Right About Now - Legendary Business Advice - Breaking B2B with Founder Sam Dunning

Starting point is 00:00:00 Remember those endless summer days that felt like they just last forever? Sunrays kiss your skin. Grass tickles your toes as you bite into the creamy popsicle melting in your hand. Pure, unbothered bliss. Capture more sun-drenched memories with the orange vanilla dream hydration multiplier from liquid IV. This nostalgic vanilla flavor with notes of candied orange can help keep you hydrated while savoring your favorite golden hour moments. No matter how hot your summer gets, just one stick of liquid IV and 16 ounces of water hydrates you better than water alone. It's three times the electrolytes of the leading sports drink with eight vitamins and nutrients for refreshing on the go hydration.

Starting point is 00:00:45 Live your summer dream with liquid IV. Tear, poor, live more. Go to Liquidiv.com and get 20% off your first order with code Indulge 20 at checkout. That's code Indulge 20 at Liquidiv.com. we want our websites to look great, have great features, have pages that share information about us and so on. The website, in most businesses' case, is not for us. We are not the buyer. We are not the person that's going to be landing on the site and potentially request to do business, book a demo or book of sales pool, whatever that action is.

Starting point is 00:01:20 This is right about now with Ryan Alford, a Radcast Network production. We are the number one business show on the planet with over one million downloads and month taking the BS out of business for over six years and over 400 episodes you ready to start snapping next and cash and checks it starts right about now what's up guys welcome to about now we're making it right right now and hey everybody we always especially i don't know clients we're in the agency world it's always discussion about how you do better marketing how you do better b-to-be marketing so we just had to go to the expert sam dunning he's the founder of breaking b-to-be welcome to the show of sam hey ryan appreciate you having me on man really

Starting point is 00:02:16 looking forward to the conversation and excited to get stuck in yes exactly and not that just like my accent gives away that i'm a southern guy from other states it's clear you're across the pond a little bit. Where's home, Sam? Yeah, so I'm southern as well, but southern in England. So I'm right in the southwest. For any folks that are familiar with England, I'm near a city called Bristol, probably about two and a half hours from London in a little town called Yoval in Somerset. That's where we're based. It sounds. It sounds lovely. Is it as lovely as it sounds? It's good until something like snow happens or torrential rain. So down south in the England, we're just not geared up for it.

Starting point is 00:02:59 So as soon as something like that happens, everything just shuts down, man. We're just like locked in my houses. But apart from that, nice country side. Hey, it sounds more and more like South Carolina. It's the same way here. We get even a dusting. There's cars wrecking and all the bread in the store is gone. And so, yeah, maybe we have a lot of like in that regard.

Starting point is 00:03:18 But, yeah, I appreciate you joining the show. I have this discussion a lot with our clients. And I even, I'm even guilty of this, as I told you, pre-episode. We all toil about our marketing, our website, especially in B2B. And I know you focus a lot on that and a lot of what your company does. But before we get into it, and I know we talked about you're getting into some of the deadly sins of B2B websites. Let's just set the table for everyone, Sam. Let's give everyone your background and a little bit of your career story and trajectory. Yeah, sure, man. I'll try and get you.

Starting point is 00:03:57 give you the shorter version. So probably I started off in business wise. My first job was in the retail world, which is funny because probably about a year and a half in, I realized I absolutely hated working in retail. So I worked in a shop called Jessups for anyone not familiar with that selling like camera equipment. So it relates to what I do now, just like yourself over on a podcast. So that was where my keenness for it came in. So selling like video cameras, SLRs, tripods, anything associated with cameras. But I soon realized that although I love media, I did not like dealing with the general public.

Starting point is 00:04:35 I soon learned that I don't know what folks are like in the US, but when you go up to someone and say, can I help you there or how are you doing that? People in the UK just grunt at you and almost moan at you, they swear at you. And probably about a year into that role, I was like, I'm really hating this, man. I was probably 18 years old.

Starting point is 00:04:52 And then my cousin said, he was actually recruiting at this web agency. At the time, a company called Web Choice, he said, there's a project management stroke sales role going. I said, sounds good, man. I'm tired of this. So it took an interview the next day and thought, yep, jacked in that retail job,

Starting point is 00:05:10 started working at a web agency. And essentially it was like a jack-of-all-trades. So started off kind of project managing websites, doing a few sales calls, learning how design sites, learning what was involved in digital marketing to start growing businesses. Buff, a quick, funny story. One of the first leads, one of the first sales inquiries they ever gave me.

Starting point is 00:05:31 I called them up. And this lead came in. I called the guy. And he wanted a web. This is probably about 12 years ago, Ryan. And he wanted a website, no joke, that was pretty much the same spec as LinkedIn. Quite a small website. Yeah. I'm joking. Probably the biggest platform you could go. Yeah, exactly. Probably the biggest scope of work for a web project you could even imagine. Did you actually do it? This is the even funnier part, or probably not that funny, was I think I quoted him. I just, because I had no clue at the time about sales, and I was 18, 19, roughly now I'm 33,

Starting point is 00:06:06 I just said yes to every request on the sales school. I just said yes, having no clue if we could deliver it, and then somehow sold this first ever lead that I took on, but sold it, I couldn't have undersold it anymore. I sold it for 500 pounds, which is probably the equivalent of, I don't know, seven, 800 bucks. And luckily, we, yeah, man, that's insane, right? Like, even however many years ago, that was like 14 or so years ago, it's still insane. So luckily, we started doing that a few designs and then this guy let us transition it off, cross over into other work because he realized that the spec was too crazy.

