If your B2B content cross-promoting efforts have been falling on deaf ears in recent times, there are measures you can take to improve such results.

The first and foremost issue to deal with is admitting your cross-promotion efforts have not been working. Yes, admit some failure in this area in order to correct the problem and move on.

When you attempt to cross-promote online content, you are reaching out to other marketers who’ve already shown interest in your material, making it easier to get their attention than someone who you have never had any worthwhile dealings with.

Let’s say your best content work to date was done several months ago and you’re putting together a new online marketing plan.

In that case, cross-promoting the older content that registered with your audience is a great way to promote then and now. You prove yourself to be an authoritative marketer with your past achievements, thereby improving the chances of having this newer marketing content register with the visitor to your site.

As part of the cross-promoting effort, be sure to draw a link between old and new content so that the visitor sees the connection.  Relevancy is key here at all times as you map out then and now.

Some other tips to successful content cross-promotion include:

• Don’t inundate your audience – While you may feel like you need to throw everything but the kitchen sink at your audience, don’t overload them. You want to lead your audience to a desired action and not overwhelm them with decisions;
• Take the opportunity to thank them and offer them something new at the same time. If you’ve gotten a visitor to make a purchase or sign up for a newsletter for example, use the ‘thank you’ message to introduce them to something new, i.e. “We wanted to thank you for signing up for our marketing newsletter. Did you know that we have an upcoming webinar on how to market your small business?”
• Combine your production efforts – In the event you have a blog and a podcast or video production that tie together a common theme, by all means cross-promote them. While they both may be strong individually, they stand to be even better together. Use the blog to get the written message out, while the podcast and/or video piece can bring sound and sight to the message. This is also a good idea in that it allows those who prefer the written word to go to that message, while those choosing audio and/or video can select that medium. As visitors cross back-and-forth, you build up a larger audience, in turn, increase your search engine rankings;
• Partner up – If you are working with others to promote, be sure to promote their products and/or services and request them to do likewise. Especially in challenging economic times, cross-promoting each other’s goods can cut down on promotional costs and subject you to an expanded audience;
• Enjoy benefits of social media – As social media tools continue to expand, so do the opportunities for B2B marketers to cross-promote through a variety of different channels. When it comes to Twitter for example, there are ample opportunities to cross-promote, most notably through retweeting. For example, you have two marketing companies that guest blog on marketing-related topics. Sharing each other’s content opens the door to new audience members for both parties, thereby increasing business opportunities.

Lead Others to a Sale When Ready

Along with your cross-promoting efforts, you want to make sure you properly manage those leads once they arrive and register on your landing page.

Oftentimes, the prospect’s data will be put in a computer system, and then your sales team is on to the new lead. This step is important due to the fact you do not want to have the client and/or the sales rep speaking just yet if one or both are not ready for such a conversation.

Make sure that you properly manage the lead once it comes to your site via a whitepaper download, webinar, etc. and are only ready to speak to the potential customer when he or she is prepared for such a conversation. This is where lead nurturing comes into play.

With such a system in place, marketing can nurture the lead and inform the prospect, then passing along to sales only when the time is right.

As a B2B marketer, what do you find to be your best cross-promotion and lead nurturing efforts?

Which ones are you still thinking about trying and why haven’t you done them before?

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As a recent study from MarketingSherpa discovered, B2B marketers reported generating leads and converting prospects as the most vital marketing goals.

According to the 2012 B2B Marketing Benchmark Report:

• 60 percent of B2B businesses named lead generation as their top goal moving forward;
• 48 percent of B2B businesses report lead generation as their greatest challenge ahead of them;
• 57 percent of B2B companies claim prospect conversion is a targeted goal, with greater than half naming conversion a challenge;
• Lack of time and resources were the most mentioned challenges facing B2B companies.

As many B2B companies have discovered, strategic content marketing strategies can assist in terms of sucessful lead generation with pay-per-download and co-registration campaigns.

The Key is in the Wording

By developing informative, keyword-rich content, businesses can attain better SERP standing, along with bettering their reputation as a thought leader in their respective niche. Among the ways to provide for better conversion are including links to landing pages and calls to action for prospects.

