Optimising B2B Landing Pages for Real Results with Tas Bober

00:04 Welcome to another episode of marketing for marketers, the series where we interview some of the brightest minds in marketing to unlock insights into the strategies that help generate pipeline. can see a facial expression there. We were definitely class is one of the brightest minds in marketing. Um, so my guest today is Taz Boba. Taz is the founder of the scroll lab and cohost of the notorious B2B podcast alongside Tim Davidson. Now the scroll lab is a B2B marketing consultancy specializing in paid ads landing pages for B2B SaaS companies.

00:33 So Taz, welcome. I'm excited to speak all about B2B landing pages over the next hour, but before we jump in, how are you? I am wonderful. Thank you so much for having me. I love hearing the plug for Notorious B2B. I think you're maybe the second or third podcast that's actually called it out, but I mean, we just launched it, I guess, a couple of months ago, but it's nice that it is now becoming notorious. So yeah. feel like you need some sort of notorious B.I.G. artwork or like some sort of trailer for it.

01:02 We have already talked about this and I don't know if we'll run into any copyright issues, but actually putting Notorious B2B and then us on either side on a t-shirt and then having Notorious B2B on there would like a couple of- I will watch from the sidelines for the court cases that follow, because I'm sure like, yeah, and you know what? Here's the thing is like-

01:27 If you're not getting sued on a show that's called Notorious B2B, it's like, what are we doing here? know, we'll just ask for forgiveness later. So we'll just wait till the C &D hits. I will get the popcorn ready so that can watch. But yeah, as I sort of touched on, we're to be talking about B2B landing pages specifically for related to paid ads. Now, one of the team here at Dealfront has done some prep work for us to have this conversation. So we've got some questions to run through.

01:55 which hopefully by the end of the conversation, we'll give everyone a bit of a bit more of an understanding into the tactics, the strategies, tips, tricks, some secrets, maybe who knows all around B2B paid out landing pages. question one on my, on my, I feel like a game show host or something. So you've, you've, you've worked on website strategy with a lot of B2B businesses. What would you say is the biggest misconception you encounter when it comes to a landing page and how they drive conversions?

02:25 Do people assume it happens differently to the reality of it? they think a page needs to be one thing when in fact it needs to be something completely different? Yeah. And through no fault of their own, because that was also me in-house, was just creating landing pages the way all those HubSpot articles, right? That's like what we grew up on before like the AI thing happened and all of that stuff. I feel like in B2B, borrow.

02:53 the wrong things from B2C. There's so much we could borrow, but we tend to borrow the wrong stuff and think that it applies to B2B. So some of the things is treating something that is more informational or like a product info page where someone is actually, you know, they have a problem, they're shopping for solution, but then we treat a landing page for a gated asset the same way as we would treat something that's supposed to be informational about the product. And so somewhere in the midst of

03:23 We got to hit pipeline and getting approval from 15 stakeholders and do a CYA with finance and all of this stuff. The buyer kind of gets lost in there because we're not considering their intent. We're not considering their behavior. We're not considering their engagement. We just build these landing pages because we know best, because the best practices tell us these things and these HubSpot articles. And then we create a terrible landing page experience.

03:50 Um, I use this example. gave a talk last year at, um, the hero conference in San Diego and I showed a landing page by a very reputable company. it was kind of, can you name the company or is it like, yeah, was like net suites, uh, page and all I typed in was accounting software and Google. You would think that the.

04:14 accounting software, okay, I have no intent in there. I'm not using any qualifiers that say, well, am I an SMB? Am I whatever? This landing page pops up, I show it, it has a form that's longer than the copy on the page. hits you right when you land there. There's like AI powered accounting software is like the headline. And then it has three bullet points about, you know, just

04:40 how it'll handle all your stuff for you. don't, it was just like super vague. And then there was just feature dumping down below a couple of awards, not a single testimonial, nothing about the actual product, who it's for, what they do, no proof, nothing about what happens when you contact them. And then the CTA was, you know, contact us for a product demo. Bro, you are selling this software that you want people to buy and you're gating the product.

05:10 Um, so for me, it was just such a miserable experience. I'm like, this is what we're taught to do though. I can't even blame the marketers there because that was me too. After 400 websites, I was still building 90 pages like that. And then I realized, Ooh, as a buyer, because I was a buyer, like everything I did as a marketer, I hated as a buyer. And so we needed to switch that around. And that's what I have been doing the last two years.

05:36 you know, working with clients through the scroll lab is just kind of changing how we structure these pages, what information we put on there to really assist the buyer versus just like hyper-focused on like, let's drive a conversion, let's trap them. Let's get their information, which you can actually just buy, you know, if you really wanted their information that badly, but to actually create intent. That's a whole different ball game. you still find people are...

06:01 Not shocked, but surprised when you present what the page should look like. And they're like, really? that what this page should look like? Yes. So I've had a few comments like, oh, it's really long. Are people even going to read this? You know? And I was like, well, we're going to find out. I'm not giving you a magic bullet. I'm giving you the first best hypothesis of what a buyer is potentially looking for. And that's what we're kind of going for, right? What we try to do is control the things we can't control.

06:30 We want them to submit a form. You can force a buyer, you can be like at their house, like holding their hands and saying like, you know, I'm going to hold your family hostage if you don't fill out this form, because I have a quota to hit. Like that's just not how that works. But what you can control are the inputs. What are you giving them to spur that action? Are you giving them the right information? Are you telling them everything you need to do? So I always use this analogy, it's my favorite. If you're walking.

06:59 around in a mall and you walk past a shoe store and then someone's standing outside and you just walk past them and then they say, leather soles, right? Running shoes. And you're like, is this person okay? That doesn't make me want leather soles or running shoes. Maybe I'm like, oh, maybe I could be interested in shoes. Okay. And then you walk into the store and you're like, can I see the shoe? they're like, Can you give me a credit card information first, please?

