B2B lead generation

How might we provide customers with a more cohesive offering that supports their needs while maintaining tense internal relationships?

Role
Lead Designer

Collaborators
SEO, Site Ops, Enterprise B2B, Small B2B

Outcome
6% increase in visits YoY and a 14% increase in submitted leads YoY

Timeline
4 weeks

The Problem

  • We had poor brand recognition and blurred business lines between our enterprise and small business offerings housed in different domains.

  • Our SEO was poor due to the naming and separation of our B2B brands.

  • We had a heavy security risk on one of our existing lead generation platforms that needed to be rehosted.

  • The historically tense relationship between Staples Small Business (Preferred) and Staples Enterprise (Professional).

B2B Strategic Solution

Unified business lines into a cohesive, SEO-optimized offering that preserved brand distinction, clarified customer segmentation, and surfaced hidden capabilities to boost visibility and awareness.

Design Solutions

Designed a scalable, user-centred onboarding flow that helped customers self-identify their needs, enhanced clarity through consistent layouts and simplified navigation, and improved content hierarchy and form usability to support seamless engagement and education.

HERO BANNER

Used bold colour branding and impactful imagery to set the tone of the page while providing a clear, immediate sign-up option for customers who don’t require additional information.

Value Prop

Placed the value proposition as the main content on the page to help customers get an understanding of how Staples could solve their business supply needs.

Slef-Identification

Provided potential customers with a way to self-identify to see program-specific features that suited their company size.

Industries Served

Gave potential customers a list of general business industries we served to help increase the value prop and allow them to feel at ease knowing we have expertise in all forms of business supply needs.

Brands

Included a brands call out to help show customers we carry the brands they love and trust.

Suatainability

Gave customers different information to look through in order to help align with company values and increasing their confidence in doing business with Staples.

E-procurment

What was previously only information that was given by request, we provided potential customers with information about our integration with their punchout systems.

Sign up Banners

To facilitate scrolling, I included sign-up banners that directed users to our form when they were ready.

Lead Generation form

Once the customer felt confident that we could support their needs, I created a singular form that would segment customers based on their size and their business type.

Thank you page

Once the potential customer submitted the form, we needed to add closure to the experience, something that was not previously done across both business lines.

The Process

Relationship Management

The relationship between our in-house brands has been a point of sensitivity for as long as they have been around. Although under one brand, they operate as competing businesses. To manage both sides, we had to ensure that we still have consistent branding and individuality, but create clear barriers of when onces business started and one’s business ended. When proposing this solution, the only thing we had to say was that we could bring in significantly more traffic and, in turn, have more leads and sign-ups. After talking about dollar value and making it enticing, there was no hesitation from either side.

Competitive Analysis

There are not many large competitors in the B2B office supplies space, but we could take a look at any B2B lead generation site and gather inspiration. Looking at Staples US, Apple and Amazon's B2B offerings, we noted that all branches of the business were cohesive and they would get customers to self-identify and sign up for what was applicable to them.

Content Page Audit

I conducted a site audit for both the Preferred Small business platform and the Professional Enterprise platform, marking down areas of improvement in UI, interaction, UX, Content writing and page traffic to see what we could carry over and what could be consolidated or removed.

pROFESSIONAL

Took a look at the form and page content to see what could be consolidated or needed to be copied over to the main site.

pREFERRED

Looked at each page's site views and general design and layout to see if we could trim content or shift pages down in the navigational hierarchy.

Final thoughts

The project was not complex and required a lot of relationship management and idea pitching. With the success of the launch and the upcoming additions to the pages, the Staples business line will continue to see success and provide Canadians with office supplies.