Ask any business-to-business (B2B) marketer what tops their wish list, and the likelihood is that they’ll wish they had a tool that could increase the hit rates they have on their websites for turning anonymous visitors into qualified leads.

If you do not think this is a big item, think about the fact that 98 percent of the anonymous visitors to your website leave without you engaging them in a conversation that could lead to a sale of your product or service. What you also need to consider is the fact that virtually everyone who visits your online address came there with intent and not by pure accident. Your site is a destination and not just an address, and visitors want something for their time and effort. But how do you get them more engaged so you can have a deeper conversation?

The answer you are seeking could lay in a new B2B Web content recommendation engine introduced by Tel Aviv-based BrightInfo. The company’s recommendation engine turns anonymous visitors into known marketing leads, with virtually no manual effort.

How They Turn Anonymous Visitors into Engaged Potential Customers

The BrightInfo solution is an interesting mix of leveraging what you are already doing on your website, while it is automatically and continually discovering and literally recommending in a non-intrusive manner (a small sidebar) the content that a visitor is likely to find compelling. It is based on learned visitor behavior and preferences. Plus, the recommendation engine is optimized to capture visitor information from all key entry points of your site.

A quick and informative video on the BrightInfo site explains how the engine works. It also shows what visitors see and discusses why in an age of attention deficit disorder (ADD) being able to easily direct them to content that should interest them (i.e., is relevant), can capture not just their attention but enable you to capture them as a qualified lead.

Key features include:

• Landing page-optimized solution for bounce reduction;
• Powerful analytics to discover which content is most valuable to your visitors;
• Private testing so only individuals you approve can see the recommendation engine;
• A/B testing immediately measures and confirms the value of BrightInfo’s engine.

The proof is in the numbers. While in beta, the patent-pending recommendation engine helped marketers increase leads by an average of 39 percent while dramatically reducing cost per lead. In fact, BrightInfo states that customers have already seen increases as high as 182 percent more content engagement, and over 83 percent more leads, all at approximately a 43 percent reduction of overall cost per lead compared with the same content without the engine engaged.  

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“With no change to our website, BrightInfo’s solution increased our leads,” said Sharon Vardi, CMO at Securonix. “We saw immediate improvements in the number of visitor page views of our key marketing content leading to better engagements and overall results.”

BrightInfo says that other solutions for increasing online conversion are time consuming, while the recommendation engine can be implemented in minutes. 

As importantly, the implementation requires no additional manual adjustments, changes to website design or manpower to integrate and manage. In addition, it provides extensive data on the visitors which enables marketers to get meaningful insights into the content on the website that not only engages visitors but helps convert them into leads. It also avoids high bounce rates, e.g., the percentage of visitors who enter the site and "bounce" (leave the site) rather than continue viewing other site pages.

“There is an inherent conflict in B2B marketing today – companies delivering more content while battling the shortened attention span of website visitors,” said Boaz Grinvald, CEO of BrightInfo. “No matter how much traffic is driven to a site, the consequence of the conflict is low content engagement and high bounce rates. BrightInfo solves this by matching the right content to the right visitor, dynamically an automatically.”

Aimed at Small and Medium Businesses (SMBs)

While  an interesting solution for companies of any size, the recommendation engine is aimed squarely at the needs of SMBs that can benefit tremendously from enabling visitors to their sites to get to content that fits their interests quickly and easily. 

“SMBs are spending more time and money creating digital content, and maximizing the value of this content is critical,” said Laurie McCabe, partner at SMB Group. “BrightInfo gives SMBs an easy, affordable way to increase consumption of their digital content and turn more of their website visitors into leads.”

In fact, the engine is available for SMBs as “freemium,” and the company says it is competitively priced for companies with deeper websites and heavier traffic.

Getting a conversation started with an anonymous visitor to your website is obviously a challenge. Once you get past visitors who want directions or are curious about employment opportunities, virtually everyone else who visits can and should rightfully be viewed as a prospect. You want to capture what you can on their visit and be able to optimize their time spent upon return so you can gain permission to engage. Great content remains the most effective way to engage visitors, including current customers, and making it easy to find things that command attention, makes a lot of sense. 

After all, look at the success Amazon has had over the years recommending books. Whether it is Yelp, or Angie’s List, or a host of other extremely popular sites, recommendations work, especially when they are rich in context-based content.