One key factor to always remind yourself is that your keyword strategy must never become static, meaning your campaigns need to keep evolving and progressing, not regressing.

When it comes to your PPC campaigns, it is important to steer clear of having just one broad term, instead selecting much targeted phrases of a pair or more words to obtain searches for providers in your niche.

It is also a good idea to consider keywords that have the possibility of increasing your reach to both the horizontal and vertical portions of your niche.

Is The Window of Time Closing?

As the MarketingSherpa study points out, B2B marketers are displaying much greater levels of maturity when it comes to lead generation and qualification than overall funnel optimization. There is also a short window of time for marketers to take advantage of this trend, in essence, moving ahead of the curve.

With a short window of time, where are B2B marketers directing their efforts?

Survey numbers indicate that marketers are throwing their weight and finances behind tried-and-true efforts like trade shows, Web site marketing and email.

According to the survey, email marketing and paid search (pay-per-click) consistently ranking in the top three as far as effectiveness for marketers.

Marketing Challenges Abound

The survey reports that while external forces are in the mix, internal issues also serve as an obstacle. Among the most notable issues are:

• 62 percent reported a lack of resources in staffing, budgeting or time;
• 39 percent noted lack of ability to cease executing and think strategically;

Lastly, for many B2B marketers, relaying data to senior executives is not always a done deal.

According to research from Lenskold and the Pedowitz Group, only approximately one in three B2B marketers worldwide provide financial contribution metrics to senior executives.

This is despite the fact that a third of B2B marketers follow revenue metrics tied to marketing-generated possibilities, finished deals and percent of total sales.

What are your top marketing goals? Share the challenges you face as a B2B marketer.

Photo credit: ilgresults.com

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[Guest blogger Evan LaPointe has contributed this post on web analytics.  To learn more about Evan or get your questions answered, click here.]

As I mentioned in my last post, from an analytics perspective, B2B is easier to understand when compared with B2C. This is because your visitors have budgets and defined needs, and aren’t just bored at work wondering if they really need that new red sweater. People need laser printers, insurance, air conditioning, shipping, keycard locks, and furniture; they aren’t going to abandon their search and decide to work on the floor, borrowing their kid’s MacBook. So what that means is that when you fail at selling a visitor to your site, you should be able to find out why. In the world of B2C, customers can buy from you, buy from someone else, or not buy. In B2B, however, the third option often isn’t an option at all. So it’s up to us to figure out why they’re buying somewhere else.

I think a lot of opportunities to improve your marketing and your site can be uncovered by spending some time in your web analytics tool. By focusing on a few metrics or combinations of metrics, you can start to get a good feel for where things aren’t going as well as you thought. Let’s talk about a few of these interesting metrics and reports today, and we’ll cover some more in future posts.

Bounce rate

This is one metric that is vitally important to the B2B marketer. When many people come to your site and then immediately abandon, you know their expectations were not met. Meanwhile, your precious marketing budget is going up in flames. You need to ruthlessly seek out the traffic sources and landing pages that are contributing to bounce, and figure out why it’s happening.

A particularly good metric to combine with high bounce rates is high click through rates, which tells you that people were interested in your content, but then you let them down somehow. If you are a business that has a B2C counterpart, one issue could be the B2C traffic; so be sure (both in your marketing and on your site) to explain that you are a B2B provider. While this will reduce your click-through-rates, it will meaningfully increase traffic quality, reduce bounce, and improve conversion rates. Similarly, the language you use on your site should be simple and straightforward, describing clearly what you do and where they have landed. While we assume our buyers are savvy in our particular niche, we often alienate the people in the executive suite with esoteric languages and explanations of what really could be a lot simpler. If you can’t explain your business or product in simple language, you are leaving a lot on the table (probably in a lot more places than just your web site) when the people who really do write the checks visit to research your offering.

Geography

Your web analytics tool will have reports that allow you to see, geographically, where both your visitors and your conversions come from. Compare these maps. Are some states hot converters but low traffic attracters? How about the other way around? What might these audiences need differently from each other? How are they looking for your services differently, using regional languages? What are they finding?