Starting point is 00:06:40 But luckily, this guy was quite friendly and understood that I was new. But yeah, as the years went on, I've had other jobs in between kind of working at Web agencies like nearly joined the Army, worked in a call center, worked for a marketing agency, was going to be a paratrooper, none of which worked out. And then I've always been drawn back into the web and SEO world. And I think what kind of resonated with me was the fact that you could use a website as almost like a salesperson in itself as it's live 24.

Starting point is 00:07:09 Seven, working around the clock. I love the fact that websites can really fuel a business with inquiries, with sales leads and all that good stuff. and it really can be the heart and sort of the business. And that teamed up with SEO, but I talked about quite a lot on episodes and podcasts like this, where you can rank on Google and drive organic traffic. The fact that you build this site to fuel your sales team really intrigued me.

Starting point is 00:07:34 And that's why a lot of what I talk about is geared up around this stuff. And then eventually became a director in my last web business, which I exited, and then recently started this year, fired up breaking B2B, which is a B2B SEO and web agency. And we also run a podcast, which is themed around B2B marketing, where we interview practitioners and a B2B marketers

Starting point is 00:07:55 and founders who are breaking B2B as well. Sounds similar journey to a lot of people. You're finding your passions, finding your skill sets, and ultimately finding fascination and interest in something, and then honing in your skills around that. If I'm summarizing well, Sam, at least that's what I'm hearing. Making a lot of mistakes as well.

Starting point is 00:08:21 Let's not forget that. Doing a lot of stupid stuff. The LinkedIn is just the tip of the iceberg. I've made so many stupid mistakes over the years, man. So many silly things. But that's where you learn. I can try to imagine specking that out after a fact. Because on its surface, if you go, even now, much less 10, 12 years ago,

Starting point is 00:08:39 if you go on the surface, it doesn't look that complicated, like the UI. but it's all the functionality and databases and all the stuff that you can't see. Yeah, exactly. You have right down probably even for, I'm sure LinkedIn used like some gigantic digital agency wherever and spit millions of dollars on it. But at the same time, even like in a small agency, you're speccing that out, that's probably two or three hundred grand. Easy.

Starting point is 00:09:10 It's like when I've had sales inquiries years ago where folks would say, say, I just need a website like Google, just a simple one page of like Google. I can pay you 300 bucks and we can get it done. And then I'm just falling off my chair in laughter. Yeah, exactly. But you don't know what you don't know. Turning to the B2B side, it is fascinating that you have this both quandary and opportunity with websites that you want it, you want it to look great, you want to be

Starting point is 00:09:42 proud of it. You want this aesthetic that has been the historical perspective of your brand and all those things. In reality, you have this great opportunity, like you said, to deliver a sales funnel and leads if you can get out of your own way. And I think even today, working with particularly medium to larger companies and maybe even small companies. It depends on who's in charge and what their aesthetics are. But I think there's even today the battle that happens with what it looks like versus what it does. How do you approach that and is that still a common refrain that you hear? Yeah, what it looks like versus what it does.

Starting point is 00:10:43 I think, if I may, there's a mistake that a lot of folks make with their website. And one of the biggest killers of website performance is ego. So to dive into that a bit deeper, what I mean by, and that could be if you're running a small business that you're the founder and you're doing all the work on your website yourself or maybe you're getting a contractor. Maybe you're a larger organization and you've got a marketing team that are going to be delivering it. you've got a team of execs that can be delivering it. But what you've got to realize is as much as we want our websites to look great, have great features, have pages that share information about us, and so on. The website, in most businesses' case, is not for us.

Starting point is 00:11:29 We are not the buyer. We are not the person that's going to be landing on the site and potentially request to do business, book a demo or book a sales call, whatever that action is. we've probably got a warehouse full of our goods, our services, or if we're a technology business, we've got almost unlimited supply within reason of what we can deliver. So one of the biggest issues is that folks spend all this time designing, building the copy, the content, the messaging, building out the pages, but they do it all for what they think

Starting point is 00:11:59 looks good as either the marketing or the founder of the business. The issue with that is unless you fit your ideal client persona 100%, which is pretty rare, your focus clients, aka the people that you want to inquire on your website or to buy your stuff, probably not going to resonate with it as well as you think they are. And we're often quite biased, right? And I've done this, I've made this mistake on my own websites in the past.

