What some B2B marketers get wrong about SEO – and how to get it right

In the world of B2B, buying cycles are long and much of the buyer’s journey plays out online.

It’s the challenge of most B2B marketers to generate awareness and capture and nurture quality leads along the buying cycle until those leads become customers. 

SEO should facilitate this process and steer the buyer’s journey to successful conversion. But to do this, you need to optimise your website and content for keywords your potential customer will use when searching online. And this brings us back to our title for this blog: what some B2B marketers get wrong about SEO. 

A repeated wrong we’ve identified is where B2B marketers focus on optimising their website and content for the keywords the company wants to target and not the keywords your customers would use to find you. 

Target the keywords and phrases customers and potential customers would use to find your content and what you have to offer, and always put the customer front and centre of your content marketing activities.

How to discover what your customers care about 

Analyse your current customer base

Consider your product/s, service/s or solution/s. What is the need for your product or service? What problem is it solving? Answer these questions by reviewing your existing customers and the data you have on them. Look for opportunities to survey customers, perhaps off the back of a transactional email or whitepaper download. Ask your customer service or sales team to find out how customers hear about you and what product/service/solution is most important to them, and why?

Ask existing customers if they’d be happy to fill in an online survey or questionnaire, or consent to a quick interview. If incentives are needed, offer something in exchange. Ask customers why they have tried, tested or purchased a particular product or solution and what problem did they need it to solve. Did it solve the problem, and if so, how? What made them decide to buy it and did it meet expectations? What product benefits got them most excited, and would they purchase it again or recommend it to others?

Gather any other customer data you have, from chatbot data to feedback form responses to in-person conversations – it’s all relevant, and valuable. Another way to gather feedback – and keep existing customers engaged – is to host a free webinar. Invite any existing customers you think would benefit. In the webinar, you could discuss a new product/service/solution they might be interested in or offer your company’s take on a topical news item or industry trend. Then ask customers to submit answers/provide feedback during the webinar. What are their concerns/pain points? If your webinar is focused on a new product/service/solution, this feedback can be factored into your product roadmaps and inform product development.

Research the competition

Take a closer look at your offline competitors – those in a similar niche to you that offer similar products or solutions. You’ll most likely have encountered them at trade shows or networking events. How do they speak to customers and through which channels? How do they present and talk about their products? 

By looking at everything from the type of videos they create content on to the nature of the questions on an FAQs page, you’ll form a clearer idea of what customers who are looking for similar products focus on and are concerned about. These might also be potential customers for your business, and you’ll be in a better position to attract them.

Segment customers and create persona profiles

Based on the information you have on your current customers and potential customers, group them according to their needs or industry. By doing this you can learn more about your customers and understand what drives them and what they are looking for specifically. 

Once you’ve done this, you can create buyer personas to bring clarity to your content marketing efforts and tailor your content to meet each persona’s specific challenges and problems. You should then have all the information you need to begin keyword research and build a list of terms to target that your customers will use.

How to identify the keywords your customers use 

Combine website analytics, market research, direction communication with your prospects and customers via your sales team, and competitor evaluation to pin down the keywords and phrases that your customers use. 

Do you know how people search for you online? Use Google Search Console to discover the phrases people use to get to your website. Then type these searched-for terms into Google Trends to see what related searches are popular. You can also use tools like Google Analytics to see where people are coming from – are they finding you through the search engines or being referred from sites like LinkedIn? 

Ask your customer services and/or sales team to mine the data they have on existing customers. What phrases, words and language do customers use and use repeatedly? Can you spot any trends or themes? Look to get a clear understanding of the problem or need your business is solving for customers as that will make it easier to understand how they search for the business. 

From there, you can make a list of topics relevant to your customers and your business and divide the phrases/keywords into each topic bucket. Build out the keywords that customers will use to look for what the business is selling using a keyword research tool. Use the same tool to find keywords that your competitors (offline and online) rank for and add these to the mix. It’s then best practice to type these phrases into Google to get more related phrases and to see what the intent is behind each keyword. 

Aim to find long-tail keywords to rank for in the short term but populate your topic buckets with keywords that are higher volume/more competitive keywords to rank for in the longer term. 

Once you have your topic buckets and keywords within them, you can use what you know about your existing customers to create content that engages, entertains and educates to help win new business.

If you need support to find the keywords your customers will use to find your business and its solutions, contact Copestone today. 

If you need support to write engaging, audience-driven content for your B2B brand or agency, contact Copestone today.