07:28 And then I'll show you the shoes and you're like, I don't even know if I want the shoes. Like, I don't know anything about the shoes. What brand are you? I don't understand what's going on. Like, are you selling women's shoes? Like, I don't know what's going on. I haven't seen the freaking shoes, right? And we do that in B2B and it's so normal. It's normalized behavior. You know, it's so transactional. It's saying, give me your only point of leverage, which is your information. And we may or may not give you what you need. No, I like that.

07:57 The shoe store, is a good one. mean, we've seen, I think Lavender back in the day did those videos, didn't they? I think it was called Lavender Joe and he just went and sat, obviously these were staged, but he went and sat next to someone on a park bench and was like, do you want to read my ebook? And they're like, what are you on about? They were quite good videos and it's the same sort of analogy. Okay. So you spoke about some page length and things that should go on those pages.

08:23 When you're designing a landing page for a complex B2B product, how do you balance clarity with persuasion for something that's complex, but also try and keep it simple? Balancing act. How'd you go about that? Well, simple is relative. So if someone is buying a cybersecurity product, right, that is high stakes, the audience is less marketing resistant.

08:50 They're more cautious, they're more detail oriented. We take those things into consideration. So if you have a highly technical audience, chances are they want a lot more details and they want less. If you're selling to a marketer and it's something like Loom, do you need to provide a lot of context? I don't know. Right? Like Calendly for marketers, you don't need to provide them with a ton of context. So we're talking about the familiarity piece as well. And so with technical audiences, we will go copy heavy because I've done, you know, a number of

09:18 interviews with that group and they tell me that there are a couple of things they immediately distrust. One, lack of information. So they don't like the marketing fluff, one, two lines of copy. They also don't believe that testimonials on landing pages are real or that companies, the ones that companies provide them are real. They think we just make them up, which was so fascinating to me. So just things like that, they prefer to have product documentation. They want to see the stuff that isn't written by marketing.

09:47 And so some of those things also are a big consideration when we lay out the page. But in essence, there are some core areas that we start out with. And the biggest thing is we want the buyers to qualify us, not the other way around. Because if they qualify us and we have determined, or they have determined that we are the right kind of fit, they will move on to the next part of the research process, right? Which is, okay, now I can dig deeper. I just want to know, what are you? Do I need you?

10:15 Do you solve my specific problems? Do you have people like me who you've solved this for? Okay, I have to, now I've taken you into consideration as a potential match for my problem. And if we in SaaS think that someone's just going to come to a landing page and decide that we are the one, no, you're going to date around before you decide to get hitched. Right? Like that's just the reality of the situation. And so what the goal should be isn't like, Oh, just someone submit a form.

10:45 or someone buy from us, it's can we get on the short list? And I think that's the biggest first step. Can we get on the short list? And then it starts this evaluation process of I am better fit for you than your competitor because of XYZ use case. And you you start to get the nitty gritty. But my reality as a buyer when I was in-house was I had this deck that I would take from company to company to company. And I would just change the company's logo on there when I was in-house, but it was the same deck.

11:14 And that was my get approval business case deck. So anytime I needed a new CMS, a new CDN, new hosting platform, a web translation tool, I needed to make the case for zoom in for form enrich instead of trying to do it manually through Marketo. All of these things, I still have the decks. I will provide them to everybody. Like I still have them. I would put in this exact format, which is why am I asking for budget? What is the problem that we're facing?

11:42 How are the ways we could solve them, not just through other solutions, right? Not just through software purchases. Can I do it manually? Can I kind of half-ass do it with like, you know, cobbling together some tools and some manual stuff? Or, yeah, I might have to spend 20, 30K on this tool, but maybe it expedites everything else and gets, you know, gets us to a better spot. Budget, timeline for implementation, who's involved in the company? I had to do this. And then I would take it first to my boss. She'd get it approved. Okay.

12:11 Then go finance, finance, do you approve it? Right. Then I have to go to the stakeholders. Hey, InfoSec, is this tool going to pass? Right. Then I have to go to marketing ops. Can you guys take this on with your bandwidth and do this little mini like Taylor Swift tour inside the company to get approval for the tool? And so that's when I realized what landing page gives me that information that I need to put in this stupid business case. I had to go fishing.

12:41 on this expedition, on Reddit, texting friends, going on LinkedIn, going to the site, going to the competitor site, going to an agnostic review site. I had to do all that work to collect that information. And I don't even know if it's the real picture. So if a company was just upfront and said, here are the shoes, okay, you're 35 now, you work out a lot, here are shoes for a 35 year old woman, right? It's a little bit pricey, but it'll last you much longer.

13:10 right, the context, all of these things in order to justify the purchase. And then I get to put that in and tell my husband like, yo, I'm buying these $300 shoes. And then he's like, well, let's talk about it first, right? So we're doing the same thing in B2B is like, I have a lot of stakeholders and we got to do that. So imagine if a landing page had all the information for you to create this business case, you'd never have to leave.

13:37 You just be like, copy paste, copy paste, copy paste. And then you could go do the little road show. And so that's the theory that I worked on, put together on a page, done it now for like, I don't know, 22 companies or something like that. And we've seen some crazy stuff so far that has been really interesting, but I'll pause there and then we can go into some of the interesting stuff.

14:01 What are your thoughts on? Well, one, I love the shoe analogy again and trying to explain to your husband why you needed a $300 pair of trainers. no, the way in which you spoke about it in the, if I want to make the business case for a new, even new head count, all of the information that you need nowadays to get a new tool or new head count is exhaustive. it's almost like a dissertation at university now. So.

14:29 your point, if you're able to provide all of that information completely open book, one, you've already built trust and rapport, but two, you've done most of the legwork. when they, if they do raise their hand, shorter sales cycles, higher conversion rates, higher intent buyer, et cetera, et cetera. So yeah, it does make complete sense. And actually, it's the first time I've thought about the work that the prospect will have to do internally after they've looked at the page or.

