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Adding Search to Your Marketing Mix - Part II
By Scott Buresh (c) 2009 Medium Blue
(http://www.mediumblue.com/) 

This is part two of the article Adding Search to Your Marketing
Mix. Read Part 1 (http://www.sitepronews.com/2009/08/18/
adding-search-to-your-marketing-mix/).

Leveraging Your Assets

Search engine optimization is not something that should be done
in a vacuum if you wish to achieve optimal results, nor is it a
discipline in which it is necessary to start from scratch. Many
of the pieces necessary for a successful SEO campaign are
already in place - it is simply a matter of identifying them and
using them (and your search engine optimization company) to
their full potential.

Your People

While your search engine optimization company should take the
time to understand everything that it possibly can about your
business before embarking on your SEO campaign, nobody will ever
understand your business better than you and your colleagues.
This is why it is important for your search engine optimization
company to help you to utilize key people that are vital to the
success of the initiative, including people outside the
marketing department.

Sales

Salespeople are the front line of your organization - the people
who know how to talk to your prospects and understand what is
involved in their decision making processes. When it comes to
collaborating with your search engine optimization company on
keyphrase selection (finding the phrases that will bring
highly-motivated prospects to your site), your sales staff can
be invaluable. Many companies have names for products or
services that are very popular internally but very rarely used
on the street, so targeting these phrases during your SEO
campaign will not bring you the type of traffic that you seek.
Your salespeople (at least the good ones) know how your
prospects speak in the real world. A good search engine
optimization company will help you to utilize your sales staff -
and ensure they feel involved and enthusiastic about the SEO
campaign in the process.

Customers

Customers can also be invaluable when it comes to selecting the
keyphrases to target for your SEO campaign. Many companies are
surprised when they enlist the help of a search engine
optimization company to begin a campaign only to discover that
their customers do not speak the same language that they do.
This is common across just about every industry - most people
are very intimately involved in their industries and use
proprietary names, acronyms, and other verbiage that is, at the
least, confusing to an outsider. Anyone who has ever been
dragged along to a work function by a spouse can attest to this
- it often sounds as though the employees are speaking
animatedly in a foreign language, leaving the reluctant spouse
to fend for him or herself. In short, talk to your best
customers. Ask them what they would type into a search engine if
they were looking for a company that provided what you offer.
You will almost certainly be surprised by the responses.

Company Experts

Almost every company can boast that it has industry experts on
staff - the ones who design products and services, the ones who
implement them, etc. Yet very few companies take advantage of
these experts to promote the company as a leader in their
respective fields. Since search engines place a premium on
valuable, educational content, leveraging your company experts
to create articles and whitepapers for your SEO campaign is an
excellent way to attain search engine rankings while also
providing something of value to your site visitors. Adding this
type of content throughout your SEO campaign also allows you the
luxury of educating your prospects online so that they will be
further down the line in the sales cycle when they eventually
decide to make contact.

Your Content

Now that you have learned how to effectively make the best use
out of your colleagues, it's time to take an inventory of the
content that is available to you for your SEO campaign
initiatives. As mentioned previously, valuable content is held
in high regard by engines and visitors alike. Often, however,
much of this content never finds its way to the company website
for whatever reason. Your search engine optimization company
should help you to identify this content, which can include the
following:

Whitepapers

Does your company have whitepapers that are used during
presentations, at tradeshows, and in other areas but that are
not available on your website? If so, you are missing out on a
great opportunity to promote your expertise, educate your
prospects, and impress the search engines. Most of these
whitepapers can be optimized during the SEO campaign for maximum
search engine benefit with minimal changes. Even older
whitepapers can usually be dusted off by your search engine
optimization company and brought up to date at a fraction of the
effort that would be involved in creating a new one.

Articles

Similar to whitepapers but typically shorter, articles written
by your company experts can be just as beneficial as whitepapers
when added to the company site and for the same reason. Unless
you have signed away the rights to any articles to the original
publishing entity, there is no reason why your search engine
optimization company cannot use them on your website for
marketing purposes. Older articles, like older whitepapers, can
typically be updated with minimal effort.

Press Releases

Your company press releases can also be optimized and utilized
on your website. In fact, optimizing press releases prior to
their distribution on the newswires is also a good idea. Unlike
whitepapers and expert articles, it is usually unnecessary for
your search engine optimization company to go back and update
press releases during the SEO campaign, since they are
historical in nature.

