In the last two years, consumers have experienced continual changes in their work and personal worlds.
Demanding simplicity in increasingly complex times, consumer behaviors have changed, search engine algorithms have continued to evolve, as have the strategies that surround and support SEO.
While SEO is critical, relying on search alone to reach your market is not a winning strategy.
Instead, the importance of dynamic, connected-first digital strategies, as adaptable as the consumers they aim to attract, is now abundantly clear.
Understand that the consumer journey is no longer linear.
To engage with consumers effectively, marketers need to step back and rethink strategies, building dynamism into the foundation of their customer experience approach.
And while SEO alone is not enough, the challenges within the industry are many and varied.
But in short, it’s fair to say that SEO is complex and constantly changing: SEO insights provide a real-time picture of the changing voice of the consumer, which can be leveraged to inform any number of digital strategies.
From these insights, marketers can create comprehensive, multifaceted, complementary plans that connect with consumers across multiple channels and touchpoints.
In this post, we’ll explore why the most effective marketing teams aren’t putting all their eggs in one basket, because they know that focusing on SEO alone isn’t enough.
Content Marketing
High-quality content remains key to visibility. It is a critical component of the modern salesperson’s integrated plan.
Really good content is naturally engaging. It answers the biggest questions throughout the consumer lifecycle, and consumers are looking for it on any number of platforms.
From ebooks and podcasts to how-to videos and feel-good social posts, content marketing has evolved from just blogs.
When marketers and communicators work closely with SEO, using insights from search terms and putting consumers at the center of their content strategy, they have the best foundation for success.
Mapping the consumer journey, and digital touchpoints at each stage, provides the opportunity to build a customer experience strategy underpinned by quality content that connects with consumers across platforms, across multiple channels and touchpoints. Contact.
The reach of content marketing is limitless, as is the ability to personalize, and that’s a recipe for winning.
Creating a holistic strategy that connects content marketing and SEO is what is at stake.
Digital Advertising And Pay Per Click (PPC)
Because SEO is constantly changing and every business is different, investing time and effort to figure out what works best for your business can be expensive.
Remember, while separate channels with different attributes, SEO and PPC share a common goal, to drive consumers to your website.
Approaching search holistically, ensuring that SEO and PPC complement each other, will help you navigate the changing environment, pivoting as needed in real time.
By combining forces and sharing learnings, your team will have the opportunity to drive growth and improve budget efficiency in the process.
Building integrated dashboards that provide insights into organic and paid search results supports a complete view of keyword trends.
Leveraging the right data can support the discovery of key insights, providing the real potential to improve performance.
The example in this article looks at how PPC and SEO data can be combined to apply a cost savings lens to marketing budget cuts.
By combining organic performance metrics such as impressions with PPC conversion data, opportunities to improve performance can be visually identified using charts and graphs.
Identifying keywords with high CPCs (costs per click) and low organic visibility, and then combining that data with insights can provide the foundation for a strategic pivot that sees you cut budgets in areas where you can withstand a downturn while shoring up performance with strong organic visibility. .
Relevance is key, and when we step back and look at the trends we can map based on SEO data, we can begin to think about the value that SEO data can bring to digital advertising through targeting.
When we think of advertising in the traditional (out of home) media space, print, radio and television, we talk about reaching certain demographic groups.
But the demographics are large and varied. The Gen Z audience, for example, is between the ages of 5 and 25. And what may be relevant to a given individual within a broad demographic will vary dramatically.
A study conducted by Google and Ipsos in 2020 found that video advertising based on consumer intent has a significantly higher impact than advertising based on demographic data.
Providing consumers with relevant ads, focused on their needs and wants, rather than just their demographics, drives engagement, brand recognition, and ultimately sales.
Social Media
The numbers are clear: With over a billion monthly active users on the top seven social networks, social media presents incredible opportunities to engage consumers around the world.
There’s no question that social media sites carry a lot of authority, so setting up brand profiles on Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter has the potential to secure additional search results, supporting your SEO goals.
Beyond SEO, whether your social media goals are to increase brand awareness, build engaged communities, or simply sell products and services, social media platforms provide a critical method of sharing information and promoting business.
If you’re rethinking your social strategy, consider these recommendations on where to focus your attention for 2022.
If you’re just starting out, plan for integration from the start and consider strategies that support SEO performance.
Whatever your goals, ongoing performance tracking is key: testing, learning, and pivoting to social media should be an ongoing process.
Creating a flexible social strategy is arguably much simpler than planning for pizzazz in other advertising and marketing spaces, as social media channels provide a plethora of targeting options, with both free and paid options, and the settings it can be changed simply, so there is no need to set it and forget it.
Take advantage of the flexibility!
Brand Management
Every interaction a consumer has with your business, be it marketing, communications, virtual or person-to-person interaction, contributes to the overall perception of the brand.
In the digital space, managing your reputation is especially critical.
If you don’t manage your online reputation, your SEO efforts will go to waste. Why? In short, consumers trust user-generated content.
Online reviews help you build a good reputation, going back to SEO, this is incredibly important for local results.
Let’s think about the search process.
When a consumer searches for your brand, product, or service, your website may be one or two of the results displayed.
Other search results may include review and social sites that show what others are saying about you, whether negative or positive.
Proactively managing your online reputation, specifically through review sites and social platforms, puts you in control of the narrative.
Mistakes happen; how a business responds to consumer feedback has the potential to change consumer perception.
By engaging in a conversation, you have the opportunity to correct any misinformation and accept responsibility when problems arise.
If you’re not monitoring search results with your brand reputation in mind, you’re simply missing an opportunity.
Email Marketing
Great email marketing provides an opportunity for brands to engage consumers in their space at the time, nurturing relationships with potential, current and past customers in a highly controlled environment.
The targeting options are essentially endless, from interests to demographics to trigger-based user experience. You are only limited by the creativity of your team and the data you have collected.
You can choose to roll out emails based on the hot topics of the moment, and again, it’s something that’s easy to control by leveraging SEO data as the voice of your customer.
You may also want to send emails based on the customer lifecycle.
Both options provide a highly customizable and personalized experience.
Emails can be triggered based on any number of engagements with your site (helpful “left something in your cart” emails come to mind!), or you can choose to set and forget a time-based strategy You see the perennial key content of your site pushed to new subscribers.
Whatever your strategy, email marketing provides a simple and profitable opportunity to drive traffic to your site.
Also, as is the case with social media platforms, the ability to test and learn presents the opportunity to maximize spend based on proven results.
And that’s the kind of dynamic strategy that we like.
To take your email marketing to the next level (and boost your SEO efforts in the process), check out these top tips.
Conclusion
Building customer-centric strategies means meeting consumers on their terms.
By starting with the voice of the customer and leveraging real-time SEO insights, marketers can reimagine the possible, connecting with consumers across channels, digital and otherwise.
An integrated digital marketing strategy has the potential to increase brand awareness through a strong digital presence.
You can improve conversion rates and drive real value by connecting content and brand messaging across platforms, leading to higher and faster ROIs.
The consumer of the current day is connected. Shouldn’t your company’s customer experience and marketing strategies be too?
Featured Image: Lightspring/Shutterstock