57% of B2B marketers say search marketing has the biggest impact on lead generation. What’s more, leads from organic search have a 14.6% average close rate, compared to 1.7% for outbound marketing leads (NewsCred). Having a comprehensive search marketing strategy is crucial to driving leads and revenue. Here are 4 critical elements your search marketing strategy may be missing.
1. Continued Optimization Through Content Marketing
Search marketing and content marketing go hand in hand. 75% of content marketers release new content at least monthly, but only 17% put new content out daily (Wyzowl). Daily content creation is one of the best ways you can optimize your website to appear in search results – but only if you are doing it right with diverse and informative content. Diverse content means blog posts, white papers, videos, infographics, reports, and more. If you aren’t able to provide fresh, diverse content on a daily basis, scale back and do it weekly.
Pro Tip: Using the right keywords, page structure, images, meta descriptions, etc. will help the content you create appear at the top of relevant organic searches.
2. For Agencies: Realistic Expectations of Results
This tip is specifically for agencies: Crafting realistic expectations for the results that your search marketing campaigns can deliver is key to having happy clients. Your clients need to be able to view you as their trusted advisor, and if you set unreasonable expectations (such as campaign launch dates, expected CPL, etc.) early on, you set your client up for disappointment, and your agency for failure.
Pro Tip: Provide your clients with a comprehensive timeline of launches, deadlines, and reports. Knowing in advance the dates of campaign launches, the deadlines they need to meet for sending new creative, and the times they can expect to receive reports will ensure your clients trust you.
3. Comprehensive Reports that Include Competitive Data
Whether you’re an agency or managing the marketing for your own enterprise, reporting on search marketing can be a challenge. But if you put in place the proper reporting and include competitive data, you’re bound to please clients and executives alike. Goals, budget, KPIs, revenue, visitors, clicks, sessions, form submissions, and phone calls are just a few of the key metrics to include in your reports.
Pro Tip: Reports should also include information about the competition – your competitors’ organic rankings, share of voice, domain rank, etc. Moz is one tool that provides some great insight into what your competition is doing, and how you compare. You can also set up Google alerts to monitor the content your competition is creating.
This post on Search Engine Watch has some tips for monitoring what your competition is doing.
4. Landing Pages Optimized for Mobile
Finally, I have to mention mobile. According to Salesforce, 71% of marketers believe mobile marketing is core to their business and if your search marketing strategy hasn’t fully integrated mobile, you may be behind the curve.
80% of Internet users own a smartphone (GlobalWebIndex) and according to Google, mobile searches surpassed the number of searches on desktop early on in 2015. Since so many searches are now taking place on mobile devices, it’s crucial that your landing pages be optimized for mobile users. Mobile-optimized landing pages should be quick hitting, highly visual, and easy to digest.
Pro Tip: Keep in mind, since these users are on their smartphones, calling your business is often the easiest way to convert. And there’s research to back that up: according to BIA/Kelsey, mobile search will drive 73 billion calls in the U.S. by 2018, so having mobile-optimized landing pages that make it easy for mobile searchers to call is key.
To learn more about optimizing your search marketing to drive calls get the free guide: Marketer’s Guide to Call Tracking for Google SEO and PPC.