If your website is underperforming in terms of lead conversion, ask yourself if your site is in alignment with how your business builds relationships and makes sales.
Assuming you are using ‘leads converted’ as your metric for success, it is important to know that the highest-performing websites give users the value they want exactly when they need it. This is done by aligning your content strategy with the buyer’s journey. Creating this level of alignment can help you achieve more conversions, but it requires your marketing team to work closely with your sales team. That’s radical and outrageous, we know.
We are going to dive deeper on how inspiring collaboration between the marketing and sales teams can shed light on why your website is underperforming and help you start to see how collaboration can lead to optimizing your website messaging for better performance.
Nurture the Connection Between the Sales and Marketing Teams
One of the first things you should do when your site is underperforming is to get the marketing and sales departments in the same room. Here is why: in B2B businesses, sales teams have the most contact with customers, they are responsible for closing deals, and, depending on the account management structure, they may be the keepers of the customer experience as well. This means that they hold the most knowledge about what makes your customers buy, keep buying, and refer others. This makes them integral to helping the marketing team gain insight into how your products/services work and the best value points to sell them.
Why does this relationship matter?
Nurturing a positive relationship between sales and marketing teams will eventually raise marketing ROI. When they are collaborating, sales can provide feedback on whether a campaign will be successful with prospects and customers or not. If sales thinks a particular area of the site is not providing value, then they are more likely to share those thoughts and what might be more effective with marketing. Of course, sales wants more leads, preferably better, more actionable leads. So, that alone should incentivize spending time with marketing. These collaborative conversations need to happen regularly because, over time, products/services and markets change, creating a need for updated messaging on the site.
Uncover Commonly Asked Questions
Once the marketing and sales team sit down, the marketing team should lead with asking them what their experience has been like and how they approach sales. The key is to establish a “getting to know you, so we can better support you” tone in these conversations. So much emphasis has been placed on lead generation that marketing sometimes gets siloed and sales enablement gets deprioritized. Turning your website into a sales enablement tool is how you drive performance.
Now that everyone is cozy and acquainted, they can dive into the main course by asking:
- Which questions do prospects ask you over and over?
- What words do they use to describe the problems that our products/services solve?
- Do you have any ideas for resources that will answer the questions you get tired of answering?
- Which questions should have been answered prior to a lead interacting with you?
Pay close attention to the answers because they are indicative of possible messaging gaps. This is because these questions are either not being answered on your website or the answers are not in line with the expected user experience. Either way, this single conversation helped your company refine the value propositions for your audiences. They have uncovered an opportunity to craft messaging that will not only generate more leads, but also higher quality leads.
Adapt to Minimize Lost Opportunities
In the past, leads were strategically funneled into contacting sales to get the full picture of your products and services. But that time has passed. Now, prospects will simply find another competitor whose messaging provides them with the value they are seeking at the exact time they need it. All that is required from a prospect is a few simple mouse clicks and more than likely they are never coming back. This is a huge, missed opportunity.
Good news! The research has been done to find out what problems prospects are out to solve, what is most important to them, and how marketing can support them with the right content at the right time. To minimize lost opportunities, it is imperative that your website (and other marketing channels) offer answers to commonly asked questions, so your products and services remain top of mind whenever they consider taking action on their problem. Then, when they do contact the sales department, the salesperson has a much easier time closing the lead. Higher revenue and higher marketing ROI.
Last Thoughts
As we close out, remember that increasing conversions requires your website, and other channels, to provide value to prospects at the moment they need it. This can be achieved by having a content strategy that is in harmony with the buyer’s journey. This level of harmony is achieved when marketing and sales teams work closely together to refine the messaging on your site. Sales teams are great sources of information about what questions prospects are asking and what areas of the site could be doing more legwork. By regularly talking with sales teams and paying attention to their answers, Gladiator has produced some awesome results with website updates in our Fractional CMO engagements by creating messaging that converts. If you have questions about how to better align your sales and marketing teams, contact us for a free consultation.