Offline Marketing

Almost every organization has offline marketing materials that
are used at trade shows, in sales presentations, or in direct
mail. Since this material has (usually) already been vetted by
the marketing department, it is usually fit for consumption by
the general public. Often, however, these materials are left to
rot once they have served their offline purpose, when they could
easily be repurposed by your search engine optimization company
and used to great effect on the website. Of course, there may be
good reasons for this - you may not want to give away your best
sales pitch to your competitors by making it public.

Unique Challenges

Although it is wise to make the most out of your existing assets
when you are launching an SEO campaign, you should also be aware
of some of the unique challenges that are inherent to the online
arena. Keeping these challenges in mind as you begin your SEO
campaign can make a large difference in your results down the
road.

Understanding Searcher Behavior

In marketing, it is accepted that one must grab the prospect's
attention with a compelling message in order to maintain his or
her interest. On the Internet, this is paramount. People who are
using search engines are, by definition, in a "searching"
mode. While this is of course obvious, it is also important to
remember that in no other form of marketing is it easier for the
searcher to abandon your attempts to attract his or her
attention and look elsewhere. Your competitors are a simple
click of the 'back' button away. In fact, a recent study shows
that the average visitor to a website stays for less than three
minutes - hardly enough time for him or her to be sold.

Searchers have been conditioned, by the sheer amount of
information available, to be impatient when they do not
immediately find what it is they are seeking. What does this
mean? It means that your pages should offer immediate insight on
the common problems that your customers face. If you cannot
communicate, within a few seconds, how you understand your
prospect and how you are different from the myriad of other
firms out there, you have lost them, perhaps forever. With help
from your search engine optimization company, take a close look
at every page of your website. Do you focus on the user, or do
you focus on your company? Do you immediately engage your
prospects with your knowledge of what particular business
challenges they are facing? If not, it may be time to rethink
the most prominent marketing message on your individual pages
and devise a new action plan for your SEO campaign.

Redefining "Competition"

Almost every company has a list of four or five companies that
it considers to be its primary competitors. These are generally
the companies that it believes offer products and services most
similar to its own. Often these companies steal employees from
one another, and they seem forever concerned with what the other
is doing.

On a search engine, however, your definition of competition
should be broader. It should include any company that offers the
same products or services as your company that outranks you for
important terms. Whether or not these companies are on your
immediate radar is immaterial - a searcher will not know the
difference, nor will he or she care. The Internet is, by and
large, a vast and level playing field. There are quite possibly
companies that you have never heard of using the Internet almost
exclusively to promote their brands. It is important to watch
out for these competitors as well as the ones you and your
search engine optimization company currently track.

The Role of Patience

Unlike with most marketing channels, search engine optimization
has many variables that will be outside of your control and the
benefits will not be immediate. Simply put, it takes time to
properly optimize a website for optimal search engine
performance, and there are no guarantees as to when the engines
will re-visit your site and reward you for the efforts of your
SEO campaign (although, if you select the right search engine
optimization company and play your cards right, it will
happen).

The obvious downside is that an SEO campaign can take time
before you begin to see your ROI, and unlike most other forms of
traditional marketing, the timing can vary greatly. The upside,
which people who successfully engage in an SEO campaign realize,
is that the ROI is typically much greater than other forms of
marketing. It is also important to remember that working with a
search engine optimization company is a longer-term investment,
which, like other longer-term investments, takes time to mature.
If you spend marketing dollars on a print ad, that ad will only
be effective for as long as the publication is in the public
eye. If you buy banner ads or use pay-per-click advertising,
your presence will decline once you stop paying. But a website
that's been properly optimized by a competent, knowledgeable
search engine optimization company will likely bring you traffic
for years to come.
================================================================
Scott Buresh is the founder and CEO of Medium Blue, which was
named the number one organic search engine optimization company
(http://www.mediumblue.com/) in the world by PromotionWorld in
2006 and 2007. Scott's articles have appeared in numerous
publications, including ZDNet, WebProNews, MarketingProfs,
DarwinMag, SiteProNews, ISEDB.com, and Search Engine Guide. He
was also a contributor to The Complete Guide to Google
Advertising (Atlantic, 2008) and Building Your Business with
Google for Dummies (Wiley, 2004). Medium Blue is an Atlanta
search engine optimization (http://www.mediumblue.com/profile.html)
company with local and national clients, including Cbeyond,
Boston Scientific, and DeKalb Medical.
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