Starting point is 00:12:23 You become too attached to it. You start using copy and text, like on your website headlines, like award-winning, best in class. We've been in business 100 years and all this kind of stuff, which we think in theory is going to work. But most of the time, if folks are landing on your website, especially your homepage, which we can dive into the fundamentals and a sec, usually folks want to quickly get an idea of exactly what it is you do, how you're going to help them, and how they can take that next step. Especially in the times we're in now with AI fast improving, people are time short. So they don't have tons of time to scroll through your website and work out exactly what problems you fix, the value you bring to their life and how to be able to contact you.

Starting point is 00:13:06 So that's a taster into it. For sure. I love the thought you started. It was the first thing you said, ego. We all think we know what's best and we have what's in our mind. And a lot of times that's serving, like you said, ourselves instead of our audience, instead of our target. Because it reminds me a lot of discussions I've had over the years with marketing executive. and clients and like having to tell them that the bragging stuff,

Starting point is 00:13:40 the speeds, the stuff that you're so proud of about your product, about your service, about what you do, you're so proud of it, but it doesn't translate to necessarily solving an issue or a problem for your client. And that sounds very much like the discussion we're talking about now when framing up, especially the key positioning on the homepage, right? Yeah, yeah, exactly. And these issues, like you mentioned there, Ryan, they're not just appropriate for your website.

Starting point is 00:14:18 They're appropriate for marketing in general. These are fundamentals, right? When you're building for, when you're building marketing assets, be that website content, website messaging headlines, be that ad headlines, whether it's for Google ads, whether it's for LinkedIn ads, Facebook ads, etc. whether it's other marketing collateral, you've got to put yourself in the shoes of your focus clients,

Starting point is 00:14:39 the people that you want to stop in their tracks, attract, grab their attention, and then point them to take an action, whether that's to learn more, book a demo, check out your case studies, whatever. So one of the biggest things that you want to do like a very start of a website exercise is actually going to spend some time,

Starting point is 00:14:57 whether that's yourself as a founder or with your team. And really get down to basics. Like, what exactly? do we want to get out of this website? So I think that's just an exercise that people don't do. They get into the design, they get into the exciting stuff, but they skip out the fundamentals. In B2B, most B2B companies, most folks that I've interviewed maybe 350 or so

Starting point is 00:15:18 marketing execs on breaking B2B. And from my experience, typically, what they want to see on a B2B website is a quick idea of what you do or the problem you fix and how you help. They want to see some proof of results. So that could be case studies, testimonials, review videos, accreditations, walkthroughs, etc. They want to see some kind of proof of your offer and action. So if you like a technology or software business, maybe it's a demo before trial.

Starting point is 00:15:45 They usually want to see how much it costs. So some kind of indicative area of pricing, whether that's ballpark figures, starting ranges or packages. They want to get their questions answered. So maybe you've got FAQ sections or relevant pages address those key questions that come up in sales schools. And then they want an easy route to speak to sales. So maybe that's weaving in a calendarly or similar. So someone can book time directly on a sales rep's calendar or using a tool like Revenue Hero, which is similar as calendar,

Starting point is 00:16:13 or a simple to fill out form or book a call, whatever that is. So that's usually the fundamentals of what people want out of B2B site. But one tip that you can do is if you really want your website to resonate with these target clients that you actually want to buy your stuff and generate leads for on your website, is this is something that's skipped by a lot of websites, and it's understandable because it takes a bit of time, is customer research. So what I'm saying here is basically interviewing anywhere between,

Starting point is 00:16:43 if you can, five to ten recently signed or recently onboarded clients, or if you don't have access to that as a new business, maybe folks that fit your target persona, like the people that you want to go after. And you may have to offer them something, like a free consult or something perhaps that's a free low-ticket item you can provide. but from these people you can get golden nuggets which is really going to make sure

Starting point is 00:17:04 your messaging, your headlines, your content resonate because these are the people you want to attract and convert. This is where you can ask them things like if it's a recently onboarded customer, what was the frustrating problem that kind of tipped you over the edge was becoming so annoying that stopped you in your tracks that kind of made you decide that it's time to fix it

Starting point is 00:17:24 and reach out to a company like ours and that's going to be really impactful for your headline. Something like that is useful to know. What do you care about seeing on vendors in our sector, in our industry's website? What are the main things you quickly want to learn, see and take action upon? Again, these are golden nuggets because it's actually going to give you the spill the tea on what people actually care about seeing under site. How do we stack up, in your opinion, to other agencies or other companies or other similar businesses in our sector? And if you have got an existing website, you can ask questions around what do you feel is missing on our current

Starting point is 00:17:57 website. So that can give you some real insights like they might say, we'd have a pricing page, or the case studies are quite thin, or I couldn't really understand exactly what it is you'd do, or it's quite difficult to contact you. So my point here is you're doing these five to ten interviews using a transcript tool, maybe otter or similar, so you can dissect the notes after each call on Zoom. And then from there, you want to look for patterns. Once you do five to ten interviews, you'll see patterns in people's responses. You'll see common things that come up, like it might be, this is the juicy problem we fix. This is the main outcome.

