Jay Sachetti joined Jeff O’Brien, partner at Husch Blackwell and Dyanne Ross-Hanson, president of Exit Planning Strategies talked about the market for mergers and acquisitions, exit planning opportunities for companies that don’t end up for sale and how companies can maximize their eventual sale price during an early October panel at the first Upsize on Tap event at Summit Brewing Co. in St. Paul.
When the state Legislature passed a law requiring employers to provide paid leave and safe time for employees, Justin Bieganek started hearing differing details from friends, colleagues and peers.
Ken Bobowski
MQ Software Inc.;
952.345.8652
ke**********@***il.com
www.mqsoftware.com
How to boost
interactivity on
your Web sit
FOR BUSINESS OWNERS and business-to-business marketers, the challenge to develop relevant, shared and cost-effective sales discussions with customers and prospects has never been greater. Here are three ideas to improve your Web site’s interactivity.
Content is king
Business buying behaviors continue to change. Estimates of time all business-to-business decision-makers spend online each week researching product and service information vary from five to 12 hours. In an online environment where much of the information needed to make complex buying decisions is immediately accessible, the content on your Web site is king.
Your Web site should mirror your sales process. A prospect visiting your site is taking a self-directed journey from awareness and research to consideration and comparison of your products or services. You need to begin the customer relationship before your sales person contacts the prospect.
Relevant high-value content can make this happen. High-value content is information a prospect is looking for, can use immediately and causes your organization to be seen as an expert authority. Supply the best information in your field. It must be well-written and easy to understand. A well-written electronic newsletter can deliver your focused message to Web site subscribers on a regular basis.
Almost everything you’ve done to start and grow your business can be repurposed as valuable content for prospects and customers on your site. Brochures can provide color choices and graphics, as well as design. Sales tools can be transformed into specification sheets, engineering guides and product briefs.
Have your sales people tell their success stories. What business problems did your company solve? How? Build development of case studies into your sales process.
A sale isn’t finished until it has been documented, detailing who, what, how and why this particular problem or sets of problems were solved for the customer. Web site case studies show prospects you can solve their problems.
Don’t forget thought leadership. What do you know and provide your client, which makes you unique or differentiates your product or service? Prospects and customers want to know. Communicate the unique value of your products or services in five to 10 pages. It would make a great white paper to download.
Generating an actionable Web lead is about communicating the value of doing business with you. Focus on your visitors. Make sure visitors can find your spec sheets, sample offers, engineering guides, product briefs and white papers when they visit.
Lead generation is an exchange of value. Your visitor gets something of value from you in exchange for their contact information. Keep it simple.
Next, evaluate
Your Web site plan and an analytics tool are necessary to evaluate your site’s performance. Web analytics is observing and measuring the behavior of visitors.
While every business is different, four basic types of successful business-to-business sites are lead generation, customer support, direct sales and advertising.
Any site that sells products, services or information fits the direct sales model. An advertising site uses content to aggregate an audience, which in turn views and responds to advertising. A customer support site helps visitors answer questions about a product or a service avoiding a costly phone call. A lead generation site exchanges high-value content for qualified prospect contact information to shorten the sales cycle.
Most business-to-business sites are lead generation Web sites. Here are the five key performance indicators you should track and analyze on such sites:
Visitor traffic. How many people visit your site? Overall visitor traffic is reported as new and returning visitors.
Top content. What are visitors looking for? Knowing this can help you generate more qualified leads.
Referring domains. Who is sending you visitors? Check if your advertising dollars and business partners are performing.
Search keywords and phrases. Tracking top search engine words and phrases ensures your content is what visitors are looking for.
Leads generated. This is the most important indicator. It is where all your hard work shows. You need to understand why this number is increasing or decreasing.
When analyzing data, don’t be intimidated by the amount of data provided by your analytics tool. It’s not the numbers, it’s the change in the numbers over time.
Taking action
Few business-to-business Web sites are ‘lucky’ enough to stumble across the correct combination of design, content, language, presentation and flow to optimize their appeal to a selected target audience.
Understand and implement a continuous improvement process. Imagine a cyclical progression. As soon as you understand the results of your analysis it is time to define the next changes based on your lead generation goals.
Simple changes can deliver significant results. The most important thing to internalize is, the Internet is not static. Customers and customer preferences change, Web technology changes, the competition changes.
Just like your company, your Web site is an evolving, dynamic process, not a static product. Keep working to optimize visitor interactivity.
