Every week I’m lucky enough to work with dozens of B2B clients in my agency. While this provides me with valuable insights about what is working for B2B businesses, it also shows me the biggest mistakes that many in our industry tend to make.
Whether it is accountants, industrial sales, product distributors, they all seem to make the same mistakes across the board. And today you’re going to discover what the top 5 are, and how you can avoid them.
1. No presence in Google
Whether you service local businesses, or sell mining equipment to multi-nationals it’s essential that your business is found in Google. With 20% of all search traffic in Google being for local businesses, if you’re not there you’re simply handing a large amount of revenue directly to your competition.
The Solution: Contact an SEO company and get them to run an audit on your website. If you don’t appear #1 for at least your business name, then you have big problems.
2. No email list
Many B2B business owners believe that email marketing is only something that retail sites should do but nothing is further from the truth. According to HubSpot, email marketing generates a 4,000% ROI across all industries.
Personally I have generated a new client from nearly every email that I send to my list. Whether its a old lead who simply wasn’t ready, or a old client who came back on board, they generate me huge ROI.
The Solution: Don’t, and I repeat DO NOT under any circumstance just blindly pitch your list. Instead build a relationship from your emails. Provide useful content that genuinely helps them with their business. Those who are interested will naturally contact you for help. For example if you are an accountant, send an email with your top tips for tax preparation – I’ll be surprised if at least one client doesn’t approach you for work that day.
3. No special offers
One fundamental lesson that all B2B business owners need to learn is that business people are still human beings. And just like regular consumers they still make emotional decisions.
The Solution: Make a special offer to your client base and list at least once a quarter. It could be a free analysis which gets your foot in the door, or a discount on a product package that you offer.
4. Neglecting website conversion rates
Do you know how well your website converts? Do you know the value of each visitor that hits your website on average? And are you constantly improving how your website converts?
If you didn’t answer yes to all of the above then it’s time that you start paying attention. You see, the average website converts website traffic to leads at about 2-3%. This means that for every 100 people who hit your website, you’re likely to get 2-3 leads.
Now imagine if you could increase this number to 4-5? That would essentially double your business, while not spending another cent on traffic.
The Solution: head to HotJar and get yourself a free trial. This software allows you to see how your visitors are interacting with your site. Once you have some data and see some patterns (Such as no one wanting to fill out the 32 question quote form), then you can make adjustments and see how they affect your conversion rate.
5. Investing in areas that don’t make a return
At this start of last year I made the decision to do more trade shows to increase brand visability. However this year I’m not going to do a single one. Why? Because they didn’t give me a solid return.
For every dollar I spend on SEO I get $8-10 back. But for the trade shows I was lucky to break even.
The solution
: Before you sign another marketing check, have a deep look at what is generating you the best ROI and see if that method can be scaled any higher without losing its effectiveness.
If you avoid these 5 mistake you’re already going to be 95% further ahead than any of your competitors. If however you’d like to completely dominate them, then get in touch and I’ll be happy to help out.
