I’m a self-professed “foodie”—passionate about tasting new cuisine styles, adventurous about experimenting with everything, from Sushi to barbecues to Tapas, and totally unabashed with my zany streak when it comes to gastronomic delights. Now that’s fairly easy to do, and definitely low-risk if you always have a good digestive or a nice bottle of Angostura bitters. In business and marketing, on the other hand, I am certainly a lot more cautious. I observe, I analyze, I try out, I test, I measure and only then do I commit to incorporating a new tool or method into marketing strategy. Not saying I am less passionate or less adventurous—but I do stir in sufficient testing and measurement mechanisms as key ingredients of B2B marketing.
It was with this measured, strategically crafted rather than tactical approach that we started our digital marketing journey about 2 years ago. So let me share with you a quick summary of The ALEA Group’s SEO (search engine optimization) and Internet marketing experience…
Previously, we used traditional methods of marketing and lead generation—word of mouth, referrals, business networking, etc. We did not have a formalized Internet marketing or social media strategy. We started with 2 things:
- Improving the on-page optimization of our website
- A well-planned SEO strategy
We fixed some components of our website architecture so the links were not too deep; this made it easier for our prospects and customers to get to what they are looking for in 2 clicks or less. We have also engaged a professional SEO copywriter to ensure our content is always fresh, relevant, insightful and compelling for the audience. Plus, to implement SEO writing best practices, the meta titles and descriptions for several pages of our website were also revamped to become more SEO-friendly and (qualified) traffic-generating.
From Baby Steps to More Advanced SEO Techniques and Content Marketing
- Taking on the competition: Having taken care of some SEO fundamentals, we then focused on a few highly competitive keywords in the B2B marketing and lead generation space. Our SEO expert, Liana Ling’s timely advice was that it is better to combine competitive, fairly competitive, and not so competitive long tail keyword phrases (low-hanging fruit I think she called it; I remember that!) which we incorporated into our strategy.
- Blogging…seriously!: I had also started to blog at the time but only published sporadically. Instead, we decided to start this blog, LEADership; the results have been incrementally enhanced and continue to gather momentum.
- Off-page SEO: We also investigated and researched some of the other websites that were already ranking on page one of Google for our targeted keyword phrases. This helped us to focus our off-page link building efforts and aim to dominate higher ground. We created a content blueprint and began to add content each month to both, the main website and my blog.
- We waited, we watched, we shuffled our feet; and then we jumped!: We began in earnest and I have to say, at first, I was very frustrated as I did not see a lot of progress. However, I was advised that SEO is an ongoing process that requires a sustained effort and the results will start to pay off in a few months.
- Not quite nailed it, but definitely getting there: We finally made it to the top of Google Canada’s page 1 for a very highly competitive term, “lead generation”. We kept jostling for positions between the bottom of page one and the top of page two before we finally achieved a breakthrough and began moving up in the rankings
Today the ALEA website ranks highly for terms like “lead generation”, “b2b lead generation”, and countless other related terms. We went from being seen in the search results for less than 20 terms, all of which related to The ALEA group brand name, to now approximately 80+ non-branded terms..
In 2011 we started incorporating a social media strategy into the overall Internet marketing plan. In addition, this blog continues to grow in readership and `shareability’. In the past year alone, we have experienced more than 112% growth and gained improved status as a thought leader. To date, this blog has been featured in:
- Advantage Magazine, September 2011 Issue
- Channel Marketer Report
- SmartBrief Newsletters
- CustomerThink (I now rank at #38 among their list of top authors )
- and more
I have learned a lot over the last few years and my advice to other B2B companies is again, what I have always said—don’t trash what has always worked for you in the past to blindly run after something new. By all means, make room for change, be open to new learning, take the advice of experts in the field who have a demonstrated and proven track record, test, test, measure, measure, modify, adapt and celebrate success only so you can step up to bigger challenges. Flame grilled is great-tasting; just be careful not to burn the food or your delicacy may end up with the ashes.
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