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If you’re a marketer looking to generate more leads at the bottom of the funnel, look no further than Capterra. Capterra is a B2B directory site that allows users to create reviews across a variety of software and SaaS categories- CRM, eCommerce tools, management software, and social media management just to name a few.

Owned by Gartner, the site presents company profiles for many of the top software tools in over 700 categories and they use customer reviews to give potential buyers insights into which tool is going to be the best fit for them. In this Capterra review, we’re going to explain to you why this tool is so valuable, and how you can leverage its power for your marketing strategy.

As you can see from UberSuggest, Capterra is an extremely authoritative website.

Its high domain score allows it to generate a lot of traffic through search engine optimization, which is great for you because the intent of the visitor is high.

In many cases, they’re on the first Google search result for key terms.

1. Much like Google Ads (Adwords), Capterra operates on a pay per click (PPC) or cost per click (CPC) bidding model. The more you’re willing to bid for specific placement in the rankings, the higher your profile will be on the list.
   It’s very easy to create an account and set up a profile on Capterra.

   How to Set Up a Capterra Profile

   1. Navigate to Capterra.com and click on “For Vendors” from the main menu.

   

2. On the next screen, click “Sign Up” and fill in the information about your organization.
3. Once complete, click on “Create My Listing” at the bottom.
4. Within the next few business days, you will receive a follow-up email from Capterra letting you know when your profile is ready and how to login to edit it.
5. Then you can return to the site and log in to begin editing your profile. The page will look like this.
6. On the Dashboard screen, you will see to the right, “Your Account Status” and everything outstanding that you need to do to complete your profile. You can begin at “Complete product details for [Your Company].”
   
7. Fill out your profile. The greater the detail, the better. Be sure to get your geographical area correct.
   
8. After Product Details, you will fill in the Features section with your product features.
   
9. Next will be Media.
   

Now that you’ve got your first profile set up. Here’s how to get better ROI for your Capterra investment.

How to Get the Most Out of Your Capterra Profile

1. Put certain words in your Capterra description in all caps.

As you can see, all of the profiles look very, very similar.

With the exception of a different logo, pricing, and the number of customer reviews, the look and feel of the profile are very basic.

Therefore, one way to stand out is to put certain words in ALL CAPS. While it might look like you’re shouting, more people will have their eyes gravitate to those words and thus, keep them front and center, regardless of the listing position.

If you have certain features that your other competitors don’t have, consider using those as your all caps words.

If you’re in a category that isn’t 100% consistent with your offering, then you could use all caps to highlight the segment of customers you do support in that category.

This method is tested and proven to work for profiles that aren’t in the top spot.

2. Include the most important info in the first two lines of your description.

Because all profiles look so similar, it’s easy to gloss over many without reading a company’s entire profile.

So make sure to put your most important messages first. We’ve seen a lot of success in our metrics adding client names to the beginning of descriptions.

But you should also test using product features, pain points, awards/recognition, or the kind of customer you serve at the very beginning.

3. Get user reviews.

All marketers know that having a customer who leaves a review of your software can be a huge point of validation for prospective buyers.

Because Capterra is trying to give potential buyers feedback from existing and former customers of software tools, you’ll need to have at least a handful of reviews to look legitimate.

Fortunately, Capterra is willing to help you with this and will reach out to your customers to entice them to provide reviews about your tool.

Their outreach is pretty effective. But, you should still make sure that your best clients get their feedback on the site.

Asking a client to provide a review can be a big ask.

If someone agrees to provide a review on Capterra, then make sure to repurpose and promote those reviews in other places like your website, sales, and marketing collateral, and even your event and webinar presentations.

4. Lower your bids during nights and weekends (just like you would for other PPC campaigns).

Once you’ve had a few weeks of traffic and conversions from Capterra, make sure to run an analysis on when the leads were generated and if any of those leads turned into opportunities and/or sales. This will help you get a better idea of the days and times that work best for generating leads.

For example: after doing an analysis for one client, we noticed that very few leads were being generated after 6 pm on weekdays and anytime on the weekends. Doing that helped to cut more than 26% off the cost per lead for total leads generated and allowed the client to get even more aggressive during the weekdays.

Bonus Tip: Make sure that you get the alert when a competitor is outbidding you. You’ll very quickly be able to find out who that is and decide whether getting into a bidding war and staying with them makes sense. Good times to get into a bidding war are during your “buying season” or when there’s a huge drop off of cost-effective traffic from being in a lower position than you previously were.

5. Reply to leads in 5 minutes or less.

When a lead comes in, reach out quickly. That person has spent the time to leave a review of your business and is interested in learning more.

According to a study by The Harvard Business Review, anywhere from 35-50% of sales go to the vendor that responds the fastest.

According to the Lead Response Management Study by Dr. James Oldroyd, if you respond within 5 minutes, you are 100X more likely to actually connect with the lead than if you reach out 30 minutes later.