14:58 We will kill campaigns because they don't interact with the page right away, but I don't care about that. If they are on the page and they've maybe spent a few minutes and then they leave without doing anything. I'm like, cool. That's a good win. Have they spent two minutes on the page? What section of the page were they on? What were they looking at? Were they consuming the information? Okay, great. Then they leave. And what happens is when I had to do that and do my road show, tell me.

15:26 much time it would even take for me to schedule a meeting and then wait to have that meeting with my boss and then the other stakeholders, Few weeks. But marketers will be sitting at a company going, oh my God, this campaign isn't working, kill it after like two weeks, right? But the reality is you get all that information, you leave, probably a prospect is doing

15:49 1500 other things. Purchasing your software is not the only thing that they are doing. They are doing a thousand projects. They are in back-to-back meetings. They are purchasing other types of software for other problems. They are doing other projects, putting together reporting decks for their leadership and sending emails. Actually doing their jobs. This is a very, very small percentage and we make it so damn hard for them.

16:20 So guess what? Then they put it off because they're like, I don't have all this information. And then suddenly it's like two days before the meeting, they're like trying to figure out, oh my God, where am going to get it? Like even a price range. They can't figure it out. And they're not going to talk to you until they know, you know, hey, the base level information that they would need to know, are you in budget before I go through this exhaustive sales process? And we don't do that. Only we did like an assessment.

16:48 And I had my assistant pull the hundred, which I guess I could have had ChatTPT do it. Maybe I'm a little bit old school, but I had her go through a list of a hundred SaaS companies. And I said, tell me how many have pricing on there? In B2C, you know what I hate the most? That when you're scrolling through for shoes and it says add to cart to see the price. Why? Why can't you freaking tell me? Does me adding it to the cart.

17:15 to see the price suddenly going to magically change my mind and leave it in the cart? I don't know. Maybe there's some science around that. Not for me. Not for... So we're fabricating intent by saying, hey, just sign up to view a product and get pricing. And we're like high-fiving each other inside the company like, whoa, this guy's part of our ICP and now he wants to know pricing. we're like stage three. It's a stage three op. The guy's like, dude, I just want to know how much it's going to cost me.

17:44 I don't know if I'm going to buy anything yet. I don't even know anything about your product. Right. And so it's just those little things that it's like, we've normalized so much in B2B and we have, they have so much work that they're doing. They go through like weeks and weeks and weeks and suddenly finally they get the approvals that they need and their boss says, Hey, okay. Go talk to these three. These three sound the best. Cool. Okay. Now I go probably back to the main website and I go get a demo or whatever.

18:13 to finally schedule a meeting and talk to someone. And then the chances of them getting back to me, that's pretty low, right? And so finally have these three meetings with them. And what's happened is marketing has killed the campaign because it didn't produce in two weeks when the prospect had to go through four weeks of meetings to get the approval because they're doing other stuff. And then they come in direct to the website. And I've been on thousands of marketing reporting meetings where I've said,

18:40 Yeah, paid search was kind of down tonight, down this month. had, you know, our direct was up. But anyway, we killed these other campaigns and it's just like, yeah, direct was up because that was the only way they were going to get to you. They're not going to try to find your paid landing page so you can get attribution. You know, it's so stupid. So it's just stuff like that where I'm like, okay, so those are the signals we're going to look at is on the landing page, how are they consuming the information? And those things are going to lead to conversion. You may get less conversions.

19:10 But in aggregate, are you seeing an incremental lift in handraisers over time because you've provided them the right information? So if you can optimize and control the outputs, well, optimize and control the inputs, right, based on the feedback, the outputs will come. And you may not get a thousand conversions, you might get 500, but yeah, deal velocity, right, much higher, intent, much higher, ICP, much higher, because they've self-qualified. So the density of ICP is much better. And that's exactly what we've seen.

19:39 You know, I think I'm trying to give reason to why marketers create hand raisers and things, they associate a pipeline stage or they lead score. And, know, in fairness, it's just over the years, the senior leaders in the business asking for proof that something is working and then marketers have to come up with some sort of positive signal or stage or score or label. And they attach to something to say, we're doing something right.

20:10 because someone's filled in this form. So I think that it's just been decades of having to show your worth internally, is, well, led us to where we are today, which it kind of makes sense in terms of you, spoke about scroll depth and conversion and zero click and then going to directs and stuff. in terms of like tactical tweaks, like button tests or pop-ups or the color of stuff can, can move the needle marginally or move the needle a bit, but

20:40 How do you take landing pages from optimizing to actually like uncovering insights about the audience or the product? Like if you've got minimal, let's say, conversions, how do you understand, how do you learn? First of all, I'm sure there's some science behind button colors, but I can tell you right now it's the last fricking thing I look at. Okay. I don't give a shit about button colors. You can bleep me out by the way. the day- No, raw and unfiltered. Okay. The day progresses, I just swear more and more. I just get more rowdy, right?

21:09 But yeah, so I don't care about the traditional CRO type stuff, but I focus a lot on how people are consuming information on the page and are we providing them with the right information. And there are a couple of things that we do, right? So as a company, in SaaS, we love to give ourself names, right? So instead of shoes, to continue with the shoe thing, we'd be like an all-in-one mobility, podiatric mobility device or whatever. And you're like, what?

21:38 They're freaking shoes. So we've seen this a few times now where we'll see the ultimate revenue generating tool and it's like a video tool. And then we saw this with one of my clients, was they were calling themselves a security questionnaire automation tool. Security questionnaire automation software. Cool. mean, kind of tells you what it is. What are people looking for before they come to that website? Vendor risk assessment. Google wouldn't even pick up that those were two.

