Right About Now with Ryan Alford - Breaking B2B with Founder Sam Dunning

Episode Date: April 30, 2024

TAKEAWAYSImportance of understanding the needs and perspectives of the target audience in B2B website designCommon mistakes in website design based on personal preferences rather than the needs of the target audienceProcess of refining problem statements and testing them through outreachFundamentals of B2B websites, including the home page and the "grunt test"Controversial topic of sharing pricing on the websiteDifferent types of website traffic and catering to each effectivelyDesigning websites for businesses with multiple services and departmentsComparison between websites and landing pages for specific offers and low-ticket itemsCreating a feedback loop to inform sales calls and improve marketing strategyImportance of continuous evaluation and improvement to ensure the website meets the needs of the target audience  TIMESTAMPSThe importance of understanding the target audience (00:00:00) Sam Dunning discusses the need to understand the needs and perspectives of the target audience when designing a B2B website.Sam Dunning's background and career trajectory (00:02:56) Sam Dunning shares his background and career trajectory, including his experience in retail, web agency, and marketing.The impact of ego on website performance (00:09:40) Dunning emphasizes the negative impact of ego on website performance and the need to focus on the target audience instead of personal preferences.Customer research for effective website design (00:15:35) Dunning highlights the importance of customer research for creating website content and messaging that resonates with the target audience.Challenges in customer research (00:19:18) Discussion about the challenges of customer research, including bias and the need to dig deep to understand the root of the problems faced by the target audience.Customer Research and Testing (00:22:17) Sam discusses the importance of customer research and testing problem statements with target clients to refine assumptions.Understanding the Target Audience (00:23:56) Sam shares his experience of understanding the needs of the target market and the importance of resonating with potential clients.Website Design and Messaging (00:25:37) Sam emphasizes the importance of understanding and resonating with the audience compared to making oneself sound impressive.Fundamentals of B2B Websites (00:26:06) Sam discusses the importance of research and the home page, including the "grunt test" for clarity and the impact of page speed.Pricing and Social Proof (00:29:45) Sam discusses the controversy of sharing pricing on the website and the value of social proof in building trust.Visitor Engagement on Websites (00:32:14) Sam explains the differences in visitor engagement between warm prospects and cold traffic and the need for a good first impression.Complex Businesses and Website Design (00:35:12) Sam discusses the complexity of website design for businesses with multiple services and personas, emphasizing the need for thorough research and planning.Websites vs. Landing Pages (00:39:31) Sam explains the differences between websites and landing pages, highlighting the role of landing pages for specific offers and the complexity of high-ticket sales.Customer Journey and Attribution (00:42:07) The discussion delves into the complexity of the customer journey in B2B marketing and the challenge of attributing sales to specific marketing efforts.Understanding Customer Needs (00:43:29) The importance of gathering feedback and data from various channels to understand the messy buying journey.Maximizing Website Potential (00:43:59) Emphasizing the critical role of a well-researched, designed, and updated website in maximizing sales potential and avoiding missed opportunities.Connecting and Learning More (00:45:12) Sam Dunning's invitation to connect on LinkedIn, listen to his podcast, and seek assistance for improving website performance.Closing Remarks and Contact Information (00:45:49) Expressing gratitude for the conversation and providing contact information for further discussions and partnerships. If you enjoyed this episode and want to learn more, join Ryan’s newsletter https://ryanalford.com/newsletter/ to get Ferrari level advice daily for FREE.  Learn how to build a 7 figure business from your personal brand by signing up for a FREE introduction to personal branding https://ryanalford.com/personalbranding.  Learn more by visiting our website at www.ryanisright.comSubscribe to our YouTube channel  www.youtube.com/@RightAboutNowwithRyanAlford. 

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. 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 the action is. This is Right About Now with Ryan Alford, a Radcast Network production. This is Right About Now with Ryan Alford, a Radcast Network production. We are the number one business show on the planet with over 1 million downloads a month. Taking the BS out of business for over six years and over 400 episodes.

You ready to start snapping necks and cashing checks? It starts right about now. 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 in the agency world, there's always discussion about how you do better marketing, how you do better B2B marketing. So we just had to go to the expert, Sam Dunning. He's the founder of Breaking B2B. Welcome to the show, Sam.

Hey, Ryan. Appreciate you having me on, man. Really 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 the States, it's clear you're across the pond a little bit. And not that, just like my accent gives away that I'm a Southern guy from the 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 Yeovil in Somerset. So that's where we're based.

