Zahir Palanpur, AzulArc

In an earlier article titled Anchoring Your Marketing Initiatives with Your Web Presence, we emphasized the importance of your website as the anchor to all your marketing initiatives. In business-to-business markets, an estimated 9 out of 10 prospects will visit your website before considering your product or service. So what happens when they land on your home page? What will their experience be? A quality that consistently ranks high with 1st time visitors is Interactivity. How a visitor views and chooses to act on your content makes the experience personal. This personal interaction is key-critical to achieving your desired result--a name and contact information granting permission to engage.

Search engine optimization (SEO), ad words and email campaigns are sources of on-line marketing tactics that will drive traffic to your site. For most companies in the B2B arena, more traditional contact drives the majority of first time visits. This could be through a meeting at a networking session, offline promotions or a referral. Regardless of how they visit your website or how often they come back, the more interactive options you provide, the more productive your site will be in closing the Prospect Gap, the first step in the revenue generation formula.

Here are some practical considerations for engaging your web audience as you develop your interactive strategy:

FIRST IMPRESSIONS: At a basic level, you need a well conceived and designed website that reflects your brand, what your firm stands for as well as your products and services. We all know the power of first impressions. Sometimes it's the only impression. An impactful site creates an accurate image and communicates a promise that encourages your prospect to invest more time to investigation your firm. .

GUIDE YOUR PROSPECT: Next, be sure to have plenty of ways for your prospect to connect with you. It is amazing how many sites make it difficult to find the right contact information. Your site should guide and encourage your prospects to continue dialog with you with multiple options and points of contact for more information.

GIVE VALUE: Content in the form of knowledge, expertise and tools are another great way of engaging your prospects and capturing contact information. For example, you could create tools that help compute the cost-benefit of your solution or allow for self assessment (see Growth Gap assessment tool on our site). The same applies for articles, expert opinion and case studies. Providing upfront value casts you in a favorable light. Often the result is volunteering their contact information in exchange. Better yet, an immediate phone call is the most desired response.

CREATE COMMUNITY: Taking these ideas a step further, you can extend the knowledge exchange by creating a password protected "community" with exclusive information and special insights for those who register. You can also do this for your existing customers who are your best source for additional business. Blogs and user generated forums are similar tactics to engage and further interact with site visitors. Be sure to dedicate the resources, expertise and time if you plan to make a success of this.

BUILD CREDIBILITY: Finally, customer testimonials and quotes along with product and project profiles go a long way in validating your firm. All of these build credibility as your prospects contemplate doing business with you.

In conclusion, your site is not only responsible for first impressions, but the final point of reference before purchasing and every step in between. For this reason, your site should be your most compelling marketing tool and the anchor all your prospecting initiatives. Engage your web audience. The more interactive ingredients you build into your web experience, the more opportunities you have to convert a visitor into a customer-for-life.

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