22:08 Two of the same things, maybe AI could in the future, right? But half the time we're like, what does this company do? And when they try to give you all these acronyms or make all these descriptions, it's like, okay, if I was explaining it to somebody who didn't know this category that you made up, how would I explain it to them? Right? Like my mother-in-law, my daughter. I'm going to do a series by the way, pulling up SaaS websites. Now that my daughter who's six can read, have her read it.

22:38 And then tell me what she thinks it is. And it'll be a hilarious real life explain like I'm five. And people are gonna be like, well, she's not, she's not the audience. I'm like, you think your audience knows what this is? Like, I don't think so. Anyway, that was my slight, slight tangent, but you know, you got to throw the ideas out there one day. that'll be a very, very good series. Yeah, that would be a good series. Uh, she's hilarious too. Anyway, so I look at more qualitative feedback. So some of the things that we have.

23:06 lost along the way in marketing because we have been pressured for these numbers, right? I wrote a post a while ago that did really well and the hook was measurement killed the marketing star. Like before, when I started marketing, like 15 years ago, it was like vibes. It was all vibes. You know, was like, who could make the biggest splash? It was like, got milk. Do they know quantitatively how much got milk generated in revenue for them? Hell no.

23:36 But everybody knows about got milk, right? So it's just like, we have lost that because we are so like stage one, stage zero, you know, we're so into that mode. Well, I'm kind of taking it back a little bit and I'm saying, okay, what is behavioral science and how do people actually read information? Right. And we talk about like the fog method, which is like, they read in Fs. So placement of where you put key information is very important. That's one thing. Two.

24:04 We experience a lot of decision fatigue as a society right now. We have access to so much information. We also consume information differently than back in the day. Back in the day, we would read books and books and books, long form, a lot of stuff, right? Now it's a lot of like TikTok scrolling type of stuff. So the way we skim a page is we'll read all the headlines first, and then we'll see, scroll back, scroll down, scroll back up.

24:30 try to find something that we want to dive into. And I've seen this over and over again with heat mapping, session recordings, people rage clicking, right? They think something's going to go somewhere it doesn't, or they get frustrated. It's hilarious because people will act smart and say, yeah, when I go to a website and I'm sorry, when I do like, I'm smart, I try to mimic a British accent. makes us- No offense taken.

24:56 No, yeah, it's a big compliment. know, I can't, I can't use my regular accent. That's not as smart as a British accent. So if someone's sitting there and I picture like a very proper person that's like going through the site and then, you know, they're doing a survey response and they're like, yes, I'm very dignified and this is how. And then you actually watch them behind closed doors and they are rage clicking the shit out of the website. And you're like, Oh, this person is having a hard time. People will show you who they are and you got to believe them. And so.

25:25 That's when I'm looking at this stuff. So one key example is my favorite example. I've talked about it a ton is for one of my clients, snag it. They had 15 % of 2000 sessions that came to this page. 15 % of all the clicks was on the fourth FAQ all the way in the bottom of the page. What's happening with the fourth FAQ? Who gives a shit about that? I'm like, I just threw an FAQ on there. No, it was a question that said, Hey, this is a lifetime license.

25:52 If I bought this and I switched computers in two years, what happens to my license? Pretty, you know, that's kind of their objection. I'm going to pay for this lifetime license. What's going to, my device is not going to live as long as my license. So what happens then? And so we answer that question. We saw 15 % of the clicks going there, like 200 of them, like something insane. And we moved that to its own block. And then we saw purchases increased by 265%, even though there was a free trial available. They were like, I don't need a free trial.

26:22 I'm buying it, whatever. Cause we were like, yeah, you can't, you just move the license over. You just keep your key or you contact us if you lost your key, the end. It wasn't a big deal. You would never get that information from conversion data. If you only looked at the purchases of free trials, how would you make that optimization? You would never know because it's a lagging indicator. It's not a leading one. If someone has converted on a B2B landing page or a B2B website.

26:51 They've already done the research and come to the end of the road. There's nothing you can do there that's going to help the people who haven't converted come back. That's when you need to look at where they are in the consuming part of information and the collection of research and provide them and supply them with the information that they're actually looking for and that they actually need. What tools are you using primarily for that sort of insights?

27:17 What heat map tools, what screen recording, whatever session recording tools, what tools are you using? First of all, you don't need to go out and buy new tools for InfoSec to just reject, right? You can use the stuff that you already have. One, any kind of web analytics. If you're using GA4, that's fine. If you hate GA4 and you've moved on to another web analytics platform, that's fine too. Great. Amazing. Hotjar is what I use. I'm not advocating for it. It's just what I've used for many years, but I just use whatever my client

27:47 uses. And if they don't, then I'm like, hey, go sign up for any one of these that kind of fits your bill. Most of them will give you 2000 sessions a month for free. HotChar definitely does. So I'm like, before you start paying for another tool, see if you like this one. But at base level, you just need heat mapping that you can place on a page. And HotChar will also do session recordings for you. And then you can look at them, filter by like, these people were like 30 seconds. Okay, you want to look at all the ones that were over 30 seconds.

28:14 And then you can look at the heat map and see where are people interacting with the stuff the most. That's how we found out, you know, found out for Snagit. But conversion data would never give you that information. So I'm more like behavior led optimization than I am, you know, like conversion led. Because conversion is kind of like end of the road. We've done our job there. How do we get more people to hit the end of the road? Right. So I don't tell people it's one or the other. It's like, we need to hit them before that happens. So the path.

28:44 conversion starts with how they're consuming the information. you mentioned the snag example there being quite a surprising discovery. Have there been any other memorable A-B test results that surprised you? What was the unexpected outcome? Yeah, not even an A-B test, right?

29:04 Half the time we do the first best hypothesis and we see how people are interacting there. And the reason why I qualify my landing page to work with paid ads is because you can control the traffic with paid ads, right? I can actually send InfoSec professionals in this ICP and at least, hopefully, 90 % fit that ICP and come to this landing page and I can actually see how they are.

