Possibly the most common Call-to-Action (CTA) found on websites, even in 2017, is the ‘contact us’ button. An antique remnant of an outdated sales process, in times of old, the ‘contact us’ button was the chief and only way organisations converted leads online.
What does the ‘CONTACT US’ button mean to you?
Upon pressing the ‘contact us’ button on a website, a salesperson would then descend upon the unsuspecting consumer, offering all kinds of insightful information about a particular product; including details about its features, recent reviews, and costs. The salesperson would persuade consumers to quite literally take a leap of faith and purchase the product right there and then on the phone!
Before the age of the Internet, it was the salesperson, not the prospective customer who held all the power in the B2B sales process, as they held all the information.
Now however, things are much different.
It is no longer the salesperson who has all the power, but the buyer. The Internet has effectively provided the modern consumer with access to all the information they will ever need. And the salesperson is now invited into the purchase process much later. Today’s customers – your prospects – are far more resourceful and intelligent in their purchase process. They will conduct thorough research into their problem and the solutions available in the space, visiting your website and reading the content it provides to determine whether or not your business offers the best solution.
And so, the ‘contact us’ button falls (nearly) into disuse, only clicked on when your prospects are truly ready to engage with your business. Instead, prospects spend time investigating the content on your website: eBooks, case studies, blogs, whitepapers, pricing documents, product pages and much more to develop an informed understanding of what it is you offer. These prospects then leave your website for a time, only to come back weeks and sometimes months, later - ready to re-engage.
Without any other content or information for your web visitors to read, learn and educate themselves, these website visitors – your potential prospects – will more than likely leave your website unsatisfied. On the rare occasion, of course, that an individual still wants to move forward and engage with your business, they may get back in touch a few weeks later and complete a contact us form. But ask yourself this: how many of those do you actually get? The leads generated from your contact us form are most likely bots, spammers or strange people trying to sell to you.
What I’m trying to say is this: consumer buying behaviour has changed.
Before potential prospects even make a purchase decision, they have already guided themselves through 57% of the purchase process according to Gartner. As mentioned previously, today’s buyers are resourceful, educated and tech-savvy individuals, but most importantly, they are incredibly time poor. They have no time for unsolicited sales calls, as well as websites that lack any kind of informative content or means to engage beyond ‘contact us’.
It’s crucially important to appreciate that not every one of your potential prospects is ready to pull the trigger and engage with your sales department via the ‘contact us’ call-to-action.
Today’s consumer wants to be educated. They want to be able to make an informed purchase decision on products and services - and it is up to you to provide them with the right content at the right time and with the right means.
If your website only has a ‘contact us’ call-to-action, your prospects have no other way to engage with your business. So, if your B2B marketing agency is still trying to push people towards that button alone, you may want to acquire a different agency!
In the modern world, your website needs to have a variety of content and CTAs which allow website visitors to engage with your business and enable you to move them further into the buyer’s journey. High-quality content along with engaging CTAs such as subscribe, download, find out more, discover more, will help you to capture the attention of visitors, encourage them to engage with your content and allow you to acquire a bit more information about them.
So what are you waiting for? If your B2B lead generation agency is only bringing you ‘contact us’ leads, it might be time to consider a new agency and add more high-quality content and CTAs to your website!
