All of these suggestions, though, are of little use if the B2B marketer suffers from low traffic volume to their site.

To help out, B2B marketing specialist Anol Bhattacharya spoke about three ways in which B2B marketers could drive more traffic to their site at a recent Econsultancy Digital Intelligence Briefing in Singapore.

1. Stop trying to figure out Google’s algorithm

There is little doubt that organic search, especially from Google, is one of the best ways for B2B marketers to drive traffic to their site. To make this happen, though, marketers need to get their site to the top of the search engine result page as that is where most clicks occur.

Because appearing high in the search rank is so important, though, marketers have long been scheming about how to ‘game’ Google’s algorithm. Google, naturally, is aware of this and understands that if any old site can trick its search engine then Google users will have a bad experience and search elsewhere.

As a result, Google does not offer much information about how to appear high in its results apart from the vague statement “provide high-quality content on your pages, especially your homepage.”

Additionally, the search experience is now different for each user, so even if a marketer figured out how to appear the top of their own SERP, the search result may be different for the person sitting next to them.

So, Bhattacharya said that instead of trying to reverse engineer Google and find some sort of ‘trick’, B2B marketers should use a much more straightforward tactic – focus on finding keywords and key phrases which are:

  1. relevant to their business,
  2. have a reasonably sized search volume, and
  3. are in the ‘long tail’ of search queries.

Then, once marketers have identified a few key terms, they should deliberately include these terms on the homepage and in other relevant content and endeavour to provide the best user experience for someone searching on the term.

The difficult part of this tactic, though, is to find search terms which are used often enough to be useful and not too competitive. With some effort and practice, though, brands can rank at the top for organic search results which are relevant to the products and services they offer.

2. Pay attention to six key factors when executing an email campaign

Bhattacharya told attendees that email is another great way for B2B marketers to drive traffic, but that there are six key things that they should be keeping an eye on.

First, marketers need to maintain email database hygiene. What this means is that your email list should be regularly reviewed to ensure that you are sending emails to people who still care about your service. If one subscriber hasn’t opened your email in a year, then get rid of them as they obviously are not interested in what you are sending.

Secondly, marketers also need to pay close attention to subject line. A well-crafted subject line will result in many more opens than a generic one. Research also indicates that using personalisation will improve open rates for most industries

Third, what you include in your email headings is also an important factor for improving open rates as most email clients include the first line of the email along with the subject line. Avoid out-of-context notices (e.g. “Click to view this email in your web browser”) and try to give people an additional reason to open your email in the first few words.

Fourth, timing of emails often is the difference between a successful campaign and one with low opens and clicks. Avoid sending email out-of-hours as mobile email clients allow for people to archive all commercial emails with a single click.

Also Bhattacharya suggested that marketers should avoid sending emails at the beginning, middle (lunch), and end of the day as well as on Monday and Friday.

Fifth, Bhattacharya also discussed a few best practices for body copy. One of the main mistakes marketers make is to try to include multiple subjects in one email.  Unless the email is intended to be a broad overview, say a company newsletter, keep to one, easily-digestible subject in the body.

Finally, B2B marketers should decide what they would like the email recipient to do and have a clear call-to-action (CTA). Along with having one subject in the body copy, marketers should aim to have a single CTA in the email. That way, your subscriber will not have to prioritise the actions and end up doing nothing at all.

3. Concentrate your display efforts on retargeting

To complete his overview of how B2B marketers should drive traffic, Bhattacharya asked a simple question: Who has clicked on a banner ad recently?

Those who did put their hands up agreed that all of their clicks had one thing in common – the banners people had clicked on were part of a retargeting campaign.

For those unfamiliar with the term, retargeting simply means that the ad you see is very closely related to another activity you performed online recently. You may have searched for something, viewed a particular web page, or put an item in a virtual shopping cart and then didn’t purchase it and then, as if by magic, you see the item again as you surf the web.

Bhattacharya told delegates that B2B marketers should use retargeting ads as they perform far better than other ads. The reason is that you will be able to advertise a specific product or aspect of a service which the viewer has already shown an interest in.

This can reduce your target market to a ‘market of one’ which allows you to give them a compelling reason to return to your site.

A word of thanks

Econsultancy would like to thank Anol Bhattacharya, CEO at GetIT Comms and B2B marketing specialist, for his presentation as well as the delegates who took time out of their busy schedules to attend.

We hope to see you all at future Singapore Econsultancy events!