Best Practices for a B2B Product Landing Page that Closes Deals

Search the term “product landing page,” and you’ll find many solutions for eCommerce pages that handle direct-to-consumer sales. B2B2C brands are unique to online sales in that the most significant deals come from distributors and retail chains. The primary goal of a B2B product landing page is to capture leads for retailers interested in carrying your products.

Whether you are listing a product on a distributor’s dashboard, using an online sales tool like RangeMe, or building a custom landing page, a B2B product landing page must have some essential information to support retail sales. Besides the list price, four things make a landing page for B2B products perform well: Brand, Product, Program, and Design.

1. Brand

Brand Story

Product sales are best supported by content that aligns a brand with the buyer's needs. Take the time to organize your brand elements and get the story right. What do you want your buyers to know, believe, and do about your brand? Write it down somewhere and refer back to it as you write copy that positions your products from the customer’s point of view. Retail merchants have goals, too. They need to see how your brand is going to help them reach their sales targets and make their leadership happy.

Do: Clarify your brand story before you write content

Don’t: Create new language for every product launch

Brand Audience

Social following is becoming more and more important to retailers. More than once I’ve heard the directive, “bring your followers with you.” Merchants are looking at how popular a product line has become already, and who are the shoppers that make up the core fanbase. It may very well be that your fans aren’t their fans, and that knowledge can save a costly mistake of launching into the wrong market.

You need an active social following. If you don’t have audience validation, it’s best to leave that off the landing page. Old, outdated posts don’t do anything to strengthen your brand.

Do: Include at least one active social stream on the page

Don’t: Try to fake it with a stream that doesn’t have recent posts

2. Product

Product Featured Image

The goal of the feature image is to attract attention and draw the reader into your story. Invest in good, professional photography that does more than show product labels, but includes your product shown in its best use. For food sales, that means an image of food.

Nothing looks more desperate than an image that has every single product a company carries crowded into one shot. Your future channel partners are people too, and they will respond more favorably to an image that evokes an emotional response over a row of jars lined up like little soldiers.

Do: Show product in use, with the label as supporting information

Don’t: Cram in every package so they can see “everything we sell”

Product Photos

I can’t stress enough how important good product photography is to sales. You need both beautiful application photos (product in use) and sharp, well-lit, consistent, product photography.

When you are shooting traditional catalog shots, capture the packaging from all angles, and include close-ups of ingredients, certifications, nutrition-facts panels, and any instructions. You may not need all of them on this merchant-focused landing page, but you will need them for online sales. It costs a lot to get a photographer for the day, so capture all of them at once to make the most of your investment.

Do: Hire a professional with product experience

Don't: Shoot with your smartphone and rely on Photoshop to clean up

Product Listing

Of course, you need the product name, a description of the item and the MSRP, but merchants also need to know the pack size and the size and weight of the shipping containers. Before posting this information, go the extra mile and drop the product information into a spreadsheet to check for errors and repetitive or missing content. We do a lot with data-driven design, and we've found that putting product information in a spreadsheet is extremely helpful in catching errors and inconsistencies.

Product Sales Sheet

The purpose of this landing page is to gauge interest in your product line. To capture serious leads, put a PDF of your sales sheet behind an email submission form, and have the PDF sent directly to the merchant with an introductory message about your brand as an automated email.

Remember, this page is for potential retail buyers, not general consumers. Merchants need all the information, including shelf-life, bulk-packs, stocking information and any pertinent distribution details. This sheet is NOT the place to show your discounts or specials; save those for another campaign. You want to start by attracting merchants who will deal with you at your preferred margins. Your sales team can follow up with special programs and negotiate terms case-by-case.

Do: Capture emails and start with your preferred sales program.

Don’t: Give all the information up front and go right for a deep discount.

3. Program

Marketing Program

RangeMe and other industry dashboards allow you to share some of your marketing programs on the product page. If you have a standard marketing investment you are willing to make to get on the shelf with retailers, it’s okay to showcase it here. However, I’d caution overstating your position on this. We’ve seen small brands signal that they have $25,000 - $50,000 available in marketing funds. Remember that retailers may be expecting this in free product from you. If you can’t afford to produce that much on the chance of success in a new store, don’t advertise it here. Leave that for the negotiating table.

Smaller brands should be wary of putting private label opportunities on the table at this point in the sales cycle, especially if you don’t yet own your manufacturing equipment. Store brands are typically priced lower than name brands and will have an equally lower wholesale purchase price–that’s going to eat into your margin.

Do: Communicate a realistic and sustainable marketing program

Don’t: Overstate your funding and leave yourself at risk

4. Design

User Experience Design

Beyond honoring your brand standards and designing with pleasing aesthetics, an effective product page is constructed with the optimum user experience in mind.

Remember that the primary goal of this product landing page is to capture leads for retailers who will carry your products. The point of this page is to lead buyers from awareness to consideration, giving up their contact information in exchange for more information about your products. You’ll be directing merchants specifically to this page, so it won’t need to be part of your website’s primary navigation.

A top-performing landing page has these elements:

• A clear call to action

• Free of clutter

• Simplified messaging

• No navigation

Do: Work with a professional who can optimize your page

Don’t: Include landing pages in your general website navigation

A well-crafted landing page, supported by an active digital marketing campaign, can be a vital part of your next product launch. There are over 35,000 grocery stores in the US alone, and B2B product landing pages easily extend the reach of traditional sales teams. Consider adding this powerful tool to your next campaign. If you need help building an inbound campaign to boost retail sales, give us a call.