To improve sales using SEO and inbound marketing requires planning and a purpose. Whether B2B or consumers, the fact is more and more buyers are turning to the internet to purchase the products they normally get in the traditional channels such as at a brick-and-mortar store. Because of this shift in buying behavior; businesses have been forced to rethink the way they do business. SEO has proven to have a positive impact when it comes to boosting the sales of online retailers, SaaS companies and many other industries. Below are some of the tips on how SEO can improve sales. Be smart about keywords How SEO used keywords today isn’t the same as before. Still, keywords continue to play a huge role when it comes to SEO ranking. Without keywords, it would be hard for customers to find your business when they look you up online which is why to this day, an effective SEO strategy is not complete without keywords. Put yourself in the shoes of your customer. What do you think they would be searching for to find your product? There are hundreds of possibilities. Brands usually stick to a set of keywords that pertains to their products. A makeup brand will have keywords around beauty and makeup. But it is important that brands continue to explore other possible keywords they can use so new audiences can locate their products. The first step is to identify your “head term” which is the broad topic of the market your business serves. This is normally two words long. and should be a term your buyer persona would use when searching. Now you can begin building a keyword strategy. Step two is that articles and content should focus on long-tailed keywords. “Long-tailed” implies that the keyword is a minimum 3-4 words long and can be broken down into smaller keywords that could still drive traffic. Google Ad Words is a great starting place to do keyword research. Turn to social media to reach a new audience Social media has blown up in recent years. More and more people sign up to sites like Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter every day and this presents brands a great opportunity to grow their target audience. Social media can be a great way to engage with your audience and users use it to look for interesting content. Social media can also put a little humanity into a brand and make it more relatable and appealing to the audience. This can be done by engaging with audiences, posting interesting content, and answering questions or responding to their comments. When considering your social media strategy, remember to include social selling. Social media is 1 to many, social selling is 1 to 1. Remember, just posting your articles or content across every social network, news site, or to friends and contacts is not a social media plan. The whole purpose of content sharing via the social channels is to build a trusted connection with your audience. So, you need to establish the right tone, the right topics, and the right way for your marketing and sales team to conduct its conversations. On-page SEO According to Arcane Marketing, on-page SEO is the practice of optimizing web pages with the goal of boosting its ranking and gaining more relevant traffic in search engines. It refers to the content of the website, along with everything you see in it including titles, headings, images, and general content. To improve sales using SEO, on-page SEO should be included in a business’ SEO strategy. For one, it makes your website more user-friendly. Search engines are able to index your web pages easier thereby helping you improve your search ranking. On-page SEO can also help you focus more on optimizing important elements on your site such as creating descriptive and unique titles, improving page load speed in order to reduce bounce rates, and optimizing headings using keywords. Building a strong reputation Managing your brand’s reputation is often forgotten when talking about SEO. But it would be a mistake for a business to ignore it altogether. Reputation management refers to the task of controlling what people see when they look up your business online. A restaurant business, for instance, will try to minimize negative reviews posted on their site as well as social media profiles to entice other people to dine in. In essence, reputation management is simply the brand putting their foot forward to create a positive impression when customers look them up. It’s important that brands remember to stay professional when they engage with customers online, regularly check online reviews, and respond to negative criticism and reviews immediately and professionally. Publish quality content Search engines like Google favor pages with fresh and unique content. Not only that, but users also prefer a website that’s more than just trying to sell their products. This is one main reason why online retailers actively produce content for site visitors to peruse and gain insight into the business. But it’s not enough to simply put out content for the sake of having one. Brands should spend the time and effort to ensure that the content they are producing offer value to their customers. The best content involves helpful, educational, and insightful material designed to serve your audience. Establish your social purpose and authority, nurture your leads with highly relevant information, and share content relevant to each buyer type. Review the type of content you intend to publish and share. Start with awareness content. These articles are designed to drive visitors to your site who are searching for topics strongly associated with what you do as a business. Thought leadership content that positions you as an expert in your industry. These work to increase the trust that your audience have in you as an expert and the perceived value that each piece of content represents. Also you can use sales content to help sales prospecting, to attract and convert buyers who are interested in your services. To gather interest5 WAYS TO IMPROVE SALES USING SEO