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 England, we're just not geared up for it. So as soon as something like that happens, everything just shuts down, man. We're just like locked in our houses. But apart from that, nice countryside. 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 there but yeah man 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 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 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.

self 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 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 there people in the uk just grunt at you and almost moan at you, they'll 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. 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 I took an interview the next day and thought, yep, jacked in that retail job, started working at a web agency and essentially was like a jack of all trades. So started off kind of project managing websites, doing a few sales calls, learning how to design sites, learning what was involved in digital marketing to start growing businesses. But a quick funny story. One of the first leads, one of the first sales inquiries they ever gave me, 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 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? I think I quoted him. 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. I just said yes to no clues at the clue at the time about sales and i was 18 19 roughly now i'm 33 i just said yes to every request on the sales call and 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 anymore i sold it for 500 pounds which is probably equivalent of i don't know seven eight hundred bucks and luckily we yeah but it'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 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 but yeah luckily this guy was quite friendly and understood that i was new and 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 24-7, 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 soul of the business.

And that teamed up with SEO. 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. 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, start of 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 B2B marketers and founders who are breaking B2B as well. Sounds like a similar journey to a lot of people.

You're finding your passions, finding your skill sets, 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. 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. I'm trying to think of how you were speaking. But that's where you learn.

I can try to imagine specking that out after the fact. Because on its surface, if you go even now, much less 10, 12 years ago, 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's behind that you can't see yeah this starts to write 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, even like in a small agency, specking that out, that's probably two or 300 grand. Easy. Easy.

It's like when I've had sales inquiries years ago where folks would say, I just need a website like Google, just a simple one pager 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. 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 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 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. 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. 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, 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 a sales call, whatever the 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 looks good, is 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, 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 home page which we can dive into the fundamentals in 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. Because 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. 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 executives and clients and having to tell them that the bragging stuff, the speed, the feeds, 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 home page right yeah yeah exactly and these issues like you mentioned there ryan they're not just appropriate for your website they're appropriate for marketing in general yeah 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 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 at the very start of a website exercise is actually spend some time, whether that's yourself as a founder or with your team, and really get down to basics. 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 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 in action. So if you're like a technology or software business, maybe it's a demo before trial. proof of your offer in action. So if you're like a technology or software business, maybe it's a demo before trial. 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 on relevant pages that 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 reps calendar

or using a tool like Revenue Hero, which is similar to calendarly 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. It's customer research. basically interviewing anywhere between, if you can, five to 10 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, 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 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 and reach out to a company like ours and that's gonna 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 on your site how 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 website? So that can give you some real insights. Like they might say, we don't have a pricing page or the case studies are quite thin, or I couldn't really understand exactly what it is you do, or it's quite difficult to contact you. So my point here is you're doing these five to 10 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 10 interviews, you'll see patterns in people's responses.

You'll see common things that come up like might be, this is the juicy problem we fix. This is the main outcome people want as a result of working with us. For clients that 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. 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, your messaging, and more based on what real potential clients or existing clients care about learning, seeing, 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's 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 when you're listening. The only thing that I think about that, 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. Whether they're, if you, Steve Jobs would have asked consumers if they wanted the iPhone, or if they wanted an iPod, or an iPad.

If you would have described, ask 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. So I'm not a customer research expert. We've interviewed a few on to this so i'm not a customer research expert we've interviewed a few on breaking b2b podcasts so you're 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 yeah so if you interview like your cousin your auntie yeah you've built stuff for or likewise maybe customers have been with you months or years don't interview them like they're too biased you want to interview folks you've only just onboarded because they they don't know that much about you really yep or prospects that may be even a bit cold 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 10 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 said to them, look, 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. You'd say something like, why is revenue dropping? And that's what they might say. We're finding it is 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 for hours each day

trying to work out these statistics and these solutions. And you go, okay, so what's that doing to 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 problem. So there's a few elements to it, and this could be a huge discussion itself. 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, et cetera. Yeah, 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, are they problem aware? Do they truly know? Do they know their problem? I have that discussion with people sometimes. 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 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 straighted when target clients search for your offer or your service competitors are constantly ahead of you on Google, kind of stealing traffic or an 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 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 grabbed 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 officers, demand generation folks,

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. 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 to see if they actually resonate with your 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? 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, 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 a sales call, usually you do a bit of a discovery. So after you've done the pleasantries,

you 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 in like a lot of marketing and sales is digging in to understand the prospect's current world any frustrations they're having if they're expensive frustrations and and where they're trying to get to like a great book and this is gap selling by

a chap called keenan like that told me a lot of this kind of stuff working out the size of the gap and if it's something you want to do but yeah that just gives you one example like i used to think that you had to wow people all the time and really it's more about understanding and resonating with folks compared to just trying to kind of make yourself sound really cool i'll just i'll distill that it's about them and not you that that says it in a lot fewer words. Thank you. Yes. Talking with Sam Dunning. 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 yeah let's dig into kind of a few of the

fundamental pages and then we can tear some of those apart so we talked a bit about research we touched a bit about the home page 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 story brand he says you should run something on your homepage, 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 home page screen on his laptop if not and your website's not hitting the mark and you're potentially losing traffic and potential leads so you could run that test right now like you could get someone that's never been on your website to check it out maybe it it's your grandma, maybe it's your friend, maybe it's

