When times are tough, it’s important  to maximize the return on your on line advertising. Whether you are using Google AdWords, banners, email campaigns, a dedicated landing page is the single most effective way to turn a click into a prospect.

When buying slows down, you need to focus more than ever on making sure that you are finding the prospects who are actually ready to buy and make sure that they are finding you on the search engines consistently .

optimize landing pages

A relevant landing page can easily double conversions versus sending clicks to the homepage, and testing your pages can increase conversions by 2 X more leads for every dollar you spend, something that’s sure to look good in tough times.

44% of clicks for B2B companies are directed to the homepage, not a special landing page..

Content will help in the  buying cycle

One great way to do this is to focus your offers on content that will appeal to someone who’s actually looking for a solution (versus thought-leadership and best-practices content, which can appeal to prospects who may one day have a need but are not currently looking to purchase your solutions ). Examples of this kind of content can include “Top 10 Questions to Ask a Potential Vendor”  , How To’s , white papers, buyers guides  and so on.

Appeal to the nervous buyer

A slow growth economy can mean more risk-averse buyers, which may lead to a tendency to go with “safe” solutions. This is fine for large established companies, but it means that newer companies need to do more than ever to reassure buyers and build trust.

Tactically, this means including in your web site case studies ,customer references, user reviews, expert opinions, awards, vertical customer references, relevant partnerships and other validation as part of your on line marketing.

Few SEO tips for business blogs :

The important role of search marketing ( SEO ) to reach The B-to-B Buyer !

The business audience is moving rapidly to the Web. A survey byWashingtonPost.com found that 77% of business decision-makers use the Web to find out about companies and new products and services that will help them solve their issues.

A study by Outsell Inc discovered that business end-users – buyers, decision-makers and specifiers – spend anywhere from 5 to 20+ hours a week searching for information; 79% of them rely on the Internet to fulfill their information needs.

And according to an ISM/Forrester survey 86% of respondents use the Internet to “shop around” for suppliers. (That term – “ shop around ” – illustrates what little control suppliers / service provider have in the buying cycle.)

Marketers may slow their marketing spending a bit, but they’re not turning away from search engine marketing ( SEO & PPC ), according to a new survey from SEMPO.

Radar Research, Inc., which oversaw SEMPO’s survey research, projects that the pace should pick up. Search engine marketing (SEM) could reach $26.1 billion by 2013 – up significantly from $13.4 billion in 2008.

I  think THE REASON for this forecast is , given the low-cost nature of ongoing monthly search engine marketing and metrics that can be assigned to campaigns. Marketers are seeking for something that’s affordable and gets results – whether that’s brand exposure, lead generation & or sales.

It’s clear from SEMPO’s annual surveys and other reports that marketers rely on search engine marketing to help their companies stay afloat. Sometimes that means engaging in natural search engine optimization  ( SEO ) or paid search ( pay per click ).such as GOOGLE ADWORDS , YAHOO & MSN paid serch.

The other encouraging news is worth noting is the fact that top executives are showing more interest in search engine marketing  ( SEO & PPC ) . They’re either encouraging it internally with budgets  &  or directly involved in their  Brand visibility strategy in some way.

88% of respondents believe blogs and social media have made communications more instantaneous because they encourage organizations to respond more quickly to criticism.

73% of respondents believed the emergence of blogs and social media had changed the way their organizations (or their client organizations) communicate.

More than 90% of respondents encourage the use of research to measure how blogs and social media are impacting their organizations, but only about one-third (39%) say their companies actually are conducting this measurement.

Despite economic concerns, businesses will continue to invest in key marketing programs in the coming year.

A 2009 Marketing Outlook survey released today by StrongMail Systems, Inc., the leading provider of commercial-grade solutions for marketing and transactional email. Results show that more than half (51 percent) of the nearly 1,000 global business leaders polled plan to increase their marketing budgets in 2009 to focus on programs that yield a higher return on investment (ROI (Return On Investment) The monetary benefits derived from having spent money on developing or revising a system. In the IT world, there are more ways to compute ROI than Carter has liver pills (and for those of you who never heard of that expression, it means a lot). ), such as email marketing and search marketing ( SEO & PPC ) , while many will decrease spending on costly, less targeted programs like advertising and trade shows.

StrongMail’s 2009 Marketing Outlook survey found that only 37 percent of those polled expect to see a decrease in sales in 2009 due to current economic conditions; 22 percent believe their customers will spend about the same in 2009 as in 2008; and 19 percent think their customers will spend more next year.
As such, nearly three-quarters (73 percent) of companies that plan to increase marketing budgets in 2009 will bolster email marketing programs, while 44 percent will add dollars to their search marketing campaigns. Those professionals decreasing budgets in 2009 will cut spend on marketing programs that don’t typically generate as lucrative a return, such as advertising (29 percent) and trade shows (19 percent). Only four percent of companies surveyed plan to cut email marketing budgets.   .  ( comment by Travis  in my blog  )