Starting point is 00:18:30 People want it as a result of working with us. For clients we've already worked with, this was the main outcome we actually brought to them. Okay, excellent. We can use this problem and this solution and maybe our website headline, i.e. we do X that fixes Y. It's our headline.

Starting point is 00:18:43 And you get all this juicy intel that's going to basically mean that you're not designing and building your website on guesswork. You're building your pages, your content, you're messaging, and more based on what real potential clients or existing clients care about learning.

Starting point is 00:18:56 and doing. So that's one of the vital steps. It takes a little bit of research work, but if you're a kind of growing organization, it's something that's going to be worth its weight in gold. So it just means your website is going to convert better in short. Let me ask you a question, Sam. And that is very good practical advice. It makes a lot of sense like when you're listening. The only thing like that I, when I think about that and I think about, And I know we're talking B2B and it's different. So I just want to talk historically. Consumers don't always tell the truth.

Starting point is 00:19:35 Whether there, if Steve Jobs would have asked consumers if they wanted the iPhone or if they wanted an iPod or an iPad, if you had described, asked them. And I know that's a transcending category. But at the same time, it's like, when do you know your constituents? your consumers, do they really know how to frame and tell you what they want and what they need? Have you ever come across where you felt like you've been doing that research and you're like, I know what they're trying to tell me, but I don't know if they're quite distilling it to what really is valuable. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So there's a few elements to this.

Starting point is 00:20:21 So I'm not a customer research expert. but we've interviewed a few on Breaking B2B podcast. So you've asked a great question there. And one thing you want to be careful with is who you interview. So you don't want to interview folks that are biased towards you. So that could be long-term customers. Because they like and trust you already. And they're probably just going to say anything that pleases you.

Starting point is 00:20:43 Yeah. So if you interview like your cousin and your auntie that you've built stuff for, or likewise, maybe customers that have been with you months or years, don't interview them. They're too biased. You want to interview folks. You've only just onboarded because they don't know that much about you really. Or prospects that may be even a bit cold.

Starting point is 00:21:01 They just fit that kind of profile, the type of business, the sector, the turnover that you're going after. And the reason we want to do five to ten or so interviews is so we're not biased. So we're looking for those patterns and what people say. And you've got to dig in. So you've got to be willing. For example, if you've said to them, what are the main frustrations that might cause you to look at a product or solution like ours, if someone gives you a surface level answer, I don't know, maybe revenue is dropping.

Starting point is 00:21:27 You'd say something like, why is revenue dropping? And that's where they might say, it's taking more and more time for us to deliver this service or to deliver this solution. And then you go, what do you mean by that? They might say something like, let's pretend for a minute. We provide accounting software. They might say, we're finding that our reps are stuck in Excel sheets

Starting point is 00:21:47 for hours each day trying to work out these statistics and these solutions. and you go, okay, so what kind of it? What's that doing to your business? Well, all these hours could be used on client work, which would mean that we could turn over stuff much quicker. And that's where you're getting to the root of the problems. So there's a few elements to it, and this could be a huge discussion itself.

Starting point is 00:22:05 But one is interviewing folks that aren't biased. Two is not being afraid to dig in when you're asking these kind of questions. And thirdly, it's looking for the patterns. So the things that keep coming up, whether it is around the problem you fix, whether it is the value you provide the solutions and what folks care about. to dig out those golden nuggets that you can then weave into your website messaging, ads messaging, etc. Yeah.

Starting point is 00:22:28 I've had this debate with people, and that's a great answer, Sam. I think it makes a lot of sense. And I've had this debate with certain people at a broad level of our, and I'm using the word, we're talking about B2B consumers here in this context. But instead of calling them B2B professionals, we'll just call them the consumers of this discussion. Are consumers be are they problem aware? Do they truly know do they know their problem? I have that discussion with people sometimes.

Starting point is 00:23:04 I'm not sure they know their problem. Yeah. Not always. Yeah. It's like they they know there's issues, but they don't know exactly what the problem is. Yeah. Yeah, yeah.

Starting point is 00:23:19 usually as business owners or as marketers in general, when you're doing this kind of stuff, you have to go in with a thesis or an assumption. So you might say, for example, like one of our, if I give you like a tangible example, like what we've got as a business, we have three main problems that we tend to fix. One is if you're frustrated when target clients search for your offer or your service, competitors are constantly ahead of you on Google, kind of stealing traffic or opportunity. The second is maybe you're getting traffic to the website, but it's failing to convert into a steady flow of inbound leads. Or the third is you've got an agency already. Perhaps you're a bit wary or a bit concerned. They're not delivering. So that

Starting point is 00:24:00 was the three, in our case, the three problem statements that I refined over time. But I didn't use those straight away. In my case, I put them to the test. So I'd grab this Intel from customer research, but then I thought, wait, let's test this out. So I did cold outreach using it, cold email. I did cold calls myself to my target market to VPs of marketing, CMOs, marketing offices, demand generation folks at a kind of high-level B2B companies and see if it resonate. I put posts out on LinkedIn with these kind of problem statements and then weaving in stories to see if it resonates you. A big part of not just website design and messaging, but marketing in general is going in with assumptions or ideas and then running experiments

Starting point is 00:24:41 to see if they actually resonate with a target market. Some will. fine, keep them rolling. Some you might test on ads, for example, for, I don't know, a couple months, maybe less, and then they flop. So great, I've learned that doesn't work. Let's move on to the next test. Was there anything in that exercise that surprised you? Was there maybe a hypothesis that you would just absolutely have thought to be true that just proved otherwise? I've fallen flat on my backside many times with things. Not so much of that, because I had gathered that with kind of interviews that I'd done over so much time on my podcast and stuff like that, so I was pretty sure.