29:29 interacting with the page. A lot of people will try to adopt the same methodology and do it for the homepage, which you can. But the thing is, my mom visits my homepage. My customers visit my homepage. Prospects visit my homepage. My employees visit my homepage. So you're making judgments on calls based on, you know, diluted or muddy data. So you want to do it based on kind of a rich density of your ICP.

29:58 on these pages, but I do have clients who have done it the other way too. And that's fine. It's worked. I would just take it with less conviction. The one other one that I found, which shocked me because I've done again, 400 websites when I was in-house redesigned a bunch of them, done huge, ridiculous, $150,000, $200,000, redesigns and have implemented this one mistake that I only found out.

30:27 after I came out and had the reps like through clients. You know, those, those blocks on a website that have tabs and we always put our value props and stuff in these tabs, like integrations and like, you know, look at the reporting and we put a little like title on it. And then we want people to, no one clicks on those. And we had for one specific client. Again, we do a sample of 2000, 2000 sessions.

30:53 We put our value prop neatly in this box so that they didn't have to scroll a bunch. And guess what? Not one person, not a single person clicked on another tab in 2000 sessions. I called my client so fast and I was like, okay, here's the new design for the page. We need to pull them out and we need to split them up and make them so they're all on the page. She's like, it's going to be longer. I'm like, I can give a shit.

31:22 That's fine. We'll deal with that problem later. We got to make sure that they are even seeing the information before they consume it. We are hiding the most important information in these tabs. So now I never do tab blocks because of it. The other thing is the navigation and landing pages. We love to remove them. I used to remove them all the time because you're like, we're going to trap their ass and they'll have nowhere to go except convert. Right?

31:48 I had a client argue with me about the navigation and said, no, I want the navigation on there. And I said, no, I don't think you should have the navigation. It's going to hurt a lot of things, decision fatigue, whatever. And then finally we made a compromise. like, okay, we'll put a navigation, but it's going to be an anchored navigation and it can jump to the different sections that they want to go to. We got so many insights because people would come to the page and immediately jump to testimonials or immediately jump to FAQs. They wouldn't even read the stuff.

32:16 So instead of scrolling, like they're just going to the sections that they care about the most, which was so interesting. And guess what? Now I put them on every page. And then Google came up with the requirement that now landing pages, they require to have navigation. And so that is kind of what I'm evangelizing now is like, Hey, I've been doing this anchored nav. It gives you a lot more insights. Don't be scared of it, but definitely do not just put your main website navigation on these landing pages. Do these anchored navs. So yeah, basically here's my thing. I love being proven wrong.

32:46 I love it. Like you and I could talk a year from now and be like, oh my God, I fed you so much bullshit that first time, because when I went and ran this stuff, it was terrible. Right. But I love that. I love one of the other tests. Like I have a friend who's kind of in the same space and his company has access to like every A-B test. And then they'll give you like the best one to put on your page. And he did this whole study and they found that two CTAs are better than one. Blew my mind.

33:14 because I've always been like single CTA. So you can walk into this with an ego. You just got to walk in with so much curiosity and be like, wow, that's fascinating. I effed up, but that's cool. I love it. You know? I love being proven wrong because it means the next time it gets brought up in conversation, I know I'm right. Yeah, it's Stephen Bartlett. He talks about...

33:37 failing, often failing fast. It's a Facebook thing as well, but he actually has a fail, an A, B test or optimization test fail trophy. So it's the person each week who fails most because they've learned the most. And I completely agree with that. with, we, I'm making mental note of some of these suggestions as well, because we do have PPC landing pages with tab components and we don't have the anchor nav. So that's, that's two very, very interesting learnings.

34:04 We're doing one at the minute where we're redesigning the homepage hero from a previous winning variant. And we're not arguing. just had a different opinion to our product marketers as to how much, how much copy should go in there. We were like, that's way too much copy. But I said, in fairness, that's AB tested. So there's check it in and maybe people do like five lines of copy instead of three. I don't know. Let's prove it. But if I get proven wrong.

34:32 then I know the next time in the future where I'm suggesting a homepage here, I'm like, well, actually, well, actually, put a bit more copy in there, you might be surprised. So it's like a pub quiz when you don't get the question right. But when you know that when you get it wrong, you find out the correct answer. So the next pub quiz you go to, you get it right. And you'll never forget when you screwed up. You'll never forget those moments.

34:59 You may not remember every good moment that you have, because you're like, yeah, whatever, I got it going on. You know, obviously I nailed that. I'll tell you right now, I'll never forget the email that we were doing an A-B test for early in my career. Now, at this point, 10 years ago, never forget that I was running an A-B test email. I was like, okay, I got to schedule this on Friday, just so I'm not thinking about it. Instead of scheduling it, I sent it. And it was, the test was to test two different times.

35:28 And the time to send it was not Friday at 7 PM. Okay. That was not one of the times. Monday roll, I'm panicking. Monday rolls around. the client's on the phone and I have to tell her the bad news that the email went out. Oh, and by the way, it was her birthday that day. So, you know, I'll never forget that. It was so traumatic for me, but now it's like, it's so fascinating when I am proven wrong, because the other piece of it is knowing that maybe a test worked for one client.

35:58 And I'll go to another one and maybe make the same mistake. Maybe I have a tabbed block for someone else and it does fine. I don't know. Right. And I think there is that nuance where we can't just assume because something did or didn't work for one person or at one point does work later. A long form web landing page six years ago would have probably done like shit. Right. Because everybody was accustomed to the HubSpot landing page.

