Are your landing pages optimized for B2B lead generation? You need to focus on conversion rate optimization on your pages, even if all your other online efforts are designed to attract prospects. High-converting landing pages are versatile and you can apply them to a variety of different campaigns with some careful consideration.

Online marketing is often more difficult for B2B firms because of the longer sales cycle. Most people define this as the length of time between the first customer contact and closing the deal. This used to be a linear process, but the Internet has added more client touch points and complicated the cycle.

With this in mind, what goes into a successful landing page for business marketers?

1. Create Landing Pages for the Different Stages of the Sales Cycle

The same offers and content won’t be relevant to all your leads. Consider what someone who just discovered your company would be interested in reading. It probably isn’t the same content that would engage a lead who is closer to making a purchasing decision. You need to carefully plan your campaigns and landing pages to get the most out of paid search. Each landing page should reflect the content in a separate ad.

2. Gate Your Most Valuable Content

Want an easy way to generate more leads? Entice prospects with a whitepaper, case study, or eBook and require them to fill out a form to download the content. This creates an opportunity for you to contact them in the future and you can get a better idea of how your most detailed content is performing.

3. Personalize

Even when it comes to business products, leads still want personal interactions with brands. However, you need to shift away from being overly promotional on your landing pages. Create content that is centered around your target prospects’ main interests.

In addition, landing pages can be used to give a real-life view into your organization, which helps leads establish a more emotional connection with your brand. One of the most important ways to do this is use conversational language rather than being overly formal.

4. A/B Test Everything

If you study your landing pages, you will likely to be able to find areas for improvement. How effective is your call to action? Is the page layout intuitive for how people are interacting with the content? A/B testing helps you answer these questions, as well as make adjustments to other areas of the content.

5. Adjust Your Call to Action

Much of the room for improvement on many B2B landing pages involves weak calls to action. Your CTA needs to clearly tell visitors what’s in it for them. Tell potential leads how the action will help them. It’s also important to limit the conversion actions to as few steps as possible. Using a graphic to support the CTA can be effective as well.

6. Streamline Forms

Lead-generation forms are one of the most important elements on a B2B landing page, but they can derail your efforts without optimization. Reducing the number of required fields typically increases conversion rate, but it may contribute to lower-quality leads.

However, too many requirements can scare away qualified leads. Test different aspects of the form, such as number of fields, placement, wording and the name of the asset for best results.

7. Support Multiple Buyer Preferences

Because B2B product offerings are often complex, a single landing page may not be enough. Include links to your blog or other relevant content to support the independent research process.

8. Remove the Navigation Bar

This tip may seem counterintuitive, but the landing page is a step in the sales funnel and the navigation bar can distract prospects from taking the desired next step. Streamlining the page can keep prospects focused.

9. Use Customer Testimonials

This creates a more personal connection with your brand and builds trust. B2B leads are more interested in what your customers have to say about you than content you publish about yourself in many instances.

10. Organize Your Page for Conversions

The best B2B landing pages are short and sweet, but you still need to think about the flow of the different elements. All the aspects on the page need to have a clear connection to drive conversions.