Inbound Organic Search Lead Generation & Sales
B2B marketing while it can have similarities to B2C marketing often involves more sales prospecting and lead nurturing than B2C does. It’s quite common for B2B companies to employ sales managers who will initiate outreach and follow up to close a sale. While some B2B websites can have a checkout cart like e-commerce sites do if they’re selling a product, the site is more likely to be a lead generation platform. Here, I’ll discuss the importance of having a B2B SEO strategy and how this could help improve the quality of your company’s lead generation campaigns.
Warm Leads vs Cold Leads
The problem with the sales methods of some B2B companies is that it is way too heavy-handed with the cold outreach. With Salesforce and numerous other SAAS tools these days it’s too easy for a sales manager to “contact” thousands if not more potential prospects in a single day. If I have I never engaged with you or your brand before, that is a cold lead. If we haven’t communicated in a long time and didn’t have a close relationship previously that is also a cold lead. Just because the tools exist doesn’t mean you should abuse them.
Warm leads on the other hand might consist of people who have explicitly inquired about your services, signed up for marketing communications or registered for an account. These leads are more likely to become a customer because there was some user intent but you still have to tread carefully to not turn your prospects off at this stage. This is the stage of the conversion funnel where you’ll have to work to nurture these leads and ultimately convert them into a customer. SEO can help you generate warm leads which will make your sales efforts more efficient.
Stop Pissing Off Potential Customers
At this point, I’m sure that everyone who has worked a corporate job has received countless unsolicited LinkedIn messages, emails, text messages and automated phone calls from account executives. That is spam and can be borderline harassment especially if the recipient has not expressed interest in engaging further. Just think about from the customer POV. If I haven’t heard of you or your business before and I’m getting non-stop calls and emails I’m not going to trust you. Sure, you might get a few leads if you blast out a million contacts but that’s an inefficient way to work. Even if you have a warm lead you have to be mindful of the cadence and tone of your communications.
Quite a few years ago, there was an account executive from an enterprise SEO vendor who contacted me. I was curious to learn more about their SAAS platform so I had a few calls with the guy but it was clear that the tool was not within my annual budget and a bit overkill for my company’s needs. I made that clear to the account executive but he suddenly turned hostile and threatened to go behind my back to my boss for sign-off since apparently they had some mutual acquaintances if I was not going to do business with his company. I had some choice words for him about disrespect then promptly hung up on the guy. Later I mentioned that to my boss whom I had a great relationship with and we both had a laugh about what a jerk the guy was. You can’t threaten the SEO manager and expect that my company will sign a contract. To this day, I have not engaged with that company since though I believe that account person has since moved on.
I’m sure that might just an isolated incident with that company but when you employ these types of sales tactics you have to be aware of what sort of damage you’re doing to your brand reputation by communicating this way. Sales managers might not care since they have quotas and will likely move onto another company at some point anyway but you can’t employ aggressive sales tactics at any stage of the customer journey and not burn bridges. There are smarter ways to acquire customers.
9 Ways To Demonstrate Expertise
Good B2B lead generation has a healthy dose of relevant content marketing. You’ll have to demonstrate expertise in order to build up interest and trust in your services. This is along the lines of the E-E-A-T (Experience, Experience, Authority & Trustworthiness) SEO framework that is prevalent these days. You can also create content that addresses your customer’s needs then use that as a gateway to introduce your services to prospects. I see so many B2B sites that are glorified brochureware. That’s a missed opportunity to demonstrate expertise with inbound marketing such as SEO, paid search and LinkedIn.
- Create case studies
- Offer whitepapers as a lead magnet
- Offer free webinars as a lead magnet
- Tout the brands you have worked with
- Write thought-leadership articles for your site and for industry publications / LinkedIn
- Do podcasts and YouTube videos
- Offer free trials of your product
- Include testimonials on your landing pages
- Highlight media mentions
Keyword Research For B2B SEO
With most B2B SEO you’ll need to be hyper-targeted with your keywords and topics because your service is not for consumers or the general public. It’s not really about high search volume necessarily though it can be. It’s about understanding your audience, what they’re interested in and what their needs are then being in the right place at the right time to inform them.
There’s a data science company that I’ve consulted for which has amazing content on their site and a lot of it. The navigation of the site was a bit of a mess however and their use of Javascript was getting in the way. What they truly cared about however was ranking for one or two very niche keywords. The reason why is because those leads were worth a lot of money to them and they wanted to be the industry leader in that topic. So we re-focused the site to build content clusters around that topic. They eventually went from bottom of the first page to #1 or 2 in the SERPs after implementing these updates.
For companies that have a product that lends itself to content marketing, you can leverage audience insights to scale your traffic. A lot of B2B businesses are for services that may not currently exist or have search volume so you’ll need to be creative about how you’re reaching people. Think about what your target customer wants or needs then create content around your product to reach them.
A/B Testing & Conversion Rate Optimization
One of the fundamental aspects to lead generation that you need to focus on is A/B testing your landing pages and conversion rate optimization. SEO can drive traffic to your site but if the user experience is not efficient for converting leads then you’re not going to get nearly as much mileage from your efforts. Since I’ve been leading performance marketing teams since 2013, I have always made a point to think about A/B testing my core pages and on conversion rate optimization. A lot of SEOs are so hung up on every little algorithm update and patent out there but let’s not lose sight of what’s important. Basic fundamental SEO + optimal user experience is really what’s important. All that other stuff doesn’t matter unless you’ve got the fundamentals dialed in.