I had a lot of interest and feedback on my post about updating your website. The confusing and disappointing part was that most of it came from people looking to sell building websites for business, who agreed with the sentiment.

I was expecting more interaction with business owners. I believe they are tired of receiving random emails claiming there are errors on their current website, only to be invited to a sales pitch.

I recently had a client bite on one of those pitches and then come to me to finish the project. The company did a nice job of making the old website more visually appealing, with improved graphics and animations that move elements in and out of pages. But two crucial pieces were missed:

1) An update to the text to better engage his changing client base, and
2) A strategy to integrate the site with the company's sales process.

They may understand website development, but they miss that the website is just a part of the overall business-to-business sales process.

The Integration of the Website

A website's main purpose is to get people to consume information. A process needs to be defined to get people there. Then there needs to be a process to encourage people to engage, interact, and, hopefully, reach out to the business for more detailed information based on their needs.

The days of a website just being a business brochure are long gone. A website is a data collection tool. That can be done with form plug-ins like WP-Forms and Google Analytics. That data is the deliverable to your business that needs to be reviewed, harvested, and acted upon.

Integrated into that data collection should be the process of guiding both current clients and prospects back to your website so you have the opportunity to collect that data.

Step 1 – Make Content Serve a Purpose

The biggest mistake I see companies make is having the content on their website and blogs ‘We-We' all over themselves. When someone visits your website, they have a purpose: not only to learn about your company but also to decide whether your company is the right one to solve a problem they have.

This is where your thought leadership should shine. Content should make people feel like you're listening to them and understanding their needs. Then you should explain how you have the potential solutions to their problem.

You cannot expect to have all the answers on one page or post for the array of people and businesses that may land on and consume that content. Your main goal should be to get them to take action and talk with a human in your business who can help dig deeper into your problem-solution ecosystems.

Step 2 – Share That Content to Platforms

You need to find ways to get your messages outside of your ecosystem. Many businesses rely on SEO, AEO, and ads to get people back to their website, but it's difficult to drive people back to a problem-solution post. This means you should share as much content as you can.

Platforms that rely on algorithms (social media and artificial intelligence) need to be constantly fed the most current and pertinent information, on a regular rotation. You can't just post once and hope the algorithm will serve it up on demand. This requires current, relevant, and engaging posts that people interact with and vote on with clicks, likes, and comments.

Email is the platform that you control. People have to opt in and stay subscribed to get your messages. Your emails should be short, purposeful, and unique. Again, people will click on a problem-solution email with a short teaser, way more than a newsletter that ‘We-We's' all over and about your company.

Step 3 – Make Your Emails and Posts Enticing

Thought leadership content is usually between 1000 and 2500 words. That's a lot to expect people to consume on social media and email. That is why well-crafted teaser text and interesting and eye-catching graphics are so important to your distribution systems.

This is where I find AI systems like Perplexity and Comet so useful. You can enter the demographics of your current customers and prospects, and then ask AI to create an enticing one-paragraph summary. You may have to tweak the final result a bit by shortening or removing the demographic information for the answer.

Nothing says ‘AI wrote this' like “This solution for ‘insert demographics info here' can help you…”. Then you want to personalize it more for a single person rather than a broad audience.

Step 4 – Measure the Effectiveness

Email makes it easy to see results. Most platforms will show you opens (emails viewed in the receiving email system) and click-throughs (links clicked to get to the content). Although not as high as you might hope, you can expect 20-40% opens and 5-15% click-through rates. That just means that a limited audience was interested in this one post. As long as the bounces and unsubscribes are small, you have a winner.

Social media and advertising (other than Google) are harder to track. Google Analytics is designed to integrate with Google Ads, providing you with fairly comprehensive and useful information. Social media posts and ads can appear as direct traffic, referrals, social media, or even shopping, depending on the platform that serves the click.

The only thing you can consistently track is the location of pages or posts. You can see increases and decreases depending on the content shared and audience engagement responses.

Step 5 – Act On the Results

Vanity metrics feel great (clicks, likes, and comments), but the rubber really meets the road on your website. Among those who actually reach out, people will either call (25%), send an email (35%), or fill out a contact form (40%).

It's impossible to know how many didn't reach out, but you have real people with real results to engage and serve.

As much as we want to automate and AI everything, sometimes it just makes sense to manually track inquiries. Using a receptionist, you could enter incoming sales calls into a spreadsheet or database. Having a generic ‘Sales@' email can help you pool inquiries via email. Webforms usually include an export feature for completed forms.

All of that data should be reviewed weekly to begin compiling a picture of the effectiveness of your content distribution and consumption. Use Google Analytics to compare results and determine whether you can correlate content topics with inquiry outcomes.

Closing Thought

Although all that I presented above would seem logical and simple, it continues to mystify me how many people do not have the time or the systems in place to implement it.

I put them in steps for a reason. Skipping steps tends to yield unpredictable, less complete results. It starts with creating great content and making it accessible on your website. The distribution process is more dependent on your business, industry, and audiences.

As usual, if you need help in any or all of the above, reach out and let's have a conversation.

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Comment below and share your thoughts, ideas, or questions about business-to-business sales and marketing today! Do you have a sales or marketing communications strategy that works for you? What tips or techniques can you share that work for you and your business?

To learn more about this and other topics on B2b Sales & Marketing, visit our podcast website at The Bacon Podcast.