You should also start thinking about your offline efforts, geographically. How is your sales force represented in the areas where you’re weaker or stronger? What about your competitors?  Find out whether people are more aware of your brand vs. your competitors in different areas, and you can focus some of your sales and advertising efforts where a market share increase may have huge marginal benefits. If you need specific tools to conduct this competitor research, contact me @evanlapointe and I can suggest resources that may help you with this.

Keep Going

This is just scratching the surface of what’s possible with a good focus on analytics. Challenge yourself to think across channels and use ideas from around the organization to effect change in other areas.

And please, reach out on twitter (@evanlapointe) if you have any questions or want to work through your particular challenge. And if you’re more experienced with web analytics and want to geek out on more complex issues, check out Atlanta Analytics (discussion on analytics in business) or Occam’s Razor (where you can learn black belt hands-on analytics).

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[ Ed: We are excited to feature Verse Communications, a Los Angeles based public relations firm, as our newest guest blogger. To learn more about Verse Communications, click here.]

SEO.  Google these three letters and you will find approximately 136 million results.  What does it mean, and more importantly, how does it translate to your business?  Simply put, search engine optimization means learn some basic algorithmic tips and you will generate more awareness for your business, increase search results and hopefully see an uptick in web traffic and lead generation.  When it comes to the public relations side of SEO, and related tactical initiatives such as issuing a press release, SEO can play a critical role.  There is a lot on the Web that delves into verbose detail regarding SEO and how it should be applied to your PR efforts, specifically press releases.  Unfortunately, too much information can sometimes be overwhelming, specifically to a small business owner who barely has enough time to execute their daily operations, let alone focus on the PR side of their business. 

Fear not, we have some basic search engine optimization tips to help make your company’s press release ‘pop’ a bit more, and it will only take you a few extra minutes.  Once you determine what the news is you are writing about (and make sure your press release is just that, newsworthy), here are key search engine optimization tips to embrace when fine tuning for that maximum impact.

Headers

For starters, your press release headline is the single most important piece when it comes to SEO.  Your Company name and the press release headline is the page title that search engines use to identify your release as an actual Web page, and in effect, rank you in search results. Make sure that header speaks directly to your news in a compelling, clear and concise manner (that is also what people will view when search results come up).  Use no more than 80 characters, with key words leading the way.

If you need another line to add more detail, write a sub-headline that also incorporates just a few key words (again, the most relevant words relating to the core of the release).  Also use keywords in the first sentence of the initial paragraph and throughout the body content of the release.  Note, do not repeat key words more than two or three times.  Otherwise, those slinky search engines will mark your release as dreaded spam.

Anchor texts

Provide readers with an easy way to get more information by using anchor text(aka hyperlinking a word to a specific URL). This achieves two critical objectives: 1) allows you to link out to more detailed information without making your release too verbose; and 2) has enormous potential to increase overall SEO for the site you are promoting (namely your own).Some additional things to keep in mind when playing that algorithmic game of SEO: Keep your overall press release compelling and focused.  Only write about the core news you want to convey, and do so in a clear and concise manner.  This is not a document to write narrative.  Review each and every word on the page and make sure it meaningfully adds something to your news.  If you are not sure how to accomplish this, consult a PR expert.

• Your overall press release should not exceed 500 words.  Search engines spider the first 300 – 500 words on a page.
• Write out full URL’s to important sites  
• Build important back links by linking relevant keywords that support your message to deep, specific pages of Web sites

Now that you know how to write a press release that can increase its visibility and improve the position of your site’s overall search engine ranking, it’s time to distribute it.  Remember, news writing should be short and to the point.

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Business.com has partnered with Marketing Sherpa to offer you this free download, Special Report: 20 Tips on Generating and Nurturing Leads. This 22 page report is full of in-depth marketing tips on how to convert leads into sales, lead scoring, SEO, and social media. Additionally, this report offers valuable case studies that will sharpen  your understanding of how to improve your existing lead gen strategy and increase sales.

