The main reason B2B companies use online advertising is to drive traffic to their website. But that only means they got a prospect to click. Once there, the marketer has just a few seconds to convince that prospect to stick around, read more, and perhaps share some contact information so the company can continue the dialog.

The best way to do this is with a landing page that (a) ties directly to the ad the prospect clicked and (b) makes a compelling offer. This can increase the number of prospects that take the action you want (i.e. convert) by 2X or more, compared with the all-to-common practice of taking the traffic to a home page or generic product information page. B2B marketers can raise conversion rates by another 40% or more by following best-practices. MarketingSherpa's excellent Landing Page Handbook shares some of these tips, including repeating the ad copy in the headline, stripping out site navigation, and reiterating the call to action in multiple places (including the submit button itself).  I’ll be blogging a lot more about landing page best practices, so stay tuned.