Companies are developing digital selling strategies to align themselves to the rapidly changing face of “the buyers journey”. A digital selling strategy goes way beyond the use of tools or technology. The realization facing many leaders is that implementing digital selling strategies involves implementing a transformation or change management process. This is because digital selling is really a behavioral or mindset change not just with the sales teams but across all customer touch points. The main question to be answered is how companies embed digital selling capabilities into the very DNA of the business. This question is important as B2B buyers are acting just like consumers more and more. Driving the change in the “buyers journey” is a combination of access to content and digital native comfort. These are having a transformational effect on every aspect of the B2B sales cycle. To meet the needs this new reality, both sales and marketing must retool every aspect of their sales strategies and tactics, from social reach, to social impact to lead generation. Digital Selling Strategies Should Optimize the Sales Cycle. We know that the changes in the buyer’s journey continue to reshape the whole sales process and how they interact with vendors. Buyers are now self-educating, conducting online research, pre-selecting vendors based on content they read and engaging with sales via different communication channels. Research also points to the fact that buyers are now engaging with salespeople later on in the sales cycle. This trend is changing the roles and activities of the sales teams where insightfulness is valued over information. Another trend impacting digital selling strategies is that B2B buyers are now engaging with content similar to their B2C counterparts, meaning salespeople need to adapt their selling routines to stay relevant. Yet despite the challenges of pivoting to a digital selling lead strategy, the long-term benefits will override any short-term difficulties as “digital selling” companies are nearly six times more likely to secure prospect engagement and overachieve on sales targets by as much as 50%. Selling Requires Internal Collaboration The term Smarketing (sales + marketing) is tailor made for digital selling success. Sales and marketing collaboration is vital in order to generate the right digital assets (video content, articles, whitepapers, case studies, research, messaging templates etc.) for social selling or social media campaigns based on data. Then both sales and marketing need to measure target customer participation from the digital assets so they can keep re-assessing how to best engage them. Digital selling is here now and only going to grow in importance. The use of data and customer profiling together with buying insights will improve prospect and customer targeting with the digital assets that can open up sales conversations. Digital selling strategies are now being implemented by customer first companies everywhere. Digital Selling is a People Business. B2B buyers are the very same buyers who purchase books, gadgets, cars, phones and household items. While they self-educate and conduct research independently of any sales input, they also demand human touch points and highly personalized communication. People lead digital selling across the digital channels will show buyers that there is a real person behind the brand, ones who can answer questions and build social reach. Any digital selling strategy must plan for a consistent approach from all the salespeople or customer service personnel across all channels. This includes social etiquette, branding, content guidelines, product presentations, digital assets and messaging guides. Companies that deliver this unified personal experience will extend their social reach and impact, while deepening their influence with buyers. Mastering Digital Selling Walk the Modern Buyers Journey. The buyers journey has changed due to the availability of information via the web and the social channels. Now we see a buying process that is so much more fluid with added complexity and where buyers don’t compartmentalize. While they are educating they are also evaluating, while they are considering, they are also classifying. It is not a linear journey, it is more akin to river that twists and flows throughout the buying process. So, the modern B2B buyer’s journey is the active research and stages they go through leading up to a purchasing decision. Companies need to have the sales and marketing teams map each step of the customer experience from the client perspective to see where the gaps lie and how they can close them. Every stage of the buyer’s journey requires online and offline touch points, digital assets, messaging and collaboration that must be planned out in detail to achieve a positive outcome. Think Smarketing – a partnership between sales and marketing. Smarketing is about the alignment of your sales and marketing teams. Digital selling strategies requires that both sales and marketing are working towards the same goals and helping each other to achieve them. It’s about breaking down silos, having the same goals and ensuring mutual accountability. In sales 3.0 the relationship with the prospect is now largely based on the value a salesperson or business brings to their buyer’s journey. The value is delivered through relevant content, digital assets or via personalized interactions which add value to the prospect. This has become known as the “Givers Gain” model, with the sales organization focused on being useful and valuable in the sales process. This forward-thinking approach to acquiring customers is the exact opposite of the smash and grab sales models of the past. It’s about co-ownership: Sales and marketing must jointly own and agree upon the value proposition, assets and touch points within the digital selling strategy. In fact, companies will need to adapt a B2C mindset when selling to their B2B customers which requires cross functional cooperation and embracing digital selling. As the purchasing similarities between B2B and B2C become every closer, the combination of digital tactics, social selling, and a customer-first approach will be essential to winning and retaining customers in the digital era. Digital Strategies Should Make Buying Easier. The goal every business must strive to achieve is a more seamless buyingDigital Selling Strategies