"..the estimate of U.S. retail e-commerce sales for the first quarter of 2008, adjusted for seasonal variation, but not for price changes, was $33.8 billion"

Source: US Census Bureau

 

 

WSI specializes in delivering optimal B2B Internet Marketing Services for Businesses in the Greater Toronto Area

The Business to Business (B2B) Purchasing Process

Online buying research has increased dramatically over the last few years and now plays an ever more critical role in the typical business to business purchasing process.

Businesses usually have multiple buyers or individuals that influence the buying process. These individuals may include end users, managers, a dedicated study group as well as executive decision makers. They have a diverse range of interests but they all have one thing in common; a need for good information on which to make their buying decisions.

Content & Format Make a Difference Online

Fancy presentations may be effective tools for Business to Consumer (B2C) marketing but B2B marketers get the best results when they provide easy to digest information in a clear, simple format. Businesses like to see product performance comparisons and technical specifications and the most effective online marketers in the B2B space, provide easy to navigate websites with lots of useful, well organized information.

Search Engine Marketing

Search Engines (i.e. Google) and Online Directories (i.e Yahoo or vertical markets directories like Thomas) are becoming the most used method by B2B buyers when they are conducting initial research about a product or service they need to acquire.

Learn more about Search Engine Marketing

Your Home Page is a Funnel

Different individuals like to receive information in different ways. An accounting software user may not be as interested in the program's pricing details as the president. The president on the other hand may not care to wade through complex technical specifications that may delight the IT manager. So its important for B2B marketers to create unique points of interest for every type of visitor.

Your home page needs to act as a funnel, providing clear paths to all of your site's resources. This is where conversion architecture makes the difference between a few odd visitors each month and a steady stream of new business inquiries.

Having lots of useful information doesn't mean providing it all in one place. Make it clear that there is a wealth of useful information available, but design the site so that everything is categorized in an orderly manner and is easy to find.

What is Conversion Architecture?

Lets start with a definition of conversion. Each time a visitor responds to a "call to action such as "Download White Paper", "Contact Us" or "Add to Cart" and carries out such a request, that's a conversion.

Studies show that individuals respond differently to the layout and other design elements of web pages. For example, links that are created using buttons of a particular style and "calls to action" written in a variety of colours or text styles, produce different conversion rates. By monitoring traffic and reconfiguring text and graphics, WSI is able to optimize your website's conversion rate.

WSI utilizes proven Search Engine Optimization and Search Engine Marketing techniques that enable businesses to be easily found when people are searching online for goods and services within the specific geographic areas they serve.

Learn more about Conversion Architecture

Web Analytics

In order to make informed desicion about your Internet Marketing (or even your traditional marketing) you need to analyze the performance of your campaigns. The problem is that you have either very little information ( traditional marketing) or tons of data that doesn't mean nothing. The good news is that there are easy to use systems (web analytics) that will allow you to easily read and understand the behavior of your marketing camapigns and therefore make informed desicions.

Learn more about Web Analytics

Email Marketing

DMA Interactie says that 54% of small businesses surveyed rated e-mail as the top online promotion to drive site visitors and customers to their web sites and storefronts.

While E-mail is effective and inexpensive you should make sure to do it right in order to make sure your prospects your customers see your messages as valuable communiactions - so they open, read and act on it - and they don't see it as cheap blast marketing techniques and want to un-subscribe from your list.

Learn more about E-mail Marketing