Starting point is 00:25:17 But when I first started, for example, when I first started selling websites and SEO and stuff like that, I used to think that the only way that I could do that was to wow potential clients. So I thought that as in my case as a founder selling, that it was my responsibility to just knock the socks off people straight away. And before they could get a word in edgeways, I should say things like,

Starting point is 00:25:40 we've been in business 10 years, we've won all these awards. I've got all these case studies. I've done all this stuff, which there's a time and a place for that. But as you probably know, if it's the first time speaking to someone on sales school, usually you do a bit of a discovery.

Starting point is 00:25:53 So after you've done the pleasantries, you just say, what are you doing in business right now, what's working, what's not, what's caused you to be open to this conversation, how are you tackling this right now? Like, how's it working out for you? What are you struggling with? And then you dig in.

Starting point is 00:26:06 Like a lot of marketing in sales is digging in to understand the prospect's current world, any frustrations they're having, if they're expensive frustrations and where they're trying to get to, like a great book in this is Gap Selling by a chap called Keenan, that told me a lot of this kind of stuff working out the size of the gap

Starting point is 00:26:23 and if it's something you want to do. But yeah, that just gives you one example. I used to think that you had to well people all the time and really it's more about understanding and resonating with folks compared to just trying to make yourself sound really cool. I'll distill that it's about them and not you. That says it in a lot for your words. Thank you.

Starting point is 00:26:45 Yes. Talking with Sam Dining. He's the founder of Breaking B2B. Sam, let's get back to the nitty gritty on B2B websites. I know we've talked about some of the high-level fundamentals, but maybe talk about some of those deadly sins. And what is the ideal B2B website? Let's dig into kind of a few of the fundamental pages and then we can test some of those apart. art. So we talked a bit about research. We touched a bit about the homepage. So there's a good test that you can run on your website now. So there's a test coined by a chap called, I believe Donald Miller, great book called Building a Storybrand. He says you should run something on your homepage,

Starting point is 00:27:28 the hero area, which is the banner area before you scroll, called the grunt test. And what that means is, could you stick your homepage in front of a caveman sitting in his cave in caveman times? He fires up his laptop. Someone stuck a laptop in front of him. for the first time ever. He's wiping the dust out of his eyes. He sees your homepage and could he grunt exactly what you do, how it helps him and how to get in touch within three to five seconds of firing up that homepage screen on his laptop? If not, and your website is not hitting the mark, and you're potentially losing traffic and potential leads. So you can run that test right now, like you could get someone that's never been

Starting point is 00:28:04 on your website to check it out. Maybe it's your grandma, maybe it's your friend. Maybe it's someone you're connected to on Facebook and LinkedIn. Get five to 10 of those people to run that test. do they quickly know what you do, how it is you help and how to get in touch? If not, then you need some work on clarifying that message straight away. So that's one killer test on homepage. And then typically what you want to do on the homepage is after you've got that clear message statement, you don't want to weave in some social proofs. That could be clients you work with, logos, accreditations. Maybe then as people scroll through you talk about the problems you fix, how you fix some of your key solutions and you have clear call to actions for folks

Starting point is 00:28:37 to maybe view more work or book a call or whatever's relevant. But yeah, if we dive into some of the fundamentals of websites, one big sin that I see is page speed. So as I was mentioning earlier, people these days, if they're firing up your website on their laptop, their PC or their mobile phone, and they're usually time sensitive. So if you're waiting for a site to load

Starting point is 00:28:58 and you want to get some business done and it's taking three seconds, five seconds, even 10 seconds to load up on their device, then people are going to get frustrated, have a bit of a sour taste in their mouth, about your site and probably head to a competitor. It gives them a better experience. And then you've wasted a potential referral. You've wasted ad spend or however you've guided them to your website. So a quick fix you can do by that is you can go on a tool called Google PageSpeed Insights

Starting point is 00:29:22 and copy and paste your website URL. And it gives you actionable tips. It will say, look, this is your website speed right now at 100. Here's some main issues that you can do to improve your website speed. And it gives you some tips straight away. But common culprits we see, A lot of folks these days websites are built on tools like WordPress. So some of the main suspects of the slow website, things like way too many plugins. Maybe you're trying to embed too many videos on the page. Maybe you're not optimizing your website images. So you've got massive JPEGs that are like several megabytes when you could do WebB-based images.

