EFFECTIVE SEARCH STRATEGIES FOR B2B INBOUND MARKETERS

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1 case study social media content blog website INTERNET $ EFFECTIVE SEARCH STRATEGIES FOR B2B INBOUND MARKETERS

2 REACH YOUR AUDIENCE Following the proliferation of high-speed Internet access in the United States, and the popularization of the modern search engine, many marketers have turned to online search strategies. This document is not meant to negate the remaining value that print and broadcast advertising maintain, but instead to highlight a broader variety of search strategies than can be found within search engines, as well as other mechanisms by which consumers find information, new products and services. At Raidious, we feel the most important thing to remember about search marketing is that it does not always happen in a search engine. Prospects have an increasing amount of online avenues to find solutions to their problems. Therefore, it is crucial to consider the personae of your audience and where they are active online, whether in search or social platforms. This orange paper speaks to strategies that will impact the modern search engine via both paid and owned media channels. The most important thing to remember about search marketing is that it does not always happen in a search engine. The purpose of this document is to provide a framework for your online content planning, promotion and measurement. Targeting Your Audience: Basic First Steps Within the purview of a search engine, semantic context (keywords) are the mechanism by which relevance is sorted. Put another way, search engines such as Google and Bing are built to sort the Internet in a way that is searchable by a specific phrase or question. While keyword placement in online content has been diminished as a ranking factor, researching the volume of keyword searches performed remains a cornerstone of understanding prospect behaviors in search. Marketers can also take advantage of the market research capabilities provided by keyword research tools to inform the topography of their offline content. In a nutshell, we encourage you to speak the language of your prospect, and submit that keyword research tools are an excellent resource to support communications planning. Utilize Keyword Research Tools to understand language choices of prospects in researching yours and competitor s products and services.

3 CONVERT PROSPECT INTO CLIENT Academic/Research Intent At the progressing stages where your customers encounter your company, they will have different concerns. Clients at the top of the sales funnel might not yet be aware of the issues they will encounter when planning for next year s problems. Thus, you may perceive early-stage customer inquiries as more academic than commercial in their intent. While not all of your content should be this foresighted, thought leadership and infotainment should be seen as a way to get clients into your sales pipeline long before your competitors see the opportunity. Problem-Solving Intent As client needs become more poignant, so will the specificity of their search. When utilizing a search engine, social media or other platform, they will look for other individuals who share their problem scenario, as well as organizations, individuals and products that are attuned to solve that problem. This presents the opportunity to educate a potential client about how your products and services differentiate. Marketers must be wary to avoid a salesy tone at this stage, as online prospects are still looking for answers to their questions, and may revolt or bounce from your materials if they feel there are being force-fed solutions from your company. Solution-Seeking Intent Once a prospect has made a decision about the type of solutions they are willing to entertain, their search will become tuned toward what they call your product, service, consultant or organization. This stage of engagement is where the majority of traditional SEO work is based where most search marketing firms will focus on terms that have the highest likelihood to convert search traffic into prospects and clients. This focus however, leads to fierce competition. Provide case study and use-case related materials for prospects who are considering your product and service. Solution-oriented search phrases are the most competitive to rank for. Allocate content and resources accordingly to be competitive on sought-after phrases.

4 There is no sustainable silver bullet that can win search. Promoting Your Content A conversation about search marketing would be incomplete without discussing the available options of content promotion. Search engines have recently, and will continue to, become more sophisticated in the quality metrics they use to assess levels of authority in online content. This means, in short, that marketers need to approach content promotion with a mixed set of tactics: Social Promotion (Social Networks, Bookmarking, Directories) Community Promotion (Blogs, Forums, Article Marketing) Online PR (News Syndication, Blogger Relations) Paid placement (CPC, Content as Ad Units) Not all of these tactics will be used in every case of search marketing. The important thing to remember is that a diverse profile of activity is absolutely necessary. There is no sustainable silver bullet that can win search. Effective search marketing visibility does not end with content planning and production. Set plans in motion for your authors and correspondents to promote their own content externally. Measuring Content Success Please note that there are very few mentions of search ranking in this article. While a good milestone evaluation is a feel-good metric, it should not be used as a tell-all metric. The thing to remember is that there are measurable engagement metrics and conversion points for all stages of the customer life cycle. Just as a savvy sales executive might not go for the close 30 seconds into a prospect introduction, it is advisable to establish conversions that are applicable from the introductory to closing stages of your company s sales cycle. For an additional resource, please see our methodology for measuring content success across multiple platforms. Conversion Analytics for B2B marketers can seem hazy with the longer, non-ecommerce sales cycle. We submit that with appropriate call tracking, CRM, and event-based online conversion points, B2B marketers can have a much more complete picture of their return on investment, and make better decisions about not only their search marketing efforts, but online marketing efforts as a whole.

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