36:28 kind of like era when you could make decisions, when budget was like free and flowing. We don't have that now. Every dollar is under scrutiny now. Teams are really lean. So there's a lot that you have to pay attention to the market and those signals too and understand why are people more cautious in buying? Why are they not gonna go out on a limb? Like why would I put my job at risk by

36:58 recommending your CMS over somebody else's, especially if you're a rinky dinky AI.com. You know what I mean? Like, you're not going to do that. Like, so the brands that are winning are like the ones you think, okay, these are a safe bet. If I propose this, like we're okay. If I've got to propose Webflow versus like some other random CMS, you know, I'd probably be safer doing Webflow. You don't know, right? So there's a lot of risk involved right now in the market too.

37:27 We often hear, I think you touched on it about earlier, you mentioned B2C and I think there's maybe in the last two years, there's been this wave or this belief that everything that works in B2C, you can bring across to B2B because that's the new trend in B2B is to do what they do in B2C, but be the first to do it or whatever. So we often hear about conversion best practices from B2C, much higher, lower ticket prices, higher volume.

37:54 very different type of consumer. So are there actually that many conversion best practices from B2C that apply to B2B? And if, second to that, where are the biggest differences? Like it's the opposite. B2C does this really well. Especially today is they give you all the information, right? I have, if you're familiar with Anthony Pieri, he talked about like

38:24 how he thinks- Fletch, Fletch. Yeah, Fletch. Yeah, I like his stuff here. Yeah. He always talks about how he thinks that websites in B2B should be structured like an Amazon product page. And if you think about an Amazon product page, it kind of like tells you what it is, right? Clear product imagery, most times. Tons of reviews and social proof up top. You have specs of the product. So you have some of those things.

38:50 But then if you go down further, kind of tells you a story of the product, that's like where they're kind of making their sales pitch, right? Outside of that thing. Price is right up there. You can look at the reviews, you can look at the FAQs, you can look at all of these things and make a decision. And the reason why you can do that outside of the price and the low risk is that B2C gives you a lot of that information. So I'll tell you, I get targeted all the time on Instagram, right? Like nonstop.

39:18 And it's always like, oh, this eyelash kit and you know, here's a butt lift because summers come in or whatever, know, like butt lift cream or whatever. It's an insight into your search history, is it? Search for any of this stuff, right? Like it's proactive like marketing. They're thinking, okay, here's a 35 year old, right? Maybe she's into like based on her usage and her intent stuff. She generally likes to work out. likes to take care of her She's just bought some $300 running shoes.

39:47 Yeah, yeah. She likes, you know, she likes these kinds of makeup and like whatever. And so I will get these ads. Sometimes they're ridiculous and they don't hit the mark, but B2C does a good job of like, perhaps. And also I'm very convinced that they can hear us. Like when we're talking about stuff, because I have just told, I told a friend, I was like, Oh, I have such skimpy eyelashes next day. Freaking eyelash kits everywhere. I'm like, what the hell is going on? So I'm not saying be creepy like that, but what I'm saying is that.

40:15 They do it in a few different ways. actually have this client called Black Crow and they released this product called Storefronts. And it's so fascinating to me because what it does is it takes the product and then the product is kind of the hub, right? That's where we're starting with. And what it will do is it takes like whatever, the eyelash kit, and it does one, just product info. So you can click on it. It gives you all the product info kind of in an Amazon like shopping page. That's your e-comm page, right?

40:43 And can add to cart and buy it. Then you don't interact with that. It'll also send you then user generated content about that product. How many times I've seen it on guys, I've had the skimpiest eyelashes ever. I trust me, they didn't even pay me for this. I just want to show you how I did it. And they do like a product demo and they show you this stuff. And it's like, Oh, I've tried other brands, but like this one, honestly, if you have sensitive skin, right. So now they have this testimonial.

41:10 coupled with like a ratchet video that's like user generated stuff that they've just sponsored. Then you have another ad that's a landing page. It's more like a funnel. Why you should use a lash kit versus getting lash extensions at a salon. And they just walk through or they do like the best lash products in, you know, like on the market right now and which one's right for you. And it's like a long form, like blog article. And they do all of these things.

41:37 There are different ways to talk about the stuff and giving you all the information. And then the, the, the one benefit they have is they can incentivize. Right. So another thing is like, you know what? Pay for shipping. We'll send it you for free. And we'll actually give you two kits. If you like it, you keep it. If you don't. Fine. Chuck it. You don't owe us anything. And they can do these things that lower the risk of what that looks like. Right. If somebody told me back in the day, Hey.

42:06 I'll show you the product demo. Okay. No worries, no obligation. And I will not put you in a nurture sequence. If you like don't like it, no nurture sequence, no marketing messages, like we'll take you off the list. If you don't like it, I'm like, hell yeah, sign me up. I think there's that fear of like, once I give you my information in B2B, I am going to be harassed until I'm in my grave. And then when I'm in my grave, my

42:35 Next of kin is going to get an email that says, Hey, so we're really sorry for your loss. That task passed away. Are you the right person to talk to now that you gone? Hashtag B2B. You know, that's how we do stuff. So yeah, I just think that there are certain things we can pull over from them that they do really well. It's just creating engaging content around the product, giving you all the information in order to justify the cost.

43:01 So when they come to me and I have all this information, I'm thinking at the end of the day, I'm not thinking, shit, wait, how much does it cost? Or wait, does it do this? I'm thinking, am I buying this or not? Right? And anyway, point is, point is, right? I got the freaking eyelash kit. I've yet to use it. It's just been sitting here, like, it works. How long has it been sitting there? It's been sitting there for a couple of months. Easy. Yeah. Yeah.

43:29 I just thought that was a clever thought up example. Not a real world use case. No, this is real life. If you're not watching me right now, I'm holding up the Lux Lash Lift set. Any woman listening is probably like, oh shit, I've seen those ads. Well, I would have thought you would have used the set ready for this podcast just to make sure that the eyelashes are on. Okay. Next question then. in terms of where...

