How to generate more leads part 2 – Search Engine Marketing

Welcome to part 2 of how to generate more leads. In part 1 we covered how to improve the number of leads you get from your website. However, if your website isn’t getting any traffic then it won’t deliver you a single bean.

So for part 2, we will look at how we can deliver more traffic and leads at the same time. Again, please note this is not a complete step-by-step guide on how to implement these strategies, but rather a collection of strategies that have been proven to work. We would always recommend seeking advice from relevant professionals if you do not have the skills to deliver already in-house. So let’s gets started…

Paid search

Quite simply, this is the fastest way to get traffic to your website or other digital media. Agree a budget, pick a selection of relevant keywords, assign a bid to the keywords, and sit back and watch the traffic come. OK, not that simple in the medium or long term but you get the picture.

Google AdWords

Google is all about search, in fact all their supporting products are designed to keep you coming back to Google, but that is another topic.

Google, from a search marketing perspective, is important to us as they hold the majority share of all searches in the UK. From 2012 to 2014, Google’s average market share was 88.87%.

Regardless of all other factors, getting set up on Google AdWords will give you a piece of the action. You also have the choice of driving users straight to your site or, if they are searching from a mobile device, you can add a phone number and have them call you direct.

Find more statistics at Statista

Bing Ads

Bing, which is operated by Microsoft, is the second major search engine in the UK – although it only holds a 5.99% market share as of October 2014. Even though the search volume is much less than Google’s, it is still worth looking into, because if your competition are there and you aren’t you might as well just give them the leads.

Find more statistics at Statista

Display advertising

Don’t under estimate the power of a well-executed display campaign. I remember when Groupon was unheard of and essentially developing a completely new market – everywhere you went online there was a Groupon ad offering you discounts in your area. Now they are a household name and industry leader. The drawback on display is that often the direct ROI appears to be poor but you need consider how this ties in with the long-term strategy for your product or service. It could be the difference between having a brand andbeing a brand.

Remarketing

Let’s not pretend that this is anything other than what it is… digital stalking. When someone has been to your site, you should target them afterwards with ads to remind them of their visit. The key here is to get this right, segment your visitors and show them ads relevant to the experience they’ve already had with you. Make it compelling and bring them back; don’t just throw a generic marketing message at them, they deserve more than that.

Targeted landing pages

Your website delivers your core message but cannot be all things to all, so that is where targeted landing pages come in. Consider the journey that your visitor is on and how you can best serve that.  Also, within the design of your landing pages, think about what you goal is – do you want them to complete a contact form, sign up to a product, complete a purchase, or do you want them to pick up the phone?

Organic SEO

Set up webmaster tools

Both Google and Bing offer free tools that allow you to see how your website is performing in the respective search engines. This is different to Google Analytics or your web analytics package in that they usually deal in what has happened once someone is on your website, i.e. after the click.

Webmaster tools looks at what is happening before the click. For example, what phrases are you getting impressions for, which pages are indexed, where are your links coming from and… gulp… if you have penalty!

Learn the basics of SEO

If you are unsure of how to interpret the data from webmaster tools and there is a lot, then look at learning the basics of SEO. I appreciate this can feel like a minefield but with websites like MOZ.com there are some excellent trustworthy resources.

If in doubt on where to start, begin with what is known as on-page SEO because this is often the easiest thing to change and can deliver you some uplift quite quickly.

Fresh content

If you aren’t already, start creating meaningful content that your site visitors and the search engines can buy into. Relevant, meaningful content will not only deliver quality traffic, but will also convert into leads!

Don’t cut corners and deliver subpar content. If in doubt, think about the websites that you have visited and felt rewarded by, then consider how you can reward your site visitors.

Top tip – add your phone number to Metadata

If you have looked into SEO at all, you will have read a lot about the importance of Metadata, especially the title tag and Meta description. Both are taken from the code of your page and are used by Google to structure your result’s appearance in a Google search result.

So the title tag can be used as the blue link, whilst the Meta description forms the small block of text underneath this. You can carefully write and structure these elements to include critical contact information such as your phone number or email address to gain an opportunity for contact from the beginning.

SEM delivers NO quick wins

There are no quick wins in SEM, but ensuring you look at every opportunity, you can build quality converting traffic – the critical line of thought in everything you do within the SEM channel should be: “Quality and Sustainability”.

Part 1 – Part 2 – Part 3 – Part 4 – Part 5 – Part 6

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Tags: Lead Generation, Leads, Marketing, marketing strategy, PPC, SEM, SEO