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Website Is Key To B2B Sales Leads
by Jack Loechner, Wednesday, October 12, 2011 10:12 PM
According to a 2011 National Marketing and Sales Study recently released by Demandbase and Focus, a company’s corporate website is the top source of new sales leads, second only to personal
connections and referrals, and more than seven times more effective than social media. However, study participants report that the website still vastly underperforms in terms of lead
generation. And, while businesses feel that they understand their sales prospects (more than 60% report knowing or understanding their prospects well), they do not understand their prospects’
behavior on the very site that’s driving those sales leads. From May 18 to May 25, 2011 Demandbase ran a study in conjunction with Focus. com addressing B2B corporate websites
as lead generation tools, specifically by assessing the common practices and challenges of measuring the demand generation performance of those websites. B2B corporate websites are
the leading demand generation engine for new sales leads, but B2B companies are struggling to optimize site performance and analyze insights around customer behavior once they
arrive, says the report. And while companies have invested heavily in the corporate website, they are doing little to optimize the Web experience for those very audiences they have
worked so hard to attract. Summarized Findings Include:
- Corporate website ranks as the #1 online source of new leads for businesses, second overall only to personal
referrals
- The corporate website is not performing to its maximum lead generation potential, as reported by 80% of overall respondents
- Businesses see the most room for
improvement in tracking unidentified site visitors and generating new sales leads from the companies reviewing their website
- The single most important performance indicator for website
effectiveness is the quality of the leads generated
- The major challenge in website analytics is not the data itself, but the ability to act on the data
Despite the buzz
around social media as a silver bullet to transform sales and marketing, data suggests it has yet to deliver the business impact of personal networks and referrals, which still provide
many businesses with the most leads. For most businesses today, nearly all leads hit the corporate website at some point during the selling cycle, regardless of their origin. The
Website becomes the crucial sales tool during the buyer’s research and discovery process, and buyers are educating themselves without the guidance of a salesperson. B2B marketers clearly
need to adapt to this trend, and work to engage buyers through more personalized Web experiences with custom messages and landing pages.
Top Lead Sources Among Surveyed B2B ProfessionalsLead
Source% of Respondents Personal connections and referrals 41% Corporate websites 23% Email 14% Online advertising 7% Social media 3% Other 12%
Source: Demandbase,
September 2011 The survey indicates that Web analytics capabilities need improvement. Only 19% of respondents report that no improvement is needed
around tracking and reporting around registered website visitors. This can be traced to resource constraints; while the majority of B2B marketers
have implemented analytics programs on their sites, they are not leveraging this data to improve website performance to better convert visitors. With only 13% of respondents reporting
that no improvement is needed in tracking and reporting around unregistered/anonymous visitors on their sites, the study finds that B2B players
are beginning to realize how much traffic flows through the website without being identified, serviced or converted from anonymous visitors to legitimate prospects with revenue
potential.
Top Areas of Improvement Needed (% of Respondents)
Degree of Improvement NeededArea For ImprovementStrongSomeModerateSlightNone
Provide relevant product information 5% 11% 41% 22% 11% Tracking
& reporting on current customers/users 11 34 23
13 19 Building sense of community among customers
14 32 27 19
8 Generating new sales leads 14
51 19 10 6 Tracking & reporting on unregistered/anonymous users 18 39 20 10 13
Source: Demandbase, September 2011 The single most important factor for measuring website effectiveness is the quality of leads generated, with
34% of all respondents indicating that quality is more important than quantity of sales leads (9%). Enterprise businesses, which are often more interested in overall branding than their small business
counterparts, emphasize the importance of measuring volume (44% total), whereas small businesses emphasize quality of leads (40% total). Quality versus quantity has long been a raging debate
in lead generation circles. Today, more B2B marketers are placing importance on measuring quality, and tying content management with Web analytics and CRM systems to improve the quality of
lead flow throughout the organization. Quantity of visitors also remains a key performance metric, and respondents from larger companies place a greater emphasis on the importance of
measuring the “net new” volume of visitors. Perhaps because enterprise companies tend to leverage website marketing for branding more than their smaller counterparts, who are
more focused on lead generation, opines the report. With page views important to only 8% of respondents, B2B marketers are still lagging behind their B2C brethren when it comes to
measuring Web visitor engagement. Page views and time on site are key indicators that visitors are finding the content that is relevant to them.
Most Important Key Performance Indicators to Measure Website EffectivenessPerformance Measure% of Respondents Quality of
leads 34% Visitors 22 Sales 21 Quantity of leads 9
Page views 8 Other 6
Source: Demandbase, September 2011 While companies report being able to
track the number of visits an individual has made to their websites, repeat visitors tend to be a smaller slice of overall traffic, not only because of the “tire-kicking” nature of
B2B browsers, but also due to cookie deletion. This means that B2B marketers are spending their time tracking the behavior of a very small percentage of customers, rather than maximizing
opportunities from a greater percentage of site traffic. This dilemma is further compounded when one considers that B2B marketers do not sell to individuals, they sell to accounts
and, often, committees of multiple individuals. And, while strategies must be created around companies, only 20% of respondents track the company of individual website users.
Metrics Used To TrackMetric% of Respondents Using Number of visits to website
65% Activity of individual registered users across website 49 Location of individual users 41 Inbound
source of individual users 41 Company of individual users 20 None 5 Other 13
Source: Demandbase, September 2011 One-half of all
respondents cite the ability to act on the data they gather as their biggest challenge around website analytics. Resource-constrained marketing departments often assume that automated analytics
systems will do all the work for them, but the reality is that dedicated resources must be allocated to gain maximum benefit from these tools.
Biggest Challenge In Website AnalyticsChallenge% of Respondents Ability to act on the data
50% Ease of implementation 26 System integration 24 Ease of real time reporting 21 Ease of understanding 19 Other
6
Source: Demandbase, September 2011 Nearly one-half
of B2B professionals (45%) say they do not know where their users are most likely to abandon their website; 17% say visitors are most likely to leave while visiting resources pages (blogs, collateral,
whitepapers) and 15% leave sites while visiting registration pages.
Where Customers
Are Most Likely to Abandon Company WebsitesPage Abandoned% of
Respondents Don’t know 45% Resources
page (blog, collateral) 17 Sign-up/registration 15
Home page 13 Recruiting/hiring
4 Product 3 Other 3
Source: Demandbase, September 2011 The report
concludes by noting that, while the website continues to be a top area for marketing investment made by B2B companies, both for dollar investment as well as resources across both marketing and
IT, businesses aren’t paying close enough attention to what’s working and what’s not. By only focusing on where the visitor enters the site, rather than the pages they
visit while they are there, or how long they spend on the site, marketers do not capture the data necessary to determine where the buyer is in the purchasing funnel. To read
more about the study, please visit here. For more detailed
findings around a broad range of questions asked in the survey, please
visit Demandbase here.