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If you look at the data from the survey, you will see that marketers believe their website is the leading source of leads and that 80% of marketers believe they are NOT maximizing their efforts there.As I like to say:  “you got them into the store (aka website), now what?”  The next step for marketers who are doing the right things with inbound marketing, lead nurturing, and such as optimize conversion when they get them to the website.

I am shocked that in this day and age: 27% have 8 or more fields.

Ardath: In your opinion, what is the biggest reason that B2B websites fail to generate demand?Craig: There are two reasons.The first is the propensity for creating brochureware.   Many websites are still boring, corporate, sterile, etc.  In today’s world, content needs to be arresting and provide buyers with something they actually want to read.  As well, design and usability is very important to the user experience.The second is conversion, plain and simple.  You have to decide what you want your website visitors to do on a particular page, etc.  If it is to register for something, then optimize the experience for the registration.   Most websites are not the great at that.

Though 88% of B2B companies say they understand their target audiences at least moderately well, they still struggle to translate that understanding into new business leads via their corporate websites, according to a new study by Demandbase and Focus.

Corporate websites are a critical channel for B2B companies. After personal connections and referrals (41%), websites are the leading source of leads (23%) among surveyed B2B professionals, outpacing email (14%), online advertising (7%), and social media (3%).

More than three-quarters (77%) of social media users say websites should offer social login—i.e., using a social media identity to log in at a website—as an alternative to traditional account creation or logging in as a guest, up from the 66% who said so a year earlier, according to a study by Janrain.

Many socially networked consumers leave false information when asked to register: 88% admit to having given incorrect information or leaving forms incomplete when creating a new account on a website, up from 76% who said so a year earlier.

With social login, consumers are given the choice to have a more personalized experience when they visit a website without needing to re-enter preferences.

Immediately orient visitors. "You'd better make sure people can figure out what your company does, why they're staring at your webpage and what they should do/get—and do it fast," Albee advises. Dump the jargon and get to your core information. Speak directly to them. Tell them what's in it for them. "Make sure your content speaks directly to them about stuff they care about—high-priority stuff," she says. Provide 'interest pathways' for them. To accommodate a range of prospects, offer unique pathways that appeal to individual interests—such as, "if X is your priority, then click here for all the resources you need about that topic." Answer their questions. Access your own site from the Internet, navigate it and see what questions come to mind as a visitor. This exercise can help you identify information gaps. Get them to do something. "What event can they sign up for that relates to their interests?" Albee asks. "What white paper or eBook can they download? Do you have related blog posts they might be interested in?" Invite them to follow you on Twitter.

Responsive design. This is a term that means that your website automatically senses what kind of device is being used to access information and adjusts accordingly. To further explain, responsive design allows the users to access an advanced four column layout, with the width of 1292 pixels, on a 1025 pixel width screen, and then automatically simplifies the site into one or two columns for smart phone viewing.

While testing content is nothing new—in fact, most marketers and agencies perform some sort of testing on creative content before publication—the formalization of such processes has become a priority at many b2b companies.

We've learned that simplicity is the key—easily scanned, brief content, appropriate imagery and a value-based call to action.” For example, after simplifying a registration form for a particular call to action, SAP.com saw a 96% increase in the number of registrations.

“We have to look at what is the downside to SAP in removing a field, such as taking away "industry.' We have industry-specific sales teams, so for each field we take away to get an increased conversion, there is a downside—now we have to do more work on the back end [to learn this information].”

As a B2B marketer, your job is to diversify the lead generation offers available on your blog so they apply to these different personas. These offers will fall into two main categories.

If someone is visiting your site for the first time, it's likely they aren't ready for a ton of product-focused information. Instead, they probably want to learn more about your business and, more importantly, your expertise. The best way to convey industry expertise is through some type of premium content.

Warm leads need a different type of offer. They already know that you have expertise, possibly because they have read one of your premium content pieces or because they have already talked to a sales rep. These leads want more product-focused information.  They want detail, a discount or a free trail.

1 – Attract many, then focus on filtering If your prospects do research online, will they find your company, or your competitor? Mark Roberge, VP Sales from HubSpot argued that you should keep the top of your sales funnel as broad as possible.

#2 – Give all sales people a social media address Scott Holden, Senior Director at Salesforce.com argued that not just companies need to be discoverable, but also individual sales representatives. Social pages are often the first ones to come up in search results.

Scott Holden summarized this as moving from self-promotion to social referrals: “trust me, he is a great lover” and not “I am a great lover”.  I expressed a similar sentiment in my blog earlier this week on Genuine Customer Engagement.

All successful whitepapers have a call to action. Download this ROI calculator, visit our website, call us on this number- you get the idea. You have wooed the reader, don’t leave them hanging.

A broken or non existent content strategy Whitepapers can’t stand on their own- they need content leading up to them, and they work best when they can direct the reader to another piece of collateral. A well written whitepaper is no replacement for a content funnel. 7

10. No social sharing buttons

However, during the past six months, there have been some major changes in the way audiences consume information. These changes are happening simultaneously on two fronts, one in the form of content curation and the other in content shifting. While content curation is nothing new, the rise in the use of mobile devices — especially tablets, such as the iPad and Kindle Fire — is changing when, where, and how we read internet content.

In the process, the programs often strip sidebar content and remove distractions such as advertising, allowing the reader to focus on the text of the article (or video/photos).  

Pew Research showed that nearly 20 percent of the U.S. population owns a tablet device, and nearly 30 percent owns an e-reader of some sort (a number that nearly doubled over the 2011 Christmas holiday season).