Best Practices in B2B Internet Marketing

Four in 5 U.S. employees have internet connections at work. If you want to sell to these highly connected businesses, you have to have a sophisticated B2B internet marketing strategy.

There are two factors to your B2B internet marketing practice. First, you get traffic to your site. Then, you convert them to customers. Let’s start by looking at how to get people to visit your web page.

The quickest way to get visitors is to use Pay Per Click marketing. You can set up a campaign with Google’s Adwords, Yahoo Search Marketing, or a number of smaller ad networks within an hour and start getting visitors immediately.

In the long run, a better investment may be Search Engine Optimization. While SEO requires a heavy up front fee, the results can be long lasting. Further, people are more trusting of sites they find organically than sites they come to off of an advertisement. This trust results in higher spending. Your B2B internet marketing strategy must include a SEO component.

Another way people find your web page is to see it mentioned when they visit other sites. You can write articles for other businesses and magazines to place on their web pages or you can conduct a public relations campaign so that you are quoted as an expert. The traffic you get to your site from other sites is already pre-sold on your goods and services. Make sure you get a live link back to your site when pursuing this B2B internet marketing strategy.

Finally, do not discount the ability of getting traffic from offline promotions. Every piece of material you distribute to potential customers should have your web address on it. This includes letters, invoices, brochures, and even gifts.

Once you get someone to your site, you need to convert them into a customer. Part of this is having great content on your site. If you are selling products, you should invest in a good, online catalog with quality photographs and compelling product descriptions. If you are selling your services, having relevant articles demonstrating your expertise is important.

Just as important is making it easy for the customer to make a purchase. Remember that the internet is available 24 hours a day, 7 days a week and that people all over the world can access your site. It should be as easy to buy at 2:00 in the morning as it is at 2:00 in the afternoon. Have a means by which customers can contact you. If you want them to send you an email, make sure you respond within 24 hours.

Finally, not everyone who visits your web site will be in the market for your products or services right away. But that doesn’t mean they are not interested. Get them on an email list and contact them regularly with valuable information including sales, new products, upcoming speaking engagements, etc. Give them a good reason to opt in to your list. This is typically a free report, but you can also expand it to include software or a free sample product. Having a robust email list is a key ingredient in the overall B2B internet marketing picture.

B2B Internet Marketing is starting to come of age. Your customers will expect you to have a strong internet presence. It is no longer seen as “cutting edge” to have a web site. It is part of the standard practice of doing business.

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