy team, click here to fill out a short questionnaire, learn more about our pricing and determine if we’d be a good fit to work together.

By |2023-01-25T21:39:06-08:00February 6th, 2023|Conversion Rate Optimization|0 Comments

How to Optimize Your Funnel for Today’s Generation of B2B Decision Makers

Technology, especially digital tools like email, electronic signatures, and marketing automation, has significantly impacted our business operations. But one of the more underrated elements of business change is the evolution of the people involved. Every generation is different from the previous one, and while you shouldn’t hold preconceived notions about individuals solely because of their age, it is possible to draw broad conclusions about age groups as a whole.

In today’s B2B tech and software world, many buyers are from the millennial age range – born between the mid-1980s and early 1990s. Studies have shown that this group has a distinct preference for a few specific styles of sales and marketing. Generally, incorporating these concepts into your funnels can help even if you aren’t specifically targeting a millennial prospect.

Self-service

One of the nice things about the digital era is that it has removed several time constraints that may have previously restricted business transactions. If a prospect desires, they can load a company’s website at midnight and learn about their offering’s important features and benefits. In previous eras of business where buyers relied on suppliers to learn about a potential product or service, this model wasn’t possible.

According to research, many buyers want to do business precisely this way. Forrester’s 2021 B2B Buying Survey reported that the number of self-directed sales interactions in a typical transaction has now surpassed the number of human interactions. Other data shows meetings with potential suppliers now represent a relatively small portion of the B2B purchasing process: Gartner research says B2B buyers spend only 17% of the purchasing process on meetings with potential vendors. 

It may not always be possible to show off everything your service or product can do in a way that facilitates self-service, but it’s an important ideal to endeavor to meet. In fact, buyers may get frustrated or abandon your site entirely if you don’t have the right information accessible to them whenever they want it.

Personalization

Not only do buyers want to be able to access sales information at any time, but they also have a strong desire for a customized buying process. Accenture reports that over 7 out of 10 B2B buyers want a more personalized, “consumer-like” purchasing process. This customization can manifest itself in several ways, but the foundation is always the same: a deeper understanding of your prospect’s buying journey. You must be more aware of each prospect’s specific challenges, needs, and biggest concerns throughout the purchasing process.

Buyers may get frustrated or abandon your site entirely if you don’t have the right information accessible to them whenever they want it. Click To Tweet

Another reason personalization is essential is the increasing quantity of decision-makers involved with B2B purchases today. As budgets tighten and hiring slows in uncertain economic conditions, companies are more frequently assembling buying groups to ensure they spend their dollars wisely. More people involved in buying creates a greater demand for personalized content throughout your funnel.   

Finally, remember to include a personal touch in each funnel stage. From top-funnel content like blog posts and white papers to your final product demonstrations or purchase negotiations, it’s critical to stay mindful of your prospects’ needs. Understanding their desires requires a skillful blend of early-stage communication and consistent research about your audience.

Responsive Design

Making sure every element of your funnel can be viewed and consumed properly on all devices is vital because of prospect tendencies. Certain studies show that over 4 in 10 B2B buyers use mobile devices during the purchase process. Consuming content is typically one of the primary uses for mobile devices, though, in certain industries or segments, consumers might also use them for communication with suppliers.

Another reason you should ensure your website and all other parts of your funnel load correctly on mobile devices: it’s essential for technical elements of your marketing. A website that loads on mobile devices is critical for search engine optimization (SEO). SEO is also a significant element of most B2B marketing campaigns today. In other words, if your page doesn’t load on an array of mobile devices – especially tablets and smartphones – you risk alienating your prospects and negatively impacting your visibility on search engines.

Form a Human Connection

This tip is especially applicable for persuading B2B buyers of all generations – though some evidence suggests creating personal relationships is even more important with millennial and Gen Z purchasers. Of course, a buyer needs to obtain a service that fulfills their company’s objective, but beyond that, today’s buyers want to feel a more human connection with their suppliers. It’s part of why many purchasers today – both in consumer and business – emphasize spending money with companies that align with their worldview and contribute to solving significant global problems.