43:56 these paid ad landing pages fit in the broader marketing strategy. there's obviously demand gen, is sales led, there's PLG. What role do you believe landing pages play in the broader pipeline generation strategy? like, how should we as marketers think about the landing page as part of it, rather than this siloed with singular, just for conversions. Cause you mentioned some journeys there where they go on the page and then they come direct. So.

44:26 How do we think about it as part of a broader stuff? Yeah. So first I always tell people when they come to me, I'm not going to work on your like state of sales 2025 or whatever. Right? Like I feel like B2B we have that down. Everybody knows the state of whatever report you guys are good with the top of funnel stuff. cool. Go forth and conquer.

44:51 The landing pages that I will work with companies on are the ones that I call foundational pages and they are always on. They're always on. You never kill them. They're always on. And these are the ones that answer very key questions that a buyer would have. The first thing is the product, right? What do you do? Am I the person you do it for? Baseline, if they were coming in, this is a first touch point. They search for something, they find you. Here's what Dealfront does, whatever, right?

45:20 That's kind of the page that's always on. Now, based on consumption data on that page, you could make optimizations or like, these are the value props that resonate with our ICP the most, move up and down FAQs, whatever. And then you take those learnings and you can apply it now to the main product page on the website, right? To the main homepage on the website. You can learn these little things. Now, snag it knows, I'm going to make sure that we handle the subjection on the main website.

45:46 So I always look at these pages, not in isolation as like, it's just like a little campaign that's sitting on the side. It is a sandbox environment, a playground for marketers to actually test messaging, test all the stakeholders opinions, or actually completely disregard stakeholder opinions and do these things that are very stripped product marketing at its core and see what's actually resonating with the ICP and then going back to the teams and taking data.

46:16 to support it instead of saying, I think we should do product imagery, bro. We tried the stock imagery of people with happy deals does not work, but the product imagery, this kind of product imagery did really well. This video did better than this image. Pro tip videos actually don't do better than images on landing pages as well. And so just things like that, where we would test and iterate and it's kind of our playground. We don't have to get it approved. We are just completely being led by ICP.

46:46 interactions on the page. How are they interacting with this page? Then taking those learnings, optimizing, but not going back to like Karen and Susan and like Rob or whatever. We're like, no, we did this rapid iterations. Here's kind of what we found. Bring it to the team meeting, show these learnings and then say, is this an opportunity to apply it to the main website? So I actually think that landing pages can help you inform your entire website strategy versus the other way around.

47:16 Also, do this, the first part of my engagement is doing, creating this business case as if I was the buyer for the client. And I will walk through like the market. What are we calling ourselves? What are, what's the actual, you know, our prospects, what are they calling us? Right? Vendor risk assessment versus security questionnaire. We look at some light keyword research there. What is an elevator pitch for your product, including your differentiators, looking at the alternatives, not just other solutions.

47:43 but the manual ways people are doing this, what's the status quo. Then I actually use the Fletch PMM value proposition canvas. They know, don't worry. So they get friggin plugged with every one of my clients, but it's like version 38, which I found to be the best one. I look at all the features and instead of going running shoes, leather soles or whatever, we start to identify what are the problems that ICP is facing and then talk about the features in context of the problem that they're solving.

48:11 Right? So instead of just yelling features at them, we can say something like the problem is that, you know, if you're an older, older woman, I'm not even that old. I'm making it seem like I'm 85 years old trying to run down the street. But it's like, Hey, you know, you really need like foot support at this time. There's not really cute training shoes, you know, that look good, are affordable and, know, have longevity, whatever. Well, we have these amazing trainers that have leather soles.

48:41 built-in cushions, help you with any like flat feet while you're trying to run, while you're trying to work out, right? You're talking about it in context of the problem. And we kind of go through those four, like three or four themes or stories.

48:54 And then collect all the proof, not just the ones from your company, but the ones that are agnostic, as agnostic as you can be, you know, from other review sites, because that's where they're going. We do like kind of a Reddit sentiment analysis too, and make sure we pull that in and let the client know like, hey, this is what they're saying about you on Reddit, either address it or whatever, but your buyers are definitely seeing this. And then your pricing, hopefully you show at least a starting range. And then.

49:21 Finally, what's your sales process? If they engage with you, what can they expect? Are they never going to hear from you again? Or are they going to hear from you in 24 hours? Are they going to see a demo during the first call, second call? Who are they going to meet with? Right? So we lay out all these expectations. That's the business case before we ever even write the landing pages. And then using that information, we'll do things like the product page, first touch point. Second one is, you know, what are Dealfront alternatives? know, Dealfront versus this competitor. So we look at comparison pages.

49:51 If someone types in Dealfront reviews, right? Most people, most companies, I'm yet to see it, don't have a reviews page, landing page. You can control the narrative a lot there. No one's going to sit there and read 15 of your deep case studies, but you can summarize case studies on this page. You can pull in light proof from like G2, Keptera, wherever. You can have your own source proof from your customers and tell the story in the voice of your customer based on specific use cases. And then a pricing page, demo page, whatever.

50:20 But you can see that those address the different stages they're at. Okay. I like you. Who are other companies like you? Right. What do you do? Are you for me? What's a demo look like? What can I expect? How much do you cost? These are all the things that buyers are asking. I do the reason I'm delayed responses because I'm mentally making a list of all the things that we're going to have a look at after this. We are on the hunt for actually a new paid search manager slash agency. So it's perfect. It's perfect timing.

50:50 Right. We've got a, we've got a few minutes left. So I will finish up with one question. We, sorry, Patrick, who drafted all these questions, we, won't have got through all of them, but, um, last question then. So for B2B marketers working with limited resources. So that's just assume a very small marketing team, restricted budget, you know, standard story nowadays, what are two to three high leverage optimization changes you'd recommend trying first. Like you, mentioned about how you would, you've got this like default page that you start with. That's your.