 Key takeaways from this free report are:

• How to convert 11% more prospects in the final 72 hours of the buying cycle.
• How to uncover new opportunities within your lead gen pipeline and convert those to sales.
• Discover how a software company combined lead-gen revamp with automation and scoring tactics to deliver the most relevant information to prospects.
• Learn how a marketing team at an accounting and consulting firm shook up their staid marketing tactics and adopted a new, online thought-leadership strategy

Click here to get the full version of 20 Tips on Generating and Nurturing Leads.

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We’ve said before that answering business questions in online Q&A sites is an effective marketing tool. Here’s one success story from Business.com Answers, our B2B question-and-answer forum, to back up that claim. Chris Countey, web marketing manager at Priceless Imprinters in Cherry Hill, NJ, started responding to questions on Business.com Answers last March. Within a few months, the company had seen more than $5,000 of new business from new customers who found him via Business.com Answers.  We asked him about his experience.

Business.com: Tell us about Priceless Imprinters.

Countey: We distribute promotional products and advertising specialties. We sell custom-imprinted products via our website www.PricelessImprinters.com and by telephone. We’re a small business and are always looking for ways to improve relationships with the other small businesses who happen to be our customers.

Business.com: Why did you start answering questions on Business.com Answers?

Countey: Actually, I found it when I was working on another startup business website; I thought participating would help the website owner establish an online presence more quickly. Seeing questions from real business owners really opened our eyes in terms of the issues regular people were facing when starting a new business. And that helped us create new, relevant content for her website.

Business.com: What kinds of questions do you look for?

Countey: The first type of question I look for relates in some way to Priceless Imprinters’ business. As an SEO professional working for a promotional products company, I want to answer questions that involve marketing and advertising. I also look for questions regarding general website development, SEO, design, software issues, and hardware issues. I try to answer anything I can, because I know I’ll be helping both the other business professionals and our own business.

ROI: Business.com Answers helped Chris Countey generate thousands in new business for Priceless Imprinters

Business.com: What results were you looking for, and what have you seen, from your participation in Business.com Answers?

Countey: I was pleasantly surprised to see traffic coming to our website from answers.business.com just a few days after I started answering questions. It’s been clear that the incoming traffic from answers.business.com has outpaced all other non-search-engine websites in terms of quality inbound links. We were even able to track new customers back to questions we had answered, which was really exciting. As you can imagine, I answered a lot more questions after that! The new business we’ve gotten directly from Business.com Answers is about $5,000 now and continues to go up.

Business.com: How much time do you typically spend reading new questions and posting responses?

Countey: I typically get emails with new questions daily [via the Business.com Answers category subscription feature] and try to respond as quickly as possible. Answering questions can take as little as five minutes if a link to another site will help the user more than I can, or up to 30 minutes if I need to provide a lot of detail.

Business.com: You post both answers and questions on Business.com Answers. Do you use other Q&A sites?

Countey: I’ve used hundreds of forums and help websites to ask questions about everything from SEO to how to change my oil. Unlike most of those other sites, I actually get an answer when I post a question on Business.com Answers. [See Countey’s Business.com Answers profile for links to the questions he’s asked and answered.]

Business.com: Does Priceless Imprinters use other social media?

Countey: Priceless Imprinters is active on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and several others. We also manage a blog about promotional products, which we update almost daily. We’re planning to establish a YouTube channel within the next few months.

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The old adage, ‘good things come to those who wait,’ proved true as B2B search marketers gathered last Wednesday, June 23 in San Francisco for the long-awaited conference dedicated solely to B2B search marketing – the B2B Search Strategy Summit.  The online marketing event space may be littered with online marketing events and educational organizations, but one marketer, Mary O’Brien, identified a growing need for a more tailored and advanced conference geared toward B2B marketers.     

 So, at long last, a B2B-specific search marketing conference was born, and on Wednesday, I found myself in a packed room, surrounded by B2B marketers all eagerly consuming and voraciously scribbling and typing their favorite tips, stats and case studies shared by some of the biggest names in the industry.     

