The primary objective of B2B websites should be to help visitors find the information they’re looking for. But, on top of that, they should be helping their organization capture qualified leads for their product or service.
A lead generation website does just that. It educates your visitors on your product or service and the industry you operate within in addition to giving visitors the opportunity to provide qualitative information to your sales team.
How to Create a Lead Generation Website
Prior to building a website, you need to define your target audience. Having a really strong understanding of who you’re selling to, whether that’s persona specific or segment specific, and understanding the pain points they experience is the best way to start this process. Then, layer everything else you do on top of that.
Make sure the way you set up the infrastructure and the navigation of your website is best suited for your target visitors. For example, if you have niche, industry-specific content that speaks directly to your personas’ pain points, you should make it easy to find through your main navigation along with information on the solutions to those pain points.
Another essential element is your actual conversion points.
After initially building your personas, you need to come up with conversion paths for your personas. Ideally, you’ll start with at least one conversion point for each funnel stage so you have three conversion points per persona: one at the top of the funnel (ToFu), that’ll convert them from visitor to lead, one in the middle of the funnel (MoFu) that will indicate they’re marketing qualified and one at the bottom of the funnel (BoFu) that indicates they’re ready to start the sales process.
Having these conversion points developed in advance helps you ensure that once you start identifying the specific pages of your website and their intended personas, you can leverage their appropriate conversion points. CTAs should be dispersed sitewide to convert visitors along with forms that collect the information your sales team needs to take future actions.
For example, if one of your personas is beginning the discovery process and they’re just starting to learn about their challenge, you’d want to offer them a ToFu offer, like a gated introductory ebook.
The next step you offer to visitors needs to be intentional. You don’t want to present someone with a BoFu offer, like an assessment, right off the bat because that can scare them away. The three-tiered ToFu, MoFu, BoFu approach helps prevent that from happening.
Requirements of a Minimum Viable Lead Generation Website
In addition to the foundation based upon your buyer personas and their conversion paths, there are a few more things a lead generation website needs to be successful and create a positive user experience.
A BoFu CTA that isn’t “Contact Us”
Because “contact us” appears so frequently on websites, many B2B companies think it’s a good choice for their primary BoFu CTA. However, as a user, “contact us” is a very vague and general action to take; it’s unclear what exactly will occur after filling out that form.
Instead, you should try to use more definitive copy for your CTAs. Even if “download a free trial” or “request a readiness assessment” aren’t appropriate for your company, “talk to sales” or “book a meeting” still gives the site visitor more context about the next step. Providing more information about what to expect can help increase conversions overall.
CTA strategy and organization
We build a lot of our websites in HubSpot, and there are a couple different ways you can generate CTAs in HubSpot. You can create unique CTAs on each webpage and have some of them lead to the same place and say the same things.
However, if you have a large site, that can make reporting of the efficacy of those CTAs complicated. Instead, you can create a single CTA and place it in multiple locations, leveraging Google Tag Manager to track the individual button clicks on pages. On top of minimizing the number of CTAs you employ, you can also make it easier to manage your CTAs by using a clear and consistent naming convention. That way, if you do need to make an update, you can locate the CTA easily.
Utilizing CTAs in a way that’s easy to track and report on is vital for your website’s success. To continue to improve your strategy over time, you need to understand the analytics behind conversions just as much as you need to actually bring in leads.
Strategic conversion points
It’s OK if you only have two or three forms for users to convert on. Don’t feel like you need to have five or ten content offers for each persona from the start. What’s important is that there’s intent in how you’re routing site visitors.
When determining which CTAs to place on a page, think about where visitors are in their discovery process. For blog posts, you typically only want to drive towards one offer in the text — blog posts are targeted at visitors who are earlier in the buying process and still learning about their problem and your credibility. Offering multiple next steps can make them feel pressured.