Starting point is 00:29:56 So those kind of things, just trying to put too much content on the page that's perhaps going to take ages to load too many plugins. Or maybe the website platform at WordPress just isn't up to date, which can slow things down. So those are some of the common culprits on that side of things. And then I'll go into a couple more. So one controversial one that a lot of folks, especially in the B2B or the service-based industry space absolutely hate, is sharing pricing on the website. So I used to be in the other camp. I used to think, you don't want to share your pricing on your website.

Starting point is 00:30:30 Like you want to generate as many quote-unquote leads or inquiries as possible. but after running businesses for many years and after having to deal with so many inquiries that just simply didn't have budget to work with us, be that for a service or a product, I learned the hard way. If you're a technology business, like you sell software or software as a service, it's easy to have your typical bracket like tier one, 25 bucks a month, tier two, 50 bucks a month, enterprise plan speak to sales. Where it gets a little bit tricky is where companies that are often more of a bespoke, more

Starting point is 00:31:03 of a custom service, that's where they'll push back on me. So they might say, I can't share pricing, Sam, because everything we do is tailored. And I'll say, that's fine, but surely you have a rough idea, I, even on my pages on our website, I'll say, like, prices start from a 3K a month, but that's for SEO, or prices start from this. Maybe you have three tiers, right? Plan A, typically three to five K, plan B, by to 10, plan C, enterprise, speak to sales. But one thing is, when you build out a pricing page, you'll notice that it's probably one of your most visited pages on your site, because people want to check how much it costs. The reason it's good is because it will weed out tire kickers.

Starting point is 00:31:46 So if you're getting a lot of poor-fay inquiries, it'll weed those out. But it can be a really good page to actually build trust. So you can, on the top of your pricing page, share your main plans and price. But then you can weave in some social proof to build trust, so maybe a relevant customer review video, a nice testimonial with a nice testimonial with a story of problem you fixed, how you help the customer and the results they gained with their picture and their job title. And then this is the little hack. As you scroll down, you can have an FAQ frequently asked questions section. But here you have questions that you actually get asked on sales calls and common objections. For example, on our pages, I literally answer things I get

Starting point is 00:32:22 asked on sales calls like Sam, where's your SEO so expensive compared to other agencies. Isn't Google ads way quicker compared to waiting for SEO and organic search to take impact? How How do you compare to other businesses in your space? Like all these questions I get on sales calls, I address them head on. The reason I do that on the service and pricing page is because it saves me time on sales calls. And it even speeds up deals cycles. As folks read this, they're more educated. They trust me more for being transparent and they're more inclined to do business with us.

Starting point is 00:32:51 Those are just a few tips. There's plenty more. Sam, do you think your prospects spend more or less time than you think on the website? I have that debate sometimes or internally probably more than anything. Like how much time are they willing to spend here like today's age? All depends, right? So in very simple terms, the visitors to your website can be distilled into either warm prospects, warm traffic or cold traffic. So if they're warm traffic, i.e., let's say someone referred or recommended you,

Starting point is 00:33:31 probably not going to see that much. And your website has got to do quite a lot wrong to tear that prospect from getting in touch with you, like booking your call or whatever. Yes. But it can be done. So for example, if you make some of those deadly sins, like someone recommends you,

Starting point is 00:33:46 but then they go onto your website and I think it takes ages to load, doesn't work very well on my smartphone. The design resembles that of a potato. And I'm trying to click onto pages. They're just taking ages. I can't see any results, any testimonials, any examples of work.

Starting point is 00:34:01 can't check the price. Someone's going to get frustrated. You can even drop off warm leads. And they might not spend that much time. All they want to do is validate you. Check that they can trust you before they get in touch. But then if we flip it to the other end of the spectrum, Ryan, hold traffic. Maybe there's someone that's come in from an ad.

Starting point is 00:34:20 Maybe they found your blog post on Google. That's when your website needs to work a heck of a lot harder. This is the first time someone's ever stumbled on your website. They might be reading an article. They might have found a service page. straight away you've got to give a good first impression. Again, the design's got to resonate. Messaging's got to resonate like we talked about earlier with research. It's got to load nice and quickly. It's got to give them the information they're looking for quickly. If you're selling

Starting point is 00:34:46 a high ticket service that's several thousand pounds or dollars, then they're probably not going necessarily inquire with you on the first time of visiting your website ever. They might flick around a few pages. They might check out your results, your case studies, the price, they might get some FAQs, but then they might hop off your website. So they might spend a couple minutes, and that's where you might want to consider doing something like retargeting, so running retargeting ads, the channels they hang out on, whether that's Facebook, retargeting, LinkedIn, retargeting, etc., because not everyone's going to visit your, going to inquire on your website for the first time. So that's how you can split those two types of traffic, and you'll see with cold traffic

Starting point is 00:35:21 your site's got to work a lot harder compared to warmer prospects that are referred in. Yeah, it's true. And depending on where your traffic sources are, might guide some of those decisions if you feel like, if you're driving a lot of cold traffic, then you have one. And it does bring up the, what masters, how many masters are we serving?