Unless you’re on the phone closing a deal, drop what you’re doing and reach out to the lead. Time is of the essence!

Make sure to set up alerts with your marketing automation tool or in WordPress If you’re nervous that you’ll miss a new lead. You can also use Twilio to get a text message when leads come in so that you can follow up quickly.

If you can’t get a hold of the lead when you reach out, keep trying. While some people may change their minds about wanting to talk to someone, most of the time, you’ve likely just reached out at a bad time.

Also, set up reminders or an inbound nurture sequence that follows up with emails and phone calls 5-6 times over a 2-3 week period. If the lead has ghosted you by that point, then consider them cold and move on.

6. Make sure to include UTMs in the URLs so that you can track conversions and attribution.

It’s critical that you set up the proper tracking in Capterra so that you can connect leads with opportunities and closed-won deals.

For those of you who may choose to advertise on multiple Capterra profiles, having this tracking in place can be the difference between scaling your business quickly or losing a lot of money.

There are 2 common options that you can use to set up the tracking you’ll need.

Bonus: If you want really robust tracking, make sure to do both.

• Implement UTMs in all of your URLs.
• Use a marketing automation tool like Pardot, Hubspot, SharpSpring, or Marketo to generate unique URLs and landing pages to track clicks and conversions.

7. Create profiles on Software Advice and Getapp but manage their bidding differently.

In addition to Capterra, Gartner also owns 2 other software review sites called Software Advice and Getapp. Both of these sites offer the same value as Capterra but they get different amounts of traffic for the categories that they have on those sites.

These sites also operate under a PPC auction model and you can manage your bids on these sites through Capterra’s bidding management tool.

Because these sites get different amounts of traffic, the amount that you’ll need to bid to place higher on Software Advice and Getapp will likely be different than Capterra.

Make sure to not only place unique bids for each website but also use unique URLs and landing pages so that you can get reliable tracking of performance.

8. Test the effectiveness of your profiles and your landing page.

Not only do you need to have unique landing pages for each profile that you create, but you also need to make sure to test the description of the profiles and the landing page that you’re sending the traffic to.

Common tests that we’ve seen make a successful lift in conversion rate:

• Changing the names of the customers in the first two sentences of the description
• Only having one link/call to action in the profile vs multiple links/call to actions
• Tests of the landing page headline
• Tests of the landing page call to action copy
• Changing of client logos and names on the landing page
• Value proposition messaging on the profile and landing page
• Landing page design layout

The opportunity for getting the biggest lift is with implementing tests of your landing page. So prioritize that first unless the leads that you’re generating are highly unqualified.

9. Serve retargeting ads to people who leave the landing page.

If you’re unsuccessful in converting Capterra customer reviews into leads, then make sure to at least have retargeting pixels set up on those landing pages so that you can serve those visitors other offers with retargeting ads.

We’ve seen retargeting ads generate a reasonable cost per downloads of ebooks and white papers from the traffic that has exited a Capterra traffic demo request landing page and gone to another website.

You’ll also need to have an effective nurture sequence in place to turn these leads into buyers, but in the meantime, you can at least squeeze a little more out of your Capterra investment by having retargeting in place.

10. Reach out to people who left customer reviews on your competitor’s Capterra profile.

If you want to use Capterra, but have a very limited budget. You can still get a positive return on investment from the website. All you have to do is go to your competitor’s profiles and write down all of the names, titles, and companies of people who have written user reviews for those tools.

Once you have that initial list, get their email, phone number, and LinkedIn URL, and create two plans for outreach.

The first plan is an outreach strategy that consists of calls, emails, and LinkedIn messages to people who have left a negative review of your competitors software. Make sure to read the reviews carefully so that you can personalize the messaging to how your software solves the issues that they’re having with your competitor’s tool.

The second plan is an outreach strategy that consists of calls, emails, and LinkedIn messages to people who positively rated your competitors’ software. With this outreach, make sure to tailor your messaging around these steps:

• Check to make sure that the person is still happy with the tool. If they’re not, ask probing questions to get as many pain points as you can.
• Bring up that a lot of companies using the competitive tool are moving off of their tool for reasons that are tied to their pain points.
• Explain what differentiates you from your competitor and how you address the pain points that they’ve mentioned.

Remember though, it’s very likely that things could have changed for the reviewer since they submitted their review. They may no longer like the software that they’re using or they could’ve moved to another company that is in a better position to purchase your software. Consider giving them a special offer to try and entice them to give you a shot.

We hope that you have enjoyed learning about these tested and proven methods for getting the best ROI from using Capterra Business Software. If you’re committed to getting the most out of the marketing budget for your software, let’s set up a call to discuss what Interrupt Media can do for you!

Schedule a strategy session today!

Topics: B2B Marketing, Capterra, Digital Marketing, Marketing Tools, Paid Media