You don’t have to offer a cutting-edge software solution to solve a grand problem like climate change to be more human. There are plenty of ways to incorporate personal relationships into more conventional types of business. One easy tip is to try and schedule in-person or video meetings whenever possible, as opposed to communicating via phone or email. These relationships make creating a rapport with prospects much easier, which is especially important for most B2B sectors. 

Implementation Tips for Funnel Optimization

Now that you have a better understanding of the specific elements to incorporate into your funnel, it’s vital to take some time to consider how you can use this information in your own funnel. The first thing to know is that it’s impossible to do everything at once – you shouldn’t rush to make sure you meet all of the requirements for the current generation of B2B buyers. Whatever steps you take to make your funnel more appealing, put your company’s authentic spin on it. Don’t try to be something you aren’t just because you think it might broaden your audience. That approach often backfires, alienating your core customer group who appreciates your service for what you do and don’t provide.

Finally, we suggest incorporating technical benchmarks to help determine whether or not these changes were successful. It’s easy to throw out broad suggestions like, “we need to personalize our content to attract the right audience.” But when you can quantify the improvements made with a statement like, “after personalizing our content, the conversion rate on our funnel’s main landing page increased by 6%,” it offers much more value when it comes to informing the rest of your marketing strategy.

Are you looking to get some assistance shaping your funnel to be more in line with the current generation of buyers? The team at FunnelEnvy can assist. We have lots of experience helping clients tighten up their funnels to increase conversion optimization rate (CRO) and bring more success to their marketing efforts. We’ve helped businesses in every sector modernize their funnels to get attention from their target audience.

To find out more about FunnelEnvy pricing and what we might be able to offer, click here to fill out a short quiz that will help us learn more about your needs.

By |2022-12-15T15:54:03-08:00December 26th, 2022|Conversion Rate Optimization|0 Comments

Personalization Strategies to Accelerate Conversion Rate

Once companies have established a functional system for marketing, personalization is typically the next big leverage point to increase their return on investment. Successful personalization can have a significant positive impact on conversion rate and client satisfaction. But how should you implement this idea – what’s the best way to tailor your marketing to the different segments of your audience?

Below are a few essential personalization strategies that can improve your funnel’s efficiency and make your audience feel like you genuinely understand their needs and concerns.

Update Your Personas

Before personalizing something for a specific audience, you must understand them. Most companies don’t make it a regular habit to review and update their buyer personas. A deep understanding of personas is vital if you want to succeed with personalization. Take some time to refresh your knowledge of each buyer persona you’ll be targeting. It may reinforce what you already know, but in many cases, you’ll uncover new trends or ideas related to a specific segment that might help with personalization. For example, is there a significant new industry regulation that one of your personas must now consider as they make decisions? 

Even seemingly minor factors can provide insights that translate to more successful marketing. According to HubSpot, addressing concerns on a landing page can increase conversions by as much as 80%. Best of all, the information you learn will be applicable across different funnels and campaigns in the future.

Get Input From Users

It’s always easy to speculate in a vacuum about what users want or how they prefer to receive information. But the best way to understand your target audience is to hear it directly from them. That means talking to current and previous clients about a few significant concerns, including:

  • What are their biggest challenges at work?
  • Have any of those challenges changed since they started as a client?
  • What would make your job easier for the next month/quarter/year?
  • How helpful have you found other solutions in our industry?

Notice that these questions are more general inquiries about their work and business functions and don’t have anything to do with the specific nature of your offering. While getting feedback from your users about particular points of your service or product is always important, asking them for feedback about your product or service while requesting updated details about their professional needs can be overwhelming.

User surveys are valuable for personalization, but you must keep them concise and tightly focused. Click To Tweet

Beyond that, offering some reward or compensation to users who provide feedback that enhances your personalization efforts can also be helpful. It shows you value their time and the insights they provide, even if it’s just a percentage discount or a small gift card. At the very least, you should explain how you’ll use their feedback to make your offering better and more helpful to users like them.