Starting point is 00:35:43 Like, I'm sure you get into this. So there's a lot of businesses that, if you're selling one thing, it's an easy, there's the right way to do it, and there's a driving leads. I'm sure you get into discussions, maybe companies that come to you that are more complex, tons of departments, tons of services and those kind of things. How does the process work?

Starting point is 00:36:06 I mean, how do you have those discussions with those more complex businesses? Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's where websites get more in depth when companies have tons of services, especially in the software space, if they're well-established, massive enterprise-level companies where they've got perhaps businesses they've acquired, they've got all these different tools in their tool set, all these different software as a service offerings, that's where it gets complex. And that's where websites can even attract, like you said, tons of different personas. There might be one kit of software, but they're having options that

Starting point is 00:36:37 sell to marketing execs, that sales execs, to operations, to HR. And that's where, again, the research is fundamental, because you've got to know all those personas, you've got to know the problems they care about, the expensive problems, you've got to know their goals, jobs they want to get done, and the end results they care about. And if you've got to know, got to consider a lot of stuff on this website. You've got to consider all the main service pages that they might potentially want to see. You've perhaps got to consider how this website is going to rank on Google search, so organic search from an SEO search engine optimization play and how it's mapped out from that sense. You've got to consider that there might be colder and a medium

Starting point is 00:37:13 level warmer traffic and what we want folks to do when they land in this site. So we're going to give them a clear idea of what we're doing, how we're helping. Maybe if we're providing a high ticket service, then initially we want folks to sign up to a lead magnet, so maybe download a guide or we want to point them to our podcast, want to get them to check out our email list. So it's so much of this is understanding those persona, understanding those actions we want people to take, understanding what the route to market is, i.e. what different marketing channels are we going to be driving to this website, whether that's SEO, whether that's Google Ads, whether that's kind of social ads, which can be less higher intent,

Starting point is 00:37:52 because people are browsing social, whether that's email, referrals, etc., what pages we're driving people to. So a lot of this, like you'll see from what I'm saying, is just getting back to those basics and understanding who we're targeting, where we're bringing them in for, what's going to resonate with them, and what kind of actions we want them to take. And there's no long or simple answer. A lot of it involves a lot of it involves a lot of planning out,

Starting point is 00:38:17 researching and designing and then building and then testing over time. It sells, you should think of your website is almost a living thing, because there's always things that you can measure with your analytics, like the traffic, conversion rates, session time, how long people spend on it. There's always things you can do from that side of things, and analytical. You can always be talking to prospects to learn what they like, what they think could be improved, etc.

Starting point is 00:38:41 So there's always edits that you can be making to your site as well, the content standpoint, design, page standpoint, and so on. I think this is all, as you were talking and I was thinking through it, like distilling this into the opportunity or the challenge, if I don't know how you want to look at it. You think about websites versus landing pages. And so that's a lot of the challenge because you think about a website and I always, the classical sense, thought of it as the brochure for the brand in a way. your digital brand, your digital brochure. But the promise and the opportunity of digital marketing, ads, content, LinkedIn ads, Facebook ads, YouTube ads, wherever or programmatic,

Starting point is 00:39:32 wherever your B2B ads might be keeping this B2B focused, the landing page for that ad needs to quickly pay off and lead, get to a lead ultimately. And I think that's, I think some of the fundamental challenge of, and then you get into SEO and thinking about how to write for keywords. If you've got a brochure type site, lots of copy, lots of opportunity to bring to life keywords on page, off page, all those things. I think that's the challenge in my mind, I think for companies and even myself in thinking

Starting point is 00:40:14 through landing page versus website brochure information. Yeah. How would we distill that for our audience, that dichotomy? I'd even throw one more in the mix as well. Like I'd say, like I always say, if you're a brand new company and perhaps your bootstrap, like you've got very limited cash, I actually would say, don't worry about kind of research, all that stuff I've talked about until you're more evolved and you've got a good flow of revenue and cash flow,

Starting point is 00:40:50 I'd encourage you to do a more simplified website. Yeah, yeah, exactly. It might be a landing page, might be three to five pages, just homepage, services, results, contact, that kind of stuff. But to your point, for a landing page, I think landing pages are great if you've got one specific offer, one specific action you want folks to take. So if you're sending traffic from, I don't know, Facebook ads, whatever,

Starting point is 00:41:14 and your one action you want them to take is to download a guide, a playbook or watch a video, or maybe even a low-ticket investment, like 50 bucks for this thing. It ain't going to work on something that's high ticket because it's the first time you're counting me from the ads. So it's got to be a low ask. And that page has got to work super hard. It's got to build trust, share results, all that good stuff.

Starting point is 00:41:35 If it's a one single offer, landing page is great. They can guide people to download that guide, download that playbook, sign up, invest in a low-ticket offer. And then you can email them over time. They join your list. You can remark it to them. And then you might be able to push them into higher ticket offers over time. But especially in business to business, B2B marketing, nothing's ever that simple.

