Your website as your company's #1 account manager

Not your commercial director or best-scoring account manager is your company's most important sales prop. That's your website. But only if you set it up right....

Not your commercial director or best-scoring account manager is your company's most important sales trump card. That's your website.

It was Tim Berners-Lee who launched the world's first website in August 1991 with info.cern.ch. Almost 30 years later, more than 60% of the world's population is online and there are some 1.5 billion websites in the air. Yet only a limited portion are truly successful at what a website should actually do: generate leads.

Website as 24/7 sales counter

Compare that role to the work of account managers. Their role is important because they take your product to the market, looking for customers and new sales. Just realize that an account manager's reach is limited. Every time he sits down with a customer, it is no more than four to six people who get to hear the story about your product. Your website, on the other hand, has no such limitation. This sales counter runs 24/7 and has a potential reach that even your very best account manager never comes close to. There just aren't many companies that look at the function of their website in this way, I've noticed.

Product-driven information

Take the manufacturing industry. The Netherlands has many great brands, a handful of which even compete in the Champions League of their niche. These are companies that easily turn over 100 million a year. But if you take a tour of the websites, here and there tears spring to your eyes. Visitors get lost quickly and a clear message is missing. And nice thought, those flashy elements, but do they serve a purpose? Moreover - and we see this happen very often - the creators mainly focus on sending information that is 95% product-driven. Their own product with all those unique specs is central, with the result that visitors hardly convert into customers.

From signboard to lead magnet

Name and numbers please, you may be thinking now. Let me give you one concrete example: Veco, a company in Eerbeek, Gelderland, which excels in electrochemical precision work. They had developed a new way of metal working, which they call electroplating. This term was used throughout the website. The only problem was that the market did not yet know this product at all. No potential customer was searching online for electroplating. We then completely redesigned the website and intentionally added the term electroforming. The dated but much better known technology with 10 times the search volume. It's a simple example of how to transform a website from signboard to lead magnet.

Site as an online trade show booth

Of course, it takes more than that. A good structure and some clear CTAs', to name a few. And don't underestimate the importance of the right content, with which you address the pains, desires and needs of customers. In B2B, it's often about niches and people are looking for very specific information. But what I mainly want to make clear with this example is that with a few steps you can transform your website into an online exhibition stand, a place to generate extra business. The investment this requires almost always pays off. And besides, why would you spend a ton on visiting trade shows every year while the budget for the website is limited to a few thousand euros?

So don't see the website as a balancing item in your marketing budget, but dare to invest in it. Research shows that 93% of all searches nowadays start online. Your website is therefore potentially the company's most important account manager.