Source Data From Different Business Functions

Many marketing teams face a similar challenge: siloed data. Instead of understanding the lifecycle of a customer from prospect through to purchase and retention, they can only interpret the needs and concerns of prospects through the lens of marketing actions – whether or not they convert, how long they stay on a website, their job titles, etc. The problem with this approach is that it ignores crucial elements of the customer journey that are vital to the understanding necessary for personalization. Customer interactions outside of marketing can provide a richer picture of what they are looking for from your offering.

For example, let’s say you provide a software solution that helps mortgage companies streamline their internal operations. It’s valuable to know what kind of landing page, emails, and advertisements will get the attention of prospects and convert them into subscribers or customers of your business. Suppose you can access reports on their interactions with customer service or data on which areas of your tool they spend the most time. In that case, you can use this information to personalize marketing messages in your funnel further.

Focus on Key Conversion Points

When personalizing your marketing funnel, some areas are more critical than others. For example, personalization matters on a confirmation page that appears after a user converts, but it’s essential to landing page content that helps convince visitors to take the conversion action.

As you build a strategy for improving your funnel’s personalization, you want to emphasize high-leverage points that give you the most return on the time and money invested. In some of these areas, a few small tweaks in your content and visual design can be responsible for exponential growth in conversions.  

What are some of the critical areas to think about when it comes to conversions? It varies depending on your offering and funnel, but the most common ones we work with on client engagements include:

  • Landing page forms, including things like headlines, body copy, and field text. An easy solution here is running A/B tests that pit one version of a page against another, but there are plenty of other options for improvement if you have the right data.
  • Social media ads that target your audience on networks like Facebook, LinkedIn, and other platforms. These are important because they are often the first interaction prospective customers have with your business. A successful ad will improve brand awareness and drive conversions towards your goal.
  • Drip emails that nurture clients and prospects towards signing up for your service or purchasing a product or other offering. In most B2B sales cycles, prospects will want to spend some time getting to know you before even agreeing to schedule a meeting – let alone committing to a significant, high-priced purchase. If appropriately composed with the correct elements (subject line, preview text, and body content), drip emails can be one of your most effective sales tools.

Final Thoughts on Personalization 

Even in niche B2B markets that don’t represent some of the fastest-growing sectors in the world, professionals responsible for business buying decisions face a lot of noise and uncertainty. Faced with many different options and marketing messages on various platforms, buyers have no choice but to focus entirely on the solutions that seem best for their specific needs.
While it can be harder for marketers to break through to prospects and pique their interests, the scenario also creates an opportunity. A well-calibrated message that speaks to prospects’ needs and pain points can cut through a lot of that noise and resonate immediately with the right audience. That means increased conversion rates, more significant revenues, and ultimately, a more satisfied customer base that stays with you for longer.

Looking for some help from conversion rate optimization specialists on personalization and how to apply it to your funnel? Fill out this quick quiz to see if our services might be a good fit for your requirements.

By |2022-08-08T05:35:44-07:00August 8th, 2022|Conversion Rate Optimization|0 Comments

4 Simple Lead Form Optimization Tips

If your marketing campaigns were a military, lead forms would be the infantry. They are on the ground in the fight for more leads and conversions. Lead forms are the “tip of the spear” for a conversion campaign. If your forms aren’t in good shape, you’ll struggle to meet your marketing goals, putting a damper on revenue and constricting company growth. 

Some optimization steps are relatively easy to implement if you want to get your forms in better shape. Starting with this low-hanging fruit is a great way to refresh a campaign that was once successful but has stopped performing to its previous level or as a foundation for reviewing a new campaign before it’s finalized for launch.

Here are four easy strategies to improve your lead forms to increase conversions:

Minimize Friction

When you think about friction, you might imagine tires on a rough road or a marble sliding down a chute. In physics, friction is the resistance a surface encounters when moving over another surface. In a lead form, “friction” is anything that stops a user from filling out your form.

How do you minimize friction? Here are a few suggestions from HubSpot, with additional insights about each point:

  • Remove extra navigation on the page with your form. Having a standard navigation menu makes it too easy for someone to get distracted while they are trying to fill out your lead form. Even if they don’t, why give them the temptation? Most conversion forms have either no navigation menu options or a single link or button that takes users back to the home page or previous form.
     
