Budget is an important consideration when planning out any B2B marketing initiative. The goal is simple: to get the highest return on investment. For B2B businesses, this return can seem difficult to achieve.
To get the most bang for your buck, you need to first clearly and specifically outline your marketing objective(s).
For example, do you want to…
- Increase website form submissions from high-value prospects?
- Help current and potential customers achieve a clearer understanding of your product offering?
- Attract highly qualified and in-demand job applicants?
Any of these example objectives can be attempted through a single marketing effort such as search ads to drive traffic to your website contact form, an email campaign promoting new products or creating posts on multiple recruiting websites.
For the highest return, however, these objectives rely on a professional-looking and user-friendly B2B website design. Investing in a website tailored to your specific marketing goals is the first step in getting the greatest return on investment across a range of goals.
Once you have a quality design established with your website, any efforts made toward improving SEO, establishing online advertising, social media posts, email campaigns, and job postings will be more successful.
So what is good design?
The terms “good” and “design” can seem very vague. In the world of B2B website design and marketing, we can narrow the definition significantly.
Good design is simply the visual way in which we can elevate a company in the eyes of current and potential customers and employees to inspire trust and interaction.
Read more: B2B website checklist to maximize CRO.
How do we achieve it?
The top four drivers of good design are:
- Professionalism – Do you have a professional look and feel established for your company? This includes a professional logo, intentional use of color and typography and an overall visual language that you can carry forwards across different marketing channels.
- Clarity – How easy is it for people to quickly understand what you do? Successful marketing relies on clarity in both messaging and design. Avoid visual clutter as it is likely to distract rather than enhance understanding.
- Consistency – Can people looking at your different marketing efforts tell that they come from the same company? Consistency helps build trust and trust inspires conversions. This doesn’t mean you have to be boring, it just means you have to be on-brand.
- Differentiation: What makes your company different from the competition? This can be spelled out but it can also be expressed visually. Consider leveraging your company assets through unique photography or video. Showcasing your value propositions, including products, expertise, employees, facilities, or history can help you stand out.
Businesses often measure B2B marketing success by tracking new quality lead acquisition. Other measures of success include improving communication with current customers to increase repeat orders, building up an online presence as an industry expert to gain higher visibility, or improving recruitment efforts to capture and retain top talent.
Whatever the objective driving your marketing initiative, good design can amplify the results.
