One book that every new hire at Foundation gets as a part of their onboarding package is the classic book; How To Win Friends and Influence People. In the service industry, it’s important to have solid social habits, and I’ve yet to come across a book that covers the basics as well as this 1936 classic.
One of my favorite quotes from the book is: Remember that a person’s name is to that person the sweetest and most important sound in any language.
As marketers, we can use clever tools like Clearbit and little hacks like {First Name} to inject a bit of personalization into our messaging. These techniques can work really well for building a bit of a connection. You can also do it when speaking on a webinar by calling out some of the names you see in the live chat. It’s an easy yet powerful way to build rapport… But that’s not exactly what I’m writing to talk about today. I want to talk about the power of making B2B customers feel seen and heard.
Here’s how you do it…
Every B2B or SaaS company has an audience. It’s very likely that your audience is built up of a handful of different personas and potentially different industries or buyers. It’s often a challenge to position yourself and tell the story of your solution when you’re serving multiple people.
For example…
A CRM can be used in many industries. A banker could benefit from a CRM the same way an entrepreneur running an event company could benefit from a CRM. The solution itself has many different verticals in which it could serve, but the reasons a banker would use it are quite different from the reasons an entrepreneur would… In fact, the features and benefits used to describe a CRM for an entrepreneur might actually turn off a banker entirely from the very same solution.
So how do you combat this?
One of the easiest ways to do it is to make it very clear and obvious on your website that your product can serve multiple industries. Here’s a great example of this being embraced by Salesforce:
You scroll over “Products” and are quickly met with categorization:
> By Need
> By Industry
Under the need → Visitors have the ability to say that they’re looking to learn about Salesforce’s sales product, marketing product or one of the many other products they offer.
Under the industry → Visitors can self-identify with the niche and industry that they’re working in. Talking about someone’s industry is the B2B equivalent of saying someone’s name.
If I’m in the Financial Services space, I’m going to immediately see my industry listed and gain confidence that Salesforce can serve my brand. But the benefit doesn’t end there. Salesforce now has the ability to lure me into a customer journey that is tailored to my needs and my problems.
Across all of these pages, they capture about 4,000 monthly visits from organic traffic alone. That’s 4,000 people going to Google and typing “Automotive CRM” or “Banking CRM” and coming across a Salesforce page that speaks directly to their pain points. In many industries, the idea of capturing 4,000 visits from organic traffic is a pretty meh number… But let’s do the math on this.
4,000 visits / month x 12 months = 48,000 visits.
Let’s assume 2% of those visitors convert…
That’s 960 new customers.
I’d assume that their CLV (Customer Lifetime Value) is spread over more than 4 years and the average deal size is more than $10,000 per year… Assuming this…
We’re looking at $9,600,000 in revenue per year on the back of these assets.
Not bad, right?
It gets better.
Let’s say you start to run remarketing ads against the 98% of organic visitors who didn’t convert. You now have the ability to run remarketing ads at a group of people who *through their click* have self-identified as being in a certain niche. You can now run advertisements on different platforms like Facebook, Twitter & LinkedIn, showing content tailored to them.
You can amplify niche specific case studies.
You can promote niche specific use cases.
You can share niche specific testimonials.
You can create a customer journey that feels 100% tailored to their situation and their problems.
That’s where the magic happens.
That’s why I’m convinced that an ‘industry’ specific landing page is one of the most underrated yet powerful pages a website can have. It’s the B2B equivalent of hearing your own name.