Starting point is 00:41:58 When you're in high ticket offers, when the service that you're providing is maybe several grand a month or high tens of thousands a year, people don't just go on to your website once and inquire or buy. It's just not that simple. I'll give you an example. someone recently came through our website and we have a field on our calendar booking form called for How Did You Hear About Us? They said, LinkedIn. On the sales call a couple days later, I said,

Starting point is 00:42:25 Oh, hey man, how's it going? What was your route to stumbling upon us today? Was it LinkedIn? He said, oh, no, man, I listened to your podcast for like six months. Then I connected to your LinkedIn. Then I saw your content. Then I trusted that you could deliver. Listen to a few more episodes.

Starting point is 00:42:39 Hopped over to your YouTube channel and eventually reached out. A B2B buying, a high ticket buying, as messy as anything, man. So landing pages just won't work for that kind of stuff, right? They're going to jump onto a bunch of channels. And your website is one piece of the puzzle. Your Google ranking might be another piece. LinkedIn might be another piece.

Starting point is 00:42:56 Facebook might be another piece of podcast. So they're all assets, right? They're all distribution channels that feed into it. Landing pages have their place. But if you're selling higher ticket stuff, it's just not that simple. Yeah. It's like the customer journey for B2B. It's a great discussion around that.

Starting point is 00:43:14 And again, asking the customer, it's like, it's dangerous because what's funny to me is you'll hear all of that, like what you just described. And then when you get underneath it, and my buddy Fred said you guys are awesome. Like, they did all of that, but it started with Cousin Fred at the grocery store line or whatever. There's always a attributing sales is a funny thing. Yeah, exactly. That's where some of the biggest. I've worked with before. They're like, if you ask them, is your marketing working?

Starting point is 00:43:46 Absolutely. I know where exactly 50% of it works. It's always that other 50%. It keeps them up at night. It is. It's very difficult. It's just you don't always know the path that they're going to find it. That's it.

Starting point is 00:44:05 That's it. You can never know 100%. A lot of, you'll notice a lot of what I talk about is involving your clients, your customers, getting regular feedback loops from them. But using the tools, so with websites, you've got tools like Google Analytics and various other tools that can tell you, like someone converted or they inquired on this channel, the website's picking up traffic from various channels, Google Ads, Organic Search, Facebook ads, email, whatever. Then you can use forms on your website for how did you hear about us, make them fill out that form. Then you can ask someone sales calls, and you can constantly do a feedback loop. So you can make informed decisions based on all those different channels and all those different channels and all those

Starting point is 00:44:41 putting all those different pieces of data together. Can you be 100% sure? God, no. You've got to constantly evaluate it because like I say, the buying journey is so messy. Yes. Sam, as we close out here, any final tips, tricks or things that you counsel people on? Yeah. To summarize what we've discussed, your website can quite literally be your very best or be your very worst salesperson

Starting point is 00:45:06 depending on how you research, design, build, update and market it. So in most companies' case, they want it to be their best. So don't neglect it. Even if you, even if 90% of your business is word of mouth for referrals, like we touched on earlier, those folks are probably still checking your website and you don't know what you don't know. So you're not going to know about a lead that you missed. You're just going to miss it. So if that website isn't hitting the mark, like it's taking ages to load,

Starting point is 00:45:35 it's not presenting the information they care about seeing, it's not building confidence with results, it's not sharing the key piece of information they need. you're losing leads, losing potential business that you didn't even know is coming through the door and your competitors are getting a free lunch. So that's why I'd urge you to consider. I love it. Good advice. You don't know what you're missing out on.

Starting point is 00:45:55 That's the scary thing. You don't know how many people are dropping off if they're not getting to the bottom of at least the form fill or something like that. Nothing worse than that. Yeah. Sam, where can everybody learn more about what you got going on? I think you're doing with Bing B2B. appreciate it man so yeah by all means connect on me on linkedin my name's sam dunning i share the daily tips around website SEO and more i run the podcast which is called breaking b2b where

Starting point is 00:46:23 we interview marketing practitioners or i also run solo episodes each week with stories ideas case studies b2b marketing lastly if you're perhaps a little frustrated every time target clients search for what you do on google your competitors are above you stealing traffic and in bounds or maybe you've got a decent site already, but it's just not converting a steady flow of sales leads to your team, then happy to discuss and see if we can help you at breakingb2b.com. Awesome. Thank you so much for coming on, Sam, and I look forward to further partnership and discussions. Got a lot to share. Appreciate it, man. Hey, guys, you want to find us, Ryan is right.com. Find all the highlight clips and the full episodes and the show notes where you can get the details

Starting point is 00:47:08 to Sam's info and all things breaking B2B. Where I'm at Ryan Alford on all the social media platforms. We'll see you next time. I'm right about now. This has been right about now with Ryan Alford, a Radcast Network production. Visit Ryanisright.com for full audio and video versions of the show or to inquire about sponsorship opportunities.

Starting point is 00:47:30 Thanks for listening.

Right About Now - Legendary Business Advice - Breaking B2B with Founder Sam Dunning

There aren't comments yet for this episode. Click on any sentence in the transcript to leave a comment.