2 Signs Your B2B Marketing Suffers from The More Traffic Fallacy and What to Do About It

The focus on getting more traffic without taking the proper actions to capitalize on that traffic will almost never be the solution for B2B marketing success.  We call this thinking the “More Traffic Fallacy.” 

Sure, more traffic is great. It shows progress and gives your website more opportunities to do its job. Just get more traffic and you’ll get more sales, right?

Not exactly.

The focus on getting more traffic without taking the proper actions to capitalize on that traffic will almost never be the solution for B2B marketing success.  We call this thinking the “More Traffic Fallacy” and it plagues B2B marketers within organizations of all shapes and sizes.

If the following items describe your B2B marketing efforts then you may be suffering from the More Traffic Fallacy and should focus on doing more with the traffic you get currently.

#1: All of your calls to action look like this:

  • Request a quote
  • Talk to a sales person
  • Schedule a demo
  • Get pricing
  • Download product tour
  • Call Now
  • Buy now

These are called bottom of funnel (BOFU) calls to action because they assume that the visitor is at the end of the buying journey or the Decision Stage.

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Unfortunately, only 2-4% of visitors are at this point when they visit your site for the first time and if that is their only option for connecting with you, they’ll probably leave and not come back. This type of BOFU thinking neglects the value of the 96% - 98% of people who visit the site and aren’t BOFU-ready but would be interested in middle of funnel (MOFU) engagement.

Solution: Give visitors opportunities to convert in the middle of the funnel, Consideration Stage.

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Develop content that supports the buyer journey, provides tremendous value, is non-committal and provides an opportunity for a visitor to engage. These types of calls to action usually require the visitor to provide a name, email address and some description of their role.  Some examples of great MOFU calls to action:

#2:  Your monthly newsletter is your lead nurturing program

Are you cranking out a generic, impersonal monthly newsletter just as a way to check the “send email to contact list” task off your to-do list? If so, you may be missing a huge opportunity to boost leads and sales immediately. 

Leads nurtured with targeted content produce an increase in sales opportunities of more than 20%. That means you could get 20% more value from your current list without adding a single additional visitor to the website. 

Additionally, nurtured leads make 47% larger purchases than non-nurtured leads. (Source: The Annuitas Group). Who needs the next small deal when the large ones are sitting in your contact list already?

So what is lead nurturing?

In a nutshell, it’s sending communications that are personal, relevant, timely and valuable.

  • Personal – Personalized emails improve click-through rates by 14%, and conversion rates by 10% (Source: Aberdeen Group). Segment your email list by persona, interest or previous engagement to ensure you are communicating something of interest to each person.
  • Relevant – emails that are specific to the current interests of recipients drive 18 times more revenue than broadcast emails (Source: Jupiter Research).
  • Timely - smart lead nurturing programs use technology to send emails at the right time based on a person’s actions. For example, sending an email the day a person visits the site for the 2nd time could be the difference between getting a new customer and getting marked as spam. Companies that automate lead management see a 10% or greater increase in revenue in 6-9 months (Source: Gartner Research).
  • Valuable - Lead nurturing emails get 4-10 times the response rate compared to standalone email blasts (Source: SilverPop/DemandGen Report). That’s because they are focused on providing value. Even a promotional email can be valuable if it’s personal, relevant and timely.

If you haven’t tackled the lead nurturing part of your B2B marketing program, you’re not alone. 65% of B2B marketers have not established lead nurturing (Source: MarketingSherpa). However, that number is dropping quickly and your competition is probably working on it now.

The best B2B marketers in 2016 (and beyond) will be focused on full-funnel marketing. That means they’ll definitely grow traffic, but they’ll also find ways to convert more of that traffic into leads. Then, they’ll prioritize nurturing those leads into customers. Only when the full funnel is performing extremely well does it make sense to only focus on increasing traffic.

The moral of the story:

Don’t fall for the More Traffic Fallacy. Your competition probably won’t.