However, on a product page, it’s completely fine to have multiple CTAs. The best step for your company is for the visitor to jump on a call with sales, so including that is a logical next step. But, the visitor might still want more information about your product before speaking to sales, so guiding them to a case study for that product is also a relevant next step.
Clear labels
Let’s talk about having clear labels. Your users will want to know what they’re clicking on, right? Whatever your button text says should match the page the button takes visitors to. If someone isn’t actually requesting a demo, don’t use that text on the button. Describe what they’re actually doing instead.
Visitor-centric navigation
The specifics of your navigation layout depends on what industry you’re in, what you’re selling and who your site visitors are, but there are a couple best practices that hold true, regardless of those details.
You should always have a BoFu CTA button on the top right-hand corner of your nav. Folks could be anywhere on their journey when they come to your site, so always providing that opportunity to convert will reduce friction for people looking to convert right away. Using a fixed navigation reduces friction even further so that BoFu CTA stays accessible while visitors are scrolling through your site pages.
Additionally, your navigation labels should align with the pages they lead to. People will subconsciously recognize the terms you use as they move around your site. If what a page is called in the navigation doesn’t match with the page visitors arrive at, they might feel like they’ve been brought to the wrong place.
A balance of aesthetics and usability
At the end of the day, people are vain. So if your website doesn’t look good, the likelihood people are going to convert or purchase your product decreases. That’s just the way the human brain works.
There are design principles that people are just drawn to, and when users see a website that’s aesthetically pleasing, they’re more likely to be interested in that product or organization. But there’s a balance. The primary purpose of a B2B website is to be helpful to users — and that doesn’t come from a pretty design.
Some of the biggest things to consider are spacing and contrast to make sure everything on a website is legible. Additionally, your website design should align with your company’s overall brand. It’s better to have a website that’s consistent with your brand than something new and flashy that’s unrelated to how your company presents itself elsewhere.
Prospecting and outreach tools
When it comes to creating a website, you need to know what tools to use to better increase your chances of landing a qualified lead that’s right for you. Reaching out to customers who are businesses is vastly different than connecting directly with individual customers, and it requires you to reframe your approach. Many B2B prospecting tools are built to specifically source and organize this data automatically so you can take the guesswork out of how to approach these different tactics.
Now let’s take a look at tools. The ideal sales prospecting software will help your sales team automate and simplify tasks associated with lead qualification. Your sales reps could manually find and organize emails to schedule meetings, but think about all the wasted time that goes into that.
With an organized CRM tool like HubSpot, you can organize your contacts and create conversion-ready emails, then report on that data to gain valuable insights into how you’re doing. Key features of the platform include:
- A sleek, easy-to-use platform
- Separate hubs that allow you to focus on different areas based on business needs, yet live inside one convenient tool
- Live chat functionality for any ticketing services
- Pre-made templates, scheduling, tracking, and engagement reporting tools
While there are hundreds of lead prospecting tools out there, it’s important to remember that a good one empowers you to increase the volume of leads you convert into prospects. This saves your sales reps precious time (and their sanity!).
How Much Does a B2B Website Cost?
Finally, let’s talk about price. The standard website redesign ranges from $15,000 to $35,000. Why such a difference in cost? Well, a good lead generation website requires thorough research, analysis, and an in-depth content plan. Every lead-generating element on your website needs to be based on data-backed insights. Once you outline and determine your goals, you can move on to adding a cool layout and lines of code.
Ultimately, setting out on the path to creating an effective lead generation website starts with defining your target audience. Having a really strong understanding of whom you’re selling to, whether that’s persona-specific or segment specific, and understanding the pain points they’re experiencing is the best way to start this process. Then, layer everything else you do on top of that.
The Takeaway
A lead generation website helps site visitors while gathering information about them for your company. It’s more than just a digital brochure; it’s an experience that educates and nurtures prospects.
Whether you’re developing or redesigning your website in-house or hiring someone else to do it for you, the primary focus should be creating a website your buyer personas can gain value from.
Tag(s):
Lead Generation
