Website Performance is the B2B Digital Strategy That Matters

A successful B2B marketing strategy positions the business around sound and sustainable competitive advantages and communicates it to audiences of prospective customers effectively.

So how can B2B marketers and sales leaders gain a competitive edge?

Businesses face stiff headwinds as they work to attract business from a shrinking market. Brands like Cummins, Salesforce, and WeWork have found success and built brand identities to command an enormous market share. Their websites are a big key to that success.

Stand Alone in the Competitive Marketplace

Pause for a moment and brainstorm this: Would you say your business is a “best of breed,” or a “jack-of-all-trades?”

Every day, B2B buyers browse multiple websites, looking for a business offering specialized answers and products that meet their unique needs. If you have positioned your business with a unique value proposition, your customers will know you have the right solutions.

A business in a competitive market develops expertise that earns trust. Many industry experts consider the jack-of-all-trades solutions as entry-level. Companies that focus on the right targeted solutions for targeted audiences dominate a specific market, capturing a larger share of the audience.

Don’t Get Distracted Chasing Unicorns – Keep it Simple

A search for “Strategies for Attracting More B2B Business” on Google or Bing returns eye-popping headlines:

• 6 proven B2B marketing strategies that attract more sales
• 5 Essential B2B Marketing Strategies To Grow Your Business
• 12 B2B Marketing Strategies for a Dynamic 2023
• 20 Lead Generation Strategies to Generate B2B Sales Leads

That last one is a doozy. Imagine managing and implementing 20 strategies!

Nevermind. Don’t imagine.

Start simple. Then keep it simple.

You’ll find a common thread when you dig deeper into these so-called strategies. They are distractions. Take a look.

Ultimately, you will notice that most of these “strategies” cover familiar ground. They highlight tactics that support a single strategy:

• Running A/B tests on key pages
• Building a free tool to generate B2B sales leads
• Publishing and promoting more case studies
• Publishing original research to generate sales from savvy buyers
• Creating hard-hitting lead magnets and incentives
• Catering to a visual B2B audience with in-depth YouTube videos
• Targeting high-value leads on LinkedIn
• Producing webinars to capture new leads

The list leads to an obvious question: “Then What?.”

A Website Strategy Drives Results

The answer to the question “Then What?” is that many of those tactics lead to your website. Your strategy must be website performance and optimization. Capturing a larger audience share requires an organic search strategy and a high-performance website.

Optimize for Search Performance

Over 70% of B2B buyers begin their journey with a generic search, and they are nearly 60% of the way down the sales funnel before interacting with your website, according to Google research.

Mobile and desktop versions of your website play an important role in how your B2B business is found by search engines such as Google and Bing.

You also lose prospective customers to your competitors whenever they need help finding you online. The buyer may think, “If the company is that great, it would appear prominently in search results.”

"B2B buyers are 60% of the way down the sales funnel before interacting with your website."

-- Google

Besides maintaining a visible presence for your B2B online, a business website has enormous potential to promote trust in your brand, define your brand personality, demonstrate uniqueness in what you offer, and communicate other competitive advantages. All of this helps to differentiate you from your competitors.

High-quality content supports the website strategy.

Offer a Great User Experience

All B2B businesses deserve the best shot possible at success. For the majority, they miss the mark.

At our company, we analyzed over 200 B2B websites in the manufacturing industry. The DBS team discovered that most sites don’t meet Google performance criteria. Many sites reviewed had scores Google considers poor. Over half scored below 41 (out of 100) in Google’s “Performance” test.

A well-designed and functional website, as the hub of the marketing wheel, is the starting point for creating a sound business strategy to propel your business to success.

This is the reason you should shift more attention to maintaining a high-performance B2B website that adheres to Technical SEO best practices.

This work requires an integrated team of experts with digital marketing, design, and development skills to perform technical SEO. It’s an ongoing challenge because search algorithms and development best practices change. It requires constant attention. Most businesses don’t have the resources to devote to technical SEO.

Good Enough is not Good Enough to Win

Thousands of pre-made themes and templates make creating a website easy – if good enough is good enough.  Standing out in today’s competitive landscape requires a website as unique as you are.

What makes a great website?

• Mobile-Friendly - Today, there are no excuses. Your website, built to progressive web app criteria, must look great and be compatible with any platform. Optimizing your website for mobile improves your visitors’ experience and your SEO rankings.
• Easy To Use - Create obvious and logical navigation with a clear hierarchy. Use consistent layouts and visual cues for functionality across your website.
• Well-Designed and Functional - Make your website visually appealing, polished, and professional, ensuring it meets accessibility standards for WCAG 2.1 AA. Users expect a website to load quickly, correctly, and as expected.
• Follow Best Practices - Google makes identifying shortcomings that harm performance simple. It takes work to get there and stay there.

Your website needs to earn traffic to be successful and offer a great experience for users when they get there. Stick to the best practices throughout all phases of the website development.

Websites That Achieve High Scores for Google Criteria

Remain Focused

It is easy to get distracted by misleading and clueless Internet resources touting so-called tactics disguised as strategies and ignoring the big picture.

Instead, create and maintain a high-performance B2B website because all marketing roads lead to your website.