How your new B2B website can cost nothing

When we speak to marketers and business owners about new website projects we’re often asked how much budget might need to be set aside.

A sensible question of course, but I’m always surprised how infrequently we’re asked what return the website would be likely to generate - to me it’s the key question to ask.

The purpose of a B2B website is to promote the business the right way with the right brand, the right key messages, and with content that aligns with the problem their target customer wants to solve.

The outcome of the website will always be a number - a number of leads or an amount of sales - but not all websites are equal of course.

Many clients we work with are generating hundreds of thousands or millions of pounds of business each year from their websites.

But with different design choices, different key messages and different functions revenue could halve, or double!

So the key metric for a new website project is actually what is it expected to generate - even just an extra £50,000 of revenue per year is enough to render the question of whether the project costs £20,000 or £40,000 meaningless.

Because a website generates a return it’s an investment just like any other.

We should buy a website like we buy stocks and shares - choosing the one with the highest expected recurring return.

We’d never buy stocks and shares because they’re the cheapest we can find, so we should never buy a website that way.

And the simple maths is - for any established B2B business switching to a website that generates a good flow of additional new business will likely make the website project effectively free of charge anyway.