Twenty years is a long time, and during this period, the digital landscape has gone through some significant changes. The changes have affected the core strategies of marketing that has become almost non-intrusive. In today’s context, if you want to be in the market and make gains, you have no choice but to embrace value-based SEO marketing. Pitching for sales with a loud message is now a thing of the past, as no marketer would dare to try out. Instead, the focus is on engaging consumers and customers in meaningful and close interactions that would gradually push them towards making a purchase. And all of it would happen pleasingly.
According to the professionals at iNeedArticles, it is vital to ensure that you focus entirely on delivering value to your customers by staying closely engaged through their entire journey in buying. In a way, it provides marketers with the opportunity to create SEO campaigns by posing as a friend, philosopher and guide for target customers and thereby tacitly influencing their buying decisions.
Influence buying decisions
The best way of doing it is to rely on content that creates close engagement and conveys value. More focus on content marketing is giving high returns in SEO that is turning into an essential and proactive player with a lot of strategic potentials. The SEO and content marketing teams have to work hand in hand because none would exist without the other. How you can leverage the SEO and content strategies at each stage of buying that delivers maximum value and increases the conversion prospects would become clear on reading this article.
Create brand awareness
The first step in creating brand awareness is to provide information about the brand, which might serve the purpose of providing a solution to some problems that customers might be facing. It might also be that consumers have perceived some opportunity and keen to gather information and data related to it through research. This is the stage when consumers want to familiarize with the brand without any intention of buying. The content that you use at this stage should contain only helpful information that places your brand as an authority that consumers can trust.
Educational content has immense powers in influencing the buying decision of consumers. The likelihood of consumers purchasing consuming the content goes up by 131 percent. Most importantly, it is not an impulsive decision that they take because the content has a lingering effect.
Value of content determines the trust level
During the stage of creating brand awareness, focus on conveying more value through content. The value of information determines how much trust and affinity consumers are likely to generate towards the brand. To decide on the type of content that would find favors with the audience, do some research to ascertain their needs. Know what they are looking for and provide the right information through long-form content, videos, e-books, white papers and even how to guides. For ranking in the SERPs, focus on content optimization that revolves around queries that consumers are likely to raise.
Generate brand affinity and nurture it
As you reach the mid-zone of the sales funnel, create content based on what solutions you want to offer to consumers. This zone is vital in the buyer’s journey because at this stage they compare various solutions and develop an affinity for some selected brands. The objective of the content used at this stage is to target specific consumers that educate them about how your solutions can stand out from the crowd. By nurturing consumers, you can lead them towards the conclusive stage in the sales funnel when they make a purchase.
At this stage, buyers are looking out for some brands that would work for them for which buyers’ guides, data sheets, and case studies are the most appropriate content to win over consumers. You can use citations in the content to validate the position you occupy in the market.
Enable sales
As you have now reached the bottom of the sales funnel, your objective is to close the sale by striking a deal with the prospect that has now turned into a customer. Use branded keywords that express the underlying intent of the solution. Branded keywords ensure maximum visibility during searches for those keywords while safeguarding it from competitors infringing on branded traffic that is exclusive to you. Product specification testimonials, reviews, and pricing are the constituents of the content that you use here. The content must have the capabilities of closing the deal and draw down the curtain on the buyer’s journey.
The better you align the SEO and content strategies higher will be the gains because, with a conversion rate of just 1.55 from lead to deal, the challenge is quite stiff.
About the author: Brooke Jenner is a journalist turned marketer who works for iNeedArticles. She has over a decade of experience in SEO marketing and has some successful marketing campaigns under her belts. She is also a nature lover and actively involved in the conservation of birds.