someone you're connected to on Facebook or 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 then want to weave 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 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 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 that 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 and copy and paste your website URL, and it gives you actionable tips. It'll 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 a slow website are 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 WebP based images. So those kind of things, just trying to put too much content on the page is perhaps going to take ages to load, too many plugins, or maybe the website platform like 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 that you don't want to share your pricing on your website, 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 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. Even on my pages on our website, I'll say, like, prices start from 3K a month. That's for SEO. Prices start from this. Maybe you have three tiers right plan a

typically three to five k plan b five to ten 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 kick it weed out tire kickers. So if you're getting a lot of poor fit 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 story of a problem you fixed, how you helped a customer and the results they gained with that 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 asked on sales calls like, Sam, why is 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 do you compare to other businesses in your space? All these questions I get on sales calls, I address them head on. The reason I do that on the service and pricing pages is because it saves me time on sales calls and it even speeds up deal 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 those are just a few tips but there's plenty more does sam do you think

your prospects spend more or less time than you think on the website like i have that debate sometimes, or internally probably more than anything. How much time are they willing to spend here, like today's age? It 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 warm prospects, warm traffic, or cold traffic. So if they're warm traffic, i.e. let's say someone referred or recommended you, probably not going to see that much. And your website has got to do quite a lot wrong to deter that prospect from getting in touch with you, like booking a call or whatever. But it can be done. So for example, if you make some of those deadly sins, someone recommends you, but then they go onto your website and they 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 that are just taking ages. I can't see any results, any testimonials, any examples of work. 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, cold traffic, maybe there's someone that's come in from an ad, 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 a high-ticket service that's several thousand pounds or dollars, then they're probably not going to 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, your 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, et cetera, because not everyone's going to visit, you're 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, your site's got to work a lot harder compared to warmer prospects that are referred in. see with cold traffic 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? 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 kinds of things. How does the process work? 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 that 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 sell to marketing execs, that sells execs, to operations, to HR. And that's where, again, the research is fundamental. 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 you've 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 level warmer traffic and what we want folks to do when they land in this site. So we want 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 is going to be less higher intent because people are browsing social, whether that's email, referrals, et cetera,

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. There's no long or simple answer. A lot of it involves a lot of planning out, researching, designing, then building, and then testing over time. You should think of your website as 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 that analytical you can always be talking to prospects to learn what they like what they think could be improved etc 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 depending on 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

But the promise and the opportunity of digital marketing, ads, content, LinkedIn ads, Facebook ads, YouTube ads, wherever, or programmatic, wherever your B2B ads might be keeping this B2B focused. 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 rank 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 through landing page versus website brochure information. How would we distill that for our audience? That dichotomy. I'd even throw one more in the mix as well. I'd say,

I always say, if you're a brand new company and perhaps you're bootstrapped, like you've got very limited cash, I actually would say don't worry about research, all that stuff I've talked about until you're more evolved 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 i'd encourage you to more do a more simplified website yeah yeah exactly it might be a landing page might be three to five pages just home page services results contact yeah that kind of stuff but to 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, and your one action you want them to take is to download a guide, 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 from the ad, so it's got to be 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 from the ad. 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. If it's a one single offer, landing pages are great. They can guide people to download that guide, download that playbook, sign up, invest in a low ticket offer, fine.

And then you can email them over time they join your list you can remarket 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 when you're in high ticket offers when you're the service that you're providing is maybe several grand a month or high tens of thousands a year, people don't just go onto 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 of days later, I said, 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 with you on LinkedIn. Then I saw your content. Then I trusted that you could deliver,

listened to a few more episodes, hopped over to your YouTube channel and eventually reached out. B2B buying, high ticket buying, it's messy as anything, man. So landing pages just won't work for that kind of stuff, right? channel and eventually reached out to be 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. 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 fun. There's a great discussion around that. 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, hey, 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 marketers I've worked with before, they're like, if you ask them, is your marketing working? Absolutely. I know where exactly 50% of it works. It's always that other 50%. It keeps them up at night. It is.

It all works. It's very difficult. It's just you don't always know the path that they're going to find it. That's it. That's it. 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, like 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 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.

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, 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 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, 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 was 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 though. You don't know what you don't, what you're missing out on. 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. Sam, where can everybody learn more about what you've got going on?

I think you're doing with Breaking 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 we interview marketing practitioners. I also run solo episodes each week with stories, ideas, case studies, B2B marketing.

Lastly, if you're perhaps a little frustrated that every time target clients search for what you do on Google, your competitors are above you, stealing traffic and inbounds, or maybe you've got a decent site already, but it's just not converting a steady flow of sales leads for your team, then happy to discuss and see if we can help you. It's 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? Ryanisright.com. Find all the highlight clips and the full episodes and the show notes where you can get the details, the Sam's info, and all things breaking B2B. I'm at Ryan Alford on all the social media platforms.

We'll see you next time on 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. Thanks for listening.