 The takeaways from the B2B Search Strategy Summit were many, but there are 5 in particular I’d like to highlight:     

 Takeaway #1 – Know Your Audience (or, C-Suite Decision Makers are Rolling up Their Sleeves & Getting Their Hands Dirty)     

 Without a doubt, one of the themes all speakers both placed emphasis and agreement in was to ‘know your audience.’     

 Throughout the day, this seemingly simple and intuitive theme was referenced time and time again as the foundation for everything in search marketing from landing page selection to ad copy optimization.     

 Gord Hotchkiss of Enquiro first introduced the theme during his morning keynote with an interesting statistic from a 2009 Forbes Insights Study: 53% of C-Suite executives reportedly take the first pass at finding information online, with 26% starting the process and then delegating appropriately.     

 No longer are C-Suites sitting idly as others do their work; more than 4 out of 5 are actively online searching for relevant information needed to make key business decisions or purchases. So how many marketers are currently catering their search marketing to this audience?     

 Takeaway #2 – Understanding Your Audience’s B2B Buying Cycle is Key to Optimizing Your Search Marketing Campaign Structure      

 To know your online audience is not enough, at least for Connie Stack of Wordstream and Angela Sanfilippo of You Send It. Both eloquently illustrated the importance of also understanding the intent and behaviors of your audience as they navigate through the B2B buying cycle in order to fully optimize and tailor search marketing efforts.      

 Stack encouraged marketers to take the time to dissect the buying process and categorize keywords appropriately among the different phases of the buying process. From there, you can map content offerings appropriately to each keyword, thereby providing the foundation for ad copy, landing page selection and more.     

 She shared the below image, taken from The Google/Tech Target Behavioral Research Project, as a ‘how-to guide’ of sorts for implementing this process.    

Taken from the Google/TechTarget Behavioral Research Project: Phase 2 (p. 9, 2010) - referenced at the B2B Search Strategy Summit by Connie Stack, Wordstream

 Sanfilippo also shared a more strategic view of the benefits and expectations for organizing your search marketing campaign around the phases of the buying process – her distinction of the importance of branded vs. non-branded keywords in each of the phases is widely useful and insightful for both organizing and measuring campaign success.   

This is especially true for search engine marketers who use both general and vertical engines where branded vs. non-branded keywords play a unique role within each engine (and are often mistakenly evaluated alongside one another, leading to skewed performance analysis).   

Takeaway #3 – Don’t Just Know Your Audience: Show Them You Remember Them      

 Jay Middleton of Adobe gave us a glimpse into the future of B2B Search Marketing in his afternoon keynote session when he appropriately took the mantra of knowing your audience to the next level.     

Interaction is easy, but engaging your target audience centers around the ability to continue to build upon that interaction in a way that is meaningful and personal to that audience.     

The more data we as marketers can collect on potential customers and leads, and the more data we can use to guide their brand experience, the better we’ll be able to live up to this mantra.     

Adobe, Marketo and Salesforce.com were a few of the companies that showcased some of their best practices and resulting successes from taking the time to set up custom lead scoring, nurturing or marketing automation programs.  It was clear when these programs were coupled with relevant, valuable content for the audience, success quickly followed.     

Takeaway #4 – Don’t Throw Away Hard Work Just Because You Think Your Job is Done     

As marketers, we’re often held accountable for demand generation, lead generation and the lead nurture process. Beyond these responsibilities, we usually look to our sales force to carry their end of the bargain by closing the leads we determine sales ready.     

Presented by Lauren Vaccarello, Salesforce.com, at the B2B Search Strategy Summit

 Lauren Vaccarello of Salesforce.com challenged the audience to redefine their responsibilities as marketers and place an emphasis on knowledge transference and team work in closing sales.  

While the marketing automation process can often be a complex and somewhat technical process that few sales reps have interest in understanding, Vaccarello encouraged marketers to take the time to educate sales on the journey their leads undergo throughout this process to provide sales context for contacting and engaging leads.     

Back to Middleton’s point – it’s not only about knowing your audience but about showing them you remember them – and it’s up to the marketer to make sure sales has the information and understanding they need to provide a seamless experience.     

