Digital technology continues to grow rapidly, changing the way both consumers and businesses make purchases. As technology continues to advance and grow in importance, it is being integrated more and more into our day-to-day living.
Although business-to-business (B2B) companies have been slower to go online compared with their business-to-consumer (B2C) peers, digital technology is a flexible solution that presents many opportunities to:
- Expand your company’s brand presence
- Reach new potential local and overseas customers
- Improve lead generation and conversion
- Create new revenue streams
- Renew relationships with inactive customers through targeted marketing campaigns
Going online means you can fit into your customers’ busy lives, offering the products and services they want, when and how they want them.
A well-designed site can influence buying decisions by showcasing your product at its best. Your content needs to constantly evolve to effectively represent what you do. Having a blog or news section allows you to share company news, relevant information and helpful advice for both existing and potential customers. It’s important, however, to keep your content fresh. Google tracks how much time users spent on your page to determine how useful it was to them, so the better your content is, the higher you rank.
Today, more people are loading websites on smartphones and tablets (51%) than on desktop computers. Therefore, you should make sure that your website is mobile friendly so people can easily browse and find information.
With 77% of customers reading online reviews before buying, a great way to show people that your business is reliable is to include customer testimonials and reviews on your website. By making purchasing an easy experience with plenty of product reviews, you’re more likely to encourage a sale.
Increasing traffic to your website and converting visitors into leads can be achieved through various methods including:
Keyword targeting – For more traffic to result in more sales, you’ll need to think about how people search for your products and services. Make a list of keywords that are three words or less and another list of longer phrases which are more specific to what a user may be searching for. You can check the search volume data for each term with Google’s Keyword Planner and then define your list down to the highest-trafficked, most relevant terms.
Natural, organic and earned results – To ensure that your site appears high on the list of results returned by a search engine, without having to pay for adverts, you need compelling, high-quality content on your website. This is known as ‘natural’, ‘organic’ and ‘earned’ results which determine relevant keyword terms and where a search engine ranks you.
Pay per click (PPC) – PPC is internet advertising where you pay a fee each time one of your ads is clicked. The most popular source is Google’s AdWords, accounting for around 90% of PPC revenue. When you create an advert, you pick keywords that someone will search for based on your product or service. You bid against other businesses on how much you’re willing to pay every time a searcher clicks on your ad.
Paid for advertising – If you want to drive more traffic, and increase sales, consider paying for adverts. Google Display Network lets you place all types of ads – text, image, interactive and video – on a variety of websites that are relevant to what you’re selling. Alternatively, because social networks gather such a large amount of user information, social media advertising means you can take advantage of users’ demographic information and specifically target your ads more.
Go social – It’s important to choose social platforms that work best for your business and update them regularly with company and industry news. Facebook is a good starting point, regardless of your industry. Twitter is a great tool for quickly sharing short updates. Pinterest and Instagram are visual platforms based entirely on photo and video posts. YouTube’s video-sharing platform is a great way to educate your audience about who you are. All businesses, especially B2B companies, should use LinkedIn to interact with current clients and attract prospective clients. Adding a blog or news item to your website at least once a week allows audiences to share your posts and link from your social media to your website.
Bibby Financial Services Ireland is a leading provider of alternative funding solutions to Irish SME’s. We help businesses to thrive and grow in domestic and export markets by providing cashflow solutions for businesses, offering an alternative to traditional lending options such as overdrafts or term loans.
If you would like to find out more about our services and how we can help your business, call us on 01 297 4911 or visit www.bibbyfinancialservices.ie