A guide to SEO and how it enhances B2B lead generation
Let’s talk for a minute, business to business – or B2B – about lead generation, and how you can use SEO to maximise conversions and transform organic traffic into satisfied, paying customers.
In this blog post, we’ll cover what B2B Lead Generation is exactly, how it works, and how you can implement it into your search engine optimisation strategy.
What is B2B Lead Generation?
In order to build up your business, you first need to attract and build up a loyal customer base, which means identifying potential businesses to whom your products or services might appeal. In order to present a product that other businesses want to buy, you first need to understand what it is that other businesses are lacking, so that you can step in and be what they need.
By researching information about other businesses, you can feed that data into your sales funnel in order to convert a lead into a customer. For advertisers, lead generation is often seen as a part of advertising techniques. But chances are, you’re not just an advertiser, you’re a digital marketing company with a comprehensive SEO strategy.
That means that you don’t just take the easy (and expensive) route and rely on paid-for channels and tactics. Instead, you’re smart and rely on lead-generation channels that are more likely to generate organic (unpaid) traffic and grow your revenue, such as social media, content marketing, and event marketing.
When investigating potential clients, it’s important to understand the difference between Sales Qualified Leads (SQL) and Marketing Qualified Leads (MQL):
- Sales Qualified Leads – this refers to a business or client who has already been deemed suitable for the next step in the lead generation process: lead nurturing. The buying process with SQL is usually more certain than with MQL.
- Marketing Qualified Leads – this is usually a client or business who has potential future value but is not yet ready to progress through the purchase funnel. However, as a future client, it’s still important that MQL remain on your company’s radar.
The work doesn’t stop once you’ve attracted the leads over to your website. In order to move past the “messy middle” and complete the conversion process, your website should be well-designed, attractive, accessible, authentic, and reliable, in order to maximise SEO.
How does it work?
If you’ve not gathered already, effective lead generation is all about gathering data about your (potential) customer base and tailoring your products and services to your desired customer demographic. You’ll also need to develop a thorough understanding of any competitor businesses trying to do the same thing as you. Lastly, you’ll need to carry out market research in order to identify where the gaps in the market are, and how you can best position yourself to fill them.
So let’s break it down:
Customer base
In order to maximise your customer appeal, you need to know what type of customer you’re appealing to. To do this you need to develop an ideal customer profile – this is your perfect customer – and identify the qualities that make them a perfect fit for your product or service. From here, you can identify who is and isn’t most likely to build a consumer relationship with your business and focus on leads with the highest conversion potential rather than wasting your time with businesses that aren’t suitable or interested.
Keyword research
From pinpointing your target audience, you can then tailor your keyword research to suit what your typical audience would be typing into the search bar. You need to target all possible keywords at every stage of the B2B customer journey so that you cover all bases. And by developing a customer persona, you can get to the bottom of what the likely search intent is behind the search.
Competitor research
If you understand what the companies who are trying to sell the same products and services as you are doing well – and what they’re doing not so well – you’ll gain a better concept of how to develop a competitive (and superior) lead generation strategy to attract potential customers.
Market research
By researching the market into which you’re launching your product or service, you’ll be able to define your target market in order to build a better value proposition for your lead generation strategy.
SEO Content creation
Valuable content that follows SEO best practices is likely to generate leads, especially if you include forms, contact information, and relevant CTAs. You also have to make your content visible, and this can happen through backlinks. Your content can easily get lost in the sea of information that’s available out there, so you’ve got to stand out and appear extra helpful to businesses- go above and beyond!
How to use B2B Lead Generation to maximise your client base
In terms of building your client base through B2B Lead Generation, there are a number of ways you can achieve higher rates of customer conversions and grow your business for, and with, the people who need your services.
There are several sales-focused tactics you could try, such as prospecting (creating a database of likely customers), social selling (interacting with prospects through social platforms), or referral programs (where existing customers usually receive a loyalty reward for word-of-mouth referrals).
However, on the marketing side of things, SEO has proven to be an incredibly effective strategy. This is because it focuses on high-quality, high-ranking content which takes into consideration the customer’s wants and needs, and how your business can best provide the service they’re looking for. Some of the best search engine optimisation practices for B2B lead generation include:
1. Be consistent
It’s not enough to just have a pretty landing page. Due to the nature of SEO, most of your organic traffic will likely land on the page of your website related to their search query, rather than the homepage. In order to keep visitors on your website – and make them more likely to return – it’s important that all of your pages are not just aesthetically consistent, but that they’re all also written with EEAT in mind (experience, expertise, authority, trust).
2. Test regularly
This consistently extends not just to the physical design of your website but also its internal architecture. That’s why it’s important to test regularly in order to ensure that everything is up to date from both a technical and trends perspective. You can do this by running web and link audits which will conduct a whole rundown of your website’s analytics to make sure everything is running smoothly for your clients.
3. Boost your online presence
One of the most effective ways you can drive customer engagement is by engaging with them on platforms that they already use. That’s why social media can be so impactful when it comes to SEO. Through what’s known in the marketing world as user-generated content (UGC) which includes things like customer reviews and videos, photos or blog posts, you can bring your business to potential customers rather than waiting for them to find you.
Leading by example
Central to our values here at Embryo, and key to our success as a business, is our B2B and B2C relationships. By striving to ensure the satisfaction of businesses we’re working with, we not only build stronger relationships in the world of digital marketing, but we’re also creating higher-quality content as a result that converts leads into customers and keeps our customers coming back for more.
One of our best recommendations to nudge browsers seamlessly onto the next stage of the lead generation process is to include CTAs at the end of your content so that if visitors to your site want to know more, they can simply click here to begin the journey.