 Takeaway #5 – You Too Can & Should Be Using YouTube      

 Many marketers recognize YouTube as a powerful marketing mechanism; many struggle to understand how B2B can benefit from such a seemingly B2C tool.    

Presented by Greg Jarboe, SEO-PR, at the B2B Search Strategy Summit

Greg Jarboe from SEO-PR proved the efficacy of YouTube for B2B in sharing a cogent example of how he used YouTube to build hype for a high-end product before it formally hit the market.    

 Jarboe leveraged YouTube as a means for buyers and enthusiasts to preview product design, capabilities and engage with the product in a dynamic and exciting way, which resulted in thousands of views and, even better, a dozen pre-sales totaling more than $1 million.     

 Our blog post from Friday highlighted Cisco’s use of YouTube for engaging and clients and potential customers with a more down-to-earth and witty perception of the company. Launched on Friday, this video already has more than 28,000 views. 

If you’re saying, ‘good for them, but I just don’t see our products, services or company making for a compelling YouTube video…’ then I suggest you reread takeaway #1 above. 

What makes Jarboe’s and Cisco’s efforts and videos so well-received isn’t a product or service, it’s their understanding of what will engage, attract and entertain the audience. 

If you’ve taken the time to know your audience and understand what they find interesting, funny or engaging, then you too can use YouTube to your advantage. And, if you’re smart about identifying and catering to your opinion leaders and product evangelists, you can rest easy in knowing that if they find value in your video, they’ll be sure to share it with many, many others. 

 In retrospect, these 5 takeaways probably could have been shortened to 1: Know your audience. Marketers far too often associate the word ‘audience’ with a certain demographic or firmographic, and spend the majority of our time looking to reach those demographics and find that ‘sweet spot.’ 

But in the end, our ‘audience’ is, in its simplest form, a person at a company within that demographic or firmographic who is looking to solve a problem, relate to others and feel understood. 

  

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If you think answering questions in online business Q&A sites like Business.com Answers isn’t worth your time, I’m going to try to change your mind. Opt out of online Q&A and you’re leaving money on the table, period.

First, consider these statistics from a recent report by search marketing agency Enquiro:

• 39 percent of people researching for a first-time B2B purchase say they will rely on word of mouth and the opinions of other business people
• More than half of business buyers talk to other people who use a product as either their first or second task in the purchase process

Bottom line: Word-of-mouth recommendations play a starring role in today’s business purchase process.

And how are people looking for this word-of-mouth input? In business-focused online Q&A sites. Consider this excerpt from a recent string from Business.com Answers, our B2B question-and-answer site:

Subject: Top email service providers for campaigns

Kelly (user): I am looking for the top ESPs (Email Service Providers) for sending tactical and operational emails. I am looking for an on-premise or hosted solution. Could you please let me know what you recommend?

Answer: I have used both Constant Contact and Streamsend to manage mass e-mail distribution. Both have worked very well. I preferred Streamsend due to their pricing structure (based on e-mails sent, not contacts in your database). – Jeff Arnold, Pocket-Promo.com

Answer: Infusionsoft also offers a great service. You can watch a demo on their site and they also offer a free trial service to see if they’re a fit for your business and your needs….I’ve just switched to them. – Anita Campbell, Small Biz Trends

Answer: Some email service providers are Constant Contact, Delivra, iContact and Yesmail. You may also want to look at Lyris, a powerful email marketing service. – Jim Alimena, BlumbergExcelsior

[ Read the full exchange about email service providers on Business.com Answers ]

See anything you like here? If you’re one of the companies mentioned, I bet you do. And once your company name is in the mix, it’s in your best interest to dive into the dialogue. This isn’t a hard sell opportunity, but rather a chance to thank the person who recommended you and jump into the conversation. With someone who clearly needs to buy a product or service that you sell.

You’d respond: Anita, thanks so much for throwing our name in the hat here – we really appreciate it! Kelly, we’ve been providing exactly the services you mentioned for more than a decade, and I’d be happy to talk with you about how other clients are using our services and whether we might be a good fit for you. Feel free to call me at 555-555-5555 or email me at myname@mycompany.com. Looking forward to talking with you!