  • Use precise language in your form. It’s a shame to put in all the work required to attract a lead to your website, only for that person to leave your page without converting because you used confusing language that they don’t understand. Make sure all parts of your writing are clear and concise, from the body copy on your website to the form fields themselves. When in doubt, it’s always best to use fewer short words than a longer, more complicated one. You can use an online tool like Hemingway to grade your page’s written content and ensure it’s understandable for the people visiting the site.
  • Make forms shorter whenever possible. There shouldn’t be a single unnecessary field that prospects need to fill out to complete your form, especially if they complete it to download a resource or schedule an appointment with someone on your team. 

There are many other great resources for conversion rate optimization online – check out sites like Shopify and CrazyEgg for more details about optimizing your forms and other conversion elements.

Use Multi-Step Forms

“Wait,” you might be thinking, “I thought I was supposed to keep my forms as short as possible! Doesn’t using multiple steps in a form contradict this idea?” It may seem that way at first glance. However, if you spend enough time marketing online, you’ll understand that some forms must be completed fully – there’s no way of getting around it. A common example in the ecommerce world is a customer information form that includes payment and shipping information. Another example might be setting an appointment to meet with someone on your team. You wouldn’t want the location or timing of the appointment lost because of an error or oversight on your form.

If you spend enough time marketing online, you’ll understand that some forms must be completed fully Click To Tweet

If you must present page visitors with a lengthy form, the best thing to do is break it up into multiple parts so that it doesn’t feel like a massive trudge to get through. Continuing with the example of an ecommerce transaction, you’ll typically see these form pages broken up by the various phases of the transaction: purchase info, shipping info, customer name, address, etc. This split makes it much more bearable to get through instead of having all of these forms presented simultaneously.   

Include Social Proof

As you know, people are social animals. We are conditioned to do things others do so we remain members of our tribe. Millions of years ago, expulsion from your tribe due to non-conforming beliefs or actions meant you had to try to survive on your own in the wilderness. Though most of us no longer live in tribes, people still have a natural tendency to trust and value the actions of others.

That’s why social proof is so valuable in modern marketing. Buyers in the B2B space tend to be less swayed by social proof than consumers, but even the most rational, logic-driven purchasers can still be persuaded to purchase if they know others have done the same. It’s particularly beneficial to get testimonials or social proof from people who are respected figures in a field. Placing social proof on your forms is a great technique for quelling those last-minute uncertainties about finishing.   

Consider Form Alternatives

At FunnelEnvy, we appreciate the classic elements of marketing that have worked consistently over the years. But we’re also big believers in looking forward and embracing cutting-edge technology. We suggest considering whether or not you even need to have a form to generate conversions at a sufficient rate. There are a few different options for replacing a form, but the most popular one comes to us thanks to AI and predictive language technology: chatbots.

Chatbots have grown increasingly common over the last decade – you’ve probably seen or interacted with one recently. The premise is that instead of filling out a standardized form, users can get customized assistance for their specific questions or challenges. Although this option isn’t feasible for everyone, some companies might even supplement an automated chatbot with a live customer service agent. But with interactivity and personalization looking like critical pillars of the next generation of marketing, it’s worth considering an automated chat program to replace a form. 

According to Forrester, over 40% of American adults believe it’s important for retail companies to offer live chat. And while that statistic may be mostly regarding B2C purchases, the way someone likes to make a purchase in their personal life probably translates to how they prefer to make purchases professionally.

Besides a chatbot, other options for replacing a form might include an interactive calendar or another widget that allows a user to schedule an appointment or call. In many cases, these options are simply a more advanced version of a form – but they’re still worth considering to improve your conversion rate.

Final Thoughts on Form Optimization

You don’t always have to reinvent the wheel to improve your marketing performance. By making the simple adjustments above, you can get more page visitors to fill out your forms and move to the next stage of your funnel, which ultimately drives revenue and growth for the entire business.

If you’d like some input on optimizing your lead forms or any other part of your conversion funnel, fill out this quick questionnaire to learn more about how we might be able to help.

By |2022-04-20T12:40:33-07:00May 2nd, 2022|Conversion Rate Optimization|0 Comments
Go to Top