Web Marketing Strategies for B2B Cleantech: Convert Traffic (Part 2 of 3)

As a B2B cleantech supplier, generating traffic, awareness and visibility, as discussed in part 1 of this series, is merely your first challenge toward building a healthy marketing funnel. You also need to ensure you make that traffic count by converting the most interested visitors into leads.

Leads are potential buyers who you can get to know better and communicate with as you accompany them through their buying process. Since industrial buyers research many suppliers, your ability to communicate with them and stand out among the competition is an essential part of making it onto buyers’ shortlists.

But if you want to open up a line of communication, you’ll need to find out who is visiting your website and how to contact them. Here are some of the best ways for B2B cleantech suppliers to do just that:

Add important calls to action to your site’s header & footer

Buyers who don’t find all the info they need on your website will want to ask you questions. Don’t make it difficult for them to do so. At a minimum, your site’s header and footer should include clear links to your contact page or general email address. And strongly consider including your telephone number for potential buyers who need an urgent answer.

Site headers and footers are also effective places for stronger calls to action, such as “Request a quote,” “Find a dealer/distributor,” “Become a distributor,” “Request a demo,” etc. Placing these calls to action in highly visible spots make it easy for buyers who have already done their preliminary research to take the next step.

You should also make sure the header is fixed (always visible) as buyers scroll down the page, so that your calls to action are never more than a click away.

Add clear calls to action to your product pages

Every product page you publish should have a primary call to action button, placed above the fold. And if you can make this button sticky (always visible as the buyer scrolls down the page), even better. Depending on the nature of your products and business, your primary call to action will vary. It may be “Request a quote,” “Buy now,” “Add to cart,” “Where to buy,” or “Find a distributor.”

Your product page should also include secondary calls-to-action, such as links to downloadable material, videos, distributor lists, etc.

Add calls to action to supplementary material

If you publish content such as downloads, videos, articles or case studies that provide in-depth information about your products, don’t forget to include calls to action there as well. Buyers digging this deeply on your site are among the most likely to contact you, so make it easy for them to do so.

Offer lead magnets

Buyers of B2B cleantech require lots of detailed technical information before creating a shortlist and eventually making a purchasing decision. While it is good practice to make much of this information freely available on your website so that buyers can easily conduct preliminary research on potential suppliers, you should think twice before giving it all away.

Identify the most frequent questions and doubts highly qualified prospects have, then package your answers into the form of valuable, in-depth content buyers can only obtain in exchange for their basic contact details. This premium content you offer will become your lead magnets. Typical lead magnets used by B2B cleantech suppliers include white papers, guides, checklists, live or recorded webinars, free assessments, free product demos…

Once you’ve identified and created a few lead magnets, you can invite visitors to access them through calls to action placed on the most appropriate pages of your site.

Invite visitors to sign up for newsletters

If you have a newsletter, invite visitors to sign up for it on your website. As a general rule, add permanent newsletter signup calls to action within sections of your site that publish the type of content that goes into your newsletter, i.e. your news section, your articles section, your blog, your upcoming trade show calendar, etc.

And it doesn’t hurt to set up newsletter signup overlays or modals, especially when visitors view several pages of your site, remain on your site for a specified duration or scroll to the bottom of key pages.

Add chat prompts to your site

Buyers from other countries may require an immediate answer to their questions but may not feel comfortable calling in their non-native language. Online chat gives these buyers a convenient alternative. Many online chat providers allow you to customize message prompts depending on the visitor’s behavior or even use chatbots to answer questions when your human operators are unavailable.

Schedule appointments for your upcoming trade shows

If you attend industry trade shows, chances are you already publish your trade show calendar on your website. Why not go the extra mile and prompt buyers to schedule an appointment with you at trade shows? That way you can open a line of communication with prospects even before you meet them face-to-face.

Make it easy for visitors to follow you

While not as effective as email communication, social media does provide an alternative way to communicate with potential buyers. If you maintain accounts on LinkedIn, YouTube, Facebook, Twitter or others, add those social media icons to your header and/or footer so that buyers can follow you there.

Remarket to visitors

What about buyers who visit your website but don’t become a lead using any of the above strategies? All is not lost. You can still communicate with these buyers and attempt to convert them to leads using remarketing display ads purchased through ad networks such as Google or Facebook. Like any display ad, it’s a good idea to establish a concrete goal, assign a monetary value to that goal then monitor your return on investment (ROI).

Online B2B marketplaces

In part one of this series, we talked about how online B2B marketplaces such as Environmental XPRT and Energy XPRT can generate traffic and awareness for your business. But that’s not all they can do. Publishing a storefront on an online B2B marketplace is like building an extension of your own website. Your storefront not only attracts visitors, but it converts them to leads. For example, a storefront on an XPRT marketplace generates both hard leads (requests for quote & requests for info) and soft leads (buyers interacting with your storefront content).

Next up: How to convert leads into sales opportunities

Once you’ve optimized your website to convert buyers visiting your site (visitors) into buyers you know something about and can communicate with (leads), you have one essential mission remaining as a marketer of B2B cleantech – converting your leads into sales opportunities.

Some buyers skip this stage altogether, like the ones who browse your site and fill out a request for quotation on their own. But other buyers aren’t convinced you’re the right supplier for them. You’ll need to somehow warm them up before passing them on to your sales team. Part 3 of our series covering the top digital marketing strategies for B2B cleantech will show you how. Stay tuned!