Now imagine that you’re scanning incoming inquiries about your industry (you can do that automatically in just a few minutes a day on Business.com Answers using our Category Subscription feature) and a question like this comes in. The person who’s asking the question sounds like she’s pretty close to ready to buy, doesn’t she? That’s a live lead. You want to talk to her now, while she’s narrowing down her choices. And answering questions like this on Business.com Answers or other business Q&A sites is a direct way to open those lines of communication.

As a vendor, should you jump in and answer? Absolutely. But again, it’s about sharing information, not a hard sell. Try to help the person understand the issue in a way that makes you look smart and responsive, and you’ll be top of mind when it’s time for that person to evaluate purchase options.

You’d write: Kelly, as you’re putting together your list, I hope you’ll include us and give me a chance to show you our most recent offerings. I’m sure you’re thinking about how your email tool will integrate with your existing CRM solution, and we’ve worked with all the major players, so getting everything running smoothly and passing information back and forth should be straightforward. We know there are lots of great options to explore – if you need a hand making sense of all the possibilities and parameters, I’m happy to help, whether we end up working together or not. Here’s my contact information – don’t hesitate to get in touch.

The point is that people making B2B purchase decisions are looking for input in all kinds of places. In online Q&A forums like Business.com Answers, they’re asking very direct questions about very specific (and often imminent) product and service needs. Other users may recommend you, and that’s great: Peer recommendations carry a lot of weight. But there’s an effective way for you to be part of that conversation too.

At Business.com Answers, we get questions about everything related to starting and running a business. Everything. If you sell it – whether “it” is software, accounting services, replacement parts for tractors, restaurant equipment, SEO advice, office design consulting, or a thousand other products or services – someone out there is thinking about buying it and is asking about it online. And if someone’s asking, you should be answering.

Are you convinced yet?

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Have you ever been absolutely sure that your product or service was the best solution for a particular prospect, only to find out that they chose to go with another vendor? What about that great product comparison whitepaper you developed which generated an amazing number of sales leads but no sales? Or the by-the-book email nurture campaign that just doesn’t perform like it should?

One major reason for these, according to a fascinating new study from Enquiro Research, is that the standard model of business buying as a thorough, rational, step-by-step process just isn’t accurate. Instead, this study of over 3,000 business buyers suggests  that B2B buying is driven largely by attempts to control personal and organizational risks. In other words, according to the authors, “99% of B2B buying is about covering your butt.”

These insights put a  new spin on the drive to improve B2B conversion rates – if business buying is driven more by risk mitigation than rational optimization, what does this mean for landing page content and offers? How can B2B online marketers create the lowest-risk environment for prospects to increase registrations, quote requests or purchases?

In a world where risk protection dominates rational evaluation in the business buying process, the following are important for improving B2B online marketing conversion rates:**

Understand Business Buyer Risk

To reduce business buyer risk and improve conversion rates, its essential to understand the extent to which your company, products/services or offers may be perceived as risky by your target buyers.

Purchase consideration clearly matters – there’s less risk in asking someone to provide their email address for an e-newsletter subscription than there is in a $100,000 purchase. Market position also matters, but its not just your company’s standing in the Fortune 500 or Inc. 5000 that makes a difference. Is your company the dominant player, or just entering the market, in the specific product or service for which you want to improve conversion rates? For example, few would doubt that Google’s “conversion rate” for signing-up new pay-per-click advertisers, where they’re the clear market leader among general search engines, is much higher than their conversion rate for radio advertising in their recently discontinued Audio Ads program.

For those of you marketing low price/low consideration products or services from a dominant, market-leading position, good news! There isn’t likely to be all that much you can do to improve conversion rates by reducing business buyer risk since risk is so low already.

On the other hand, B2B marketers working to establish their offerings in new markets and/or selling higher-consideration purchases may have considerable opportunity to improve conversion rates by addressing business buyer risk factors.

