Get Qualified Sales Leads with Content and SEO

You want more than just sales leads, you want qualified sales leads. With the right content and search engine optimization strategy, you can get them.

Qualified Sales Leads and the Buy Cycle

Most companies’ prospects go through what’s called a buy cycle. A buy cycle is the stages your prospects move along as they research and learn about the products or services they want to purchase. It typically starts with searching for general industry information about the product or service on Google or Yahoo and ends with qualified prospect calling, emailing or completing a web form on company’s website. There is, however a lot that happens in between.

Prospects Search for Information on Google and Yahoo

Your prospects conduct research online and search for, and read whitepapers and reports. They read thought leaders’ blogs and watch videos on YouTube.com. (Fact: YouTube.com now gets more searches than Google). They’re hungry for information because they want to be an educated buyer and educated they are becoming! Research shows that 80% of all Internet activity starts with search. Your content and website need search engine optimization to appear on page one of Google and Yahoo.

Optimize Your Content for Page One Results on Google and Yahoo

• If you know your prospects conduct research and search for information on Google about a product or service your company provides, shouldn’t your whitepaper and blog appear in the top search results?
  
  
• When your prospects are further along their buy cycle and want more specific product or service information, shouldn't your reports and case studies be in the top search results?
  
  
• When your prospects identify you as a possible solution and use Google to learn more about your company, shouldn’t glowing customer testimonials and positive PR appear in the top of the search results?

Stop Marketing and Start Publishing Online

Identify your prospects buy cycle and produce helpful information in the form of optimized content. Write a whitepaper and report. Write a case study about the success of one of your customers. Get customer testimonials in text and video formats. Repurpose your content. Take your report and turn it into a slide show and put it on YouTube.com. Create a blog and publish the main points of your whitepaper. Put your client testimonial videos on Vimeo.com. And link all of these web outposts back to your website.

Search Engine Optimization and Qualified Sales Leads

Now that you have content in different formats, it’s time to accurately position each piece of content within Google’s search results. Identify the search terms that match the stages of your prospects’ buy cycles and optimize the content with keywords so that your content will appear on page one of Google when a prospect includes the keyword in their search query.

Businesses Large and Small Can Use the Same Strategy

The Content and SEO strategy for qualified leads is not just for bigger companies. Small companies can and should do it too. In fact, many small companies do not position themselves and their employees as thought leaders. The business that goes out of their way to help a prospect make an informed and educated purchase decision will inevitably win their business.

The 12 Step Buy Cycle SEO and Content Strategy for Qualified Sales Leads:

1. Your prospects go through a buy cycle
2. They want to make an educated and informed purchase decision
3. They use search engines for initial industry research about a product/service (Your optimized content for search engines should appear on page one of Google and Yahoo)
4. Your prospects use search engines to find specific content further along the buy cycle
5. They find and download white papers, reports, and read articles thought leader blogs (your optimized content should be in the search results)
6. Your prospects search for and create a shortlist of products/services
7. They find and read case studies on web outposts like blogs and on company websites (your optimized content should be in the search results)
8. Your prospects visit your website again or for the first time
9. Your prospects research your company on Google (glowing customer testimonials and positive PR should be in the search results - good reputation management)
10. They contact you via phone, email or online via web form
11. They’re qualified and close to making a purchase decision
12. You continue publishing and optimizing your content for more qualified leads

Follow this content and seo strategy for effective qualified sales lead generation results.

All questions and comments are welcome. If you have a question or comment please share it by posting it here.

To subscribe to this blog, please send an email with “subscribe” in the subject line to service@upclickmarketing.com.