51:20 safest hypothesis, what are like two to three high leverage things that you would one, two, three, that's where you're starting. So the first thing is marketers get stuck in the execution portion. So if you're like, I don't even know where to start. Okay. Go to your product page for whatever your product is, right? Not your homepage. You can do your homepage too, but just go to your product page or platform page. If you have multiple products, clone that first.

51:46 Then look at it, you can kind of adjust the copy, try to make it a little more focused. And that's kind of like your first like very MVP landing page is to take that, make sure no one else can access it except anywhere that you can control and send traffic to. So you're going to take this page essentially, only send your ICP to it. And then you get to go ha ha to your stakeholders and say, see how this was all bullshit and they don't care about it. Now you have data to support that. So put some.

52:11 you know, heat mapping and just see how people are actually consuming information on the page that are truly ICP. So that's the first thing we're going to take care of that like execution piece. Second thing is on this product page, I want you to look at it like it's telling a story. What we do is we think, oh, product marketing will come in and like, hey, we have a new integration, throw that on the page. You know, then HR is like, hey, we have these like employee awards or whatever, throw that on the page.

52:37 Everybody has an opinion about what needs to end up on the page. And that's why B2B websites look like a freaking quilt of like all these random opinions. Right. And so I need you to strip all the BS out and you need to tell a little bit of a story. Right. And the biggest thing that you want to start with is what is the problem that you are solving? I'm so glad you mentioned this because we have released two or three new landing pages. These aren't paid pages, but

53:06 The theory still stands and I've designed these pages. I've written the copy for them with a question and three problem statements, FLETC PMM style. Exactly the same. So straight away, they know you're speaking their language. And most people, what we love to do in B2B is say pain agitation, which I absolutely hate. That's not what we're trying to do. We're not trying to agitate the pain because I can only move as fast as my stakeholders move.

53:35 You twisting the knife is just going to make me more miserable, right? It's not going to make anybody else move faster. know, Infosec doesn't give a shit about my problems. They have their own problems. I can't be like, Hey, Mike, listen, I'm just really feeling the pain. He's going to be like, okay, get in line. You know what I mean? So I don't like the agitation of the pain concept. You can explain it and you can say, Hey, you're probably experiencing this and you want the prospect to go. Yeah, that's me. This is my problem. Yeah, I do feel that.

54:05 So it's being empathetic and giving them a checkbox to let them know and signal that they are at the right place for that. So that is definitely like add a problem block. They do really well. People do consume that because what happens is if you go on a date and you sit down and all you talk about is yourself and your accomplishments and how freaking great you are.

54:28 I can guarantee you, you'll bore them out of their minds, but you want to connect with people. I knew there was something I was doing wrong on dates. I knew it. Like, you gotta make it about them. You gotta reciprocate. You gotta ask them. You gotta date them before you ask them for... Women do like talking about themselves in fairness, so I'm sure I can... Men and women.

54:51 You know, I mean, it's both sides, like it's both sides. And then you find that person that's like, wow, that person was like really interested in what I had to say. And I was really curious about them as well. So approaching it with again, curiosity rather than like transactional behavior or whatever. So you outline the problem for them and they're like, oh, they feel seen, they feel heard. And then you go into like, there are other options for you in the market to solve this. However, if you do consider us, here's how we've solved that. We literally exist to solve these problems, right?

55:21 And then, then other piece is add an FAQ block and don't just add dumb stuff like, like, uh, you know, what is a sales revenue tool? Like don't sit there and explain your fricking category. Like don't do those rudimentary things. Don't waste that space. When you're hearing the objections on sales calls, where you're hearing objections from product feedback, why people are churning, why people are like, you know.

55:46 not renewing, things like that, or what are the things that stop them? Or if you do have a big key competitor in the market, put that in your FAQs. If you all can't decide like, hey, we have 20 value props, but you're not going to put 20 value props on the page. But what we could do is put like three or four of that by prioritizing and then add a vernacular in the pages. So like I did this with a client yesterday where they said, you know, hey,

56:15 They're like, we find that we're hearing they want the migration to go really smoothly. Well, I don't know if I want to dedicate, they had so much good stuff that I'm like, I don't know if I want to dedicate a whole like migration thing, because sometimes they don't have a migration. They're just starting from scratch. So we actually put that in the FAQ to say, hey, how does the migration process go if I already have a tool? And then we talked about like some of the support pieces and things like that there. And then we're going to see if people actually interacting with that a lot. And if it shows us that they are, we'll move it up.

56:44 So all those like stakeholder opinions, those are a great place to put them and then see if people are interacting with them and then bring them up and say, you know what, Susie, you were right. Or Susie, no one gives a crap about, yeah, whatever you, some employee award, whatever. Right? So that's a good way to just like, yeah, it's on the page. Like you asked. It's not the star of the show. It's one of the backup dancers, but like could be, you know? So that's kind of the two blocks. Add a problem block, add an FAQ.

57:13 Do an anchored nav that jumps to each of the sections. Definitely do that. And then I'm still going to say like stick to a primary CTA. Don't be like, oh, if you don't want this and download a resource and check out our blog and like do all of these things, don't distract them. And then just watch how they interact with the page and then make your best assumptions on how to adjust the copy and the blocks moving forward. would wait like 2000 sessions is like pretty standard, a good sample data to start making decisions.

57:43 Well, that has been a very, very beneficial one hour and two minutes. We're just ticked one hour and two minutes. There we go for me. I'm definitely going to transcribe this, put it into AI and tell me what I need to do over the next few weeks and months, but very much appreciated. Thank you for joining us for an episode. Yeah, it was fun. Thanks for having me. I hope anyone listening or watching has got as much value from that as I have. I think that's been extremely useful, very honest.

58:08 very raw, which I like, but yeah, great episode. So thank you. Thank you very much for joining us. course. And if you enjoyed the episode, we will catch you in the next episode.