Become an “Approved Vendor” Through Teaser Offers

B2B online marketers struggling to drive conversions of a high consideration product for a relatively new business that hasn’t established a dominant market position are in a very difficult position. Even with a brilliantly conceived and executed marketing program focused on an accurate, rational view of your products’ superiority, quality conversions that lead to sales are still likely to be relatively rare. More often than not, prospects will fall through because they “got a great deal from an existing vendor” or “went with a vendor that’s already approved.”  None of the standard advice about improving conversion rates through better landing page design will put a dent in this issue because its not about making it easy for your prospects to see what they should do and act. Instead, the problem is not being on the approved vendor list in the first place.

So what do you do? Become a champion for a teaser offer (e.g., simplified product, free 30- to 60-day trial, etc.) that lowers the perceived risk of getting started for your target audience. To be an “approved vendor”, whether formally through the AP department or simply through the trust built up via multiple, positive interactions around the teaser offer, gives you a considerable leg up on future business. Its not as simple as landing page design but, if better landing page design was all you needed, you wouldn’t be reading this.

Use Search Marketing to Drive Word-of-Mouth

The Enquiro research suggests that word-of-mouth can be hugely influential during the business buying process, particularly for “blank slate” purchases where the buyer/company has no prior experience with purchasing that type of product or service. While search marketing is an extremely powerful tool for getting your message in front of business people searching for solutions, B2B search marketing tends to focus much more on driving prospects to whitepaper or webinar registration pages, or to ecommerce sites, than driving people to view and participate in conversations about a company’s products or services (for an exception, see Office Depot’s success incorporating customer reviews into paid search campaigns).

If your target buyers see your solution as moderately to highly risky, there’s reason to believe that alllocating  a portion of the search marketing budget toward driving more online and offline word-of-mouth activity will positively impact conversion rates. While it may not happen overnight, fueling the conversation can reduce the perceived risk of conversion.

Address Buyer Risk in Your B2B Demand Gen Program

One of the major challenges in driving online conversions or creating a more effective B2B demand gen programs is personalization – making each landing page, e-newsletter or offer as relevant as possible to the target prospect – and addressing business buyer risk gives us another opportunity to make demand gen practices more personally relevant. To improve conversions by reducing business buyer risk, you might consider the following changes to your demand generation program:

• Match prospects with happy customers that came from similar “risk” profiles – rather than matching a “blank slate” prospect with a reference customer that’s been with you for 20 years, have them talk with customer that made their “blank slate” purchase with you within the last couple years. Also, consider getting references from multiple people involved with the decision to purchase your product or service, and matching prospects with references at their same job level and role in the purchasing process.
• Consider linking to customer reviews or forum conversations from your conversion pages – giving prospects more than one option sounds like landing page heresy, but this may not be the case for higher consideration purchases and less established brands. If visitors to your landing page have any doubts at all about converting, at least take them to content that reduce the perceived riskiness of converting.
• If you sell primarily to large companies, get creative with landing page technology-  consider doing a reverse IP lookup on visitors to your landing pages, identifying the company and serving a dynamic content block on the page indicating that your company is already an approved vendor for the visitor’s company (if you are). Sounds creepy? Possibly for very early stage offers, but less so when a prospect visits for detailed spec sheets or to request a quote. NOTE: this won’t work well for small companies.

What do you think?  What would you do to improve conversion rates by reducing buyer risk?

For more background, you can download the first whitepaper from Enquiro’s new business buying study, “Mapping the BuyerSphere“, from the Enquiro web site.

**These recommendations, and many more, are part of  Business.com’s presentation ”Improving Search Marketing ROI During a Recession: Top 10 Insider Tips,” during the Online Marketing Summit 14-city Regional Whistle Stop Tour from May 5th through July 2nd, 2009. For a 20% discount on OMS registration from Business.com, use discount code business.com20.

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If you had $1,000 today to spend on B2B marketing to either generate new leads or nurture existing prospects, how would you spend it?

Unlike this group of marketing executives at large European companies, I’d spend it on generating new leads – do you really know enough about the financial stability of your existing customers and prospects to place a bet that improved nurturing will unlock budgets and drive sales?

What are your thoughts? How does the unique challenges your business faces drive B2B marketing focus on generating new leads versus prospect nurturing?

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