When a lead resulting from an organic search (and subsequent form fill) enters the sales funnel, knowing the original search keyword is critical. You’ll need it to
- understand where the prospect is in his/her buying cycle;
- optimize lead nurturing and drip marketing;
- tie search terms to sales revenue; and
- understand the ROI for SEO.
Here are some practical examples of how keyword usage drives tactics in our own business.
If a prospect lands at our site via a search on “lead generation“, we know immediately what he/she is looking for. In addition, we can answer questions this person hasn’t thought of yet by offering content about visit conversions. The information offers us a great opportunity to tune our communications (e.g., e-mail) accordingly.
In contrast, someone who enters “landing page” into a search engine is obviously looking for something else. That person will benefit from content about landing page optimization as well as information about conversion tactics – even if he/she hasn’t thought about that yet.
Search keywords offer important clues about the prospect’s position in the buying cycle. For example, if someone enters “LeadFormix pricing” into a search engine, we can assume that this person has done his/her research and has a favorable impression after researching the platform. He/she may be at the point of comparing prices of competitive solutions. If true, we don’t want to spend too much time “dripping”. Instead, we probably want to hand this lead to sales pretty quickly.
Something else we advocate: We often use email newsletters in nurturing campaigns. But we try to host most of the content on our website to promote more search engine indexing. That, in turn, can generate more organic search traffic.
It’s important to remember that prospects who arrive at our site via organic search will be focused on content. It’s therefore critical to have links on landing pages that point to useful collateral pertaining to that search term. The availability and quality of that collateral could make or break a budding relationship with that prospect. You’ll probably only have one opportunity to get it right, so think about this interaction carefully and invest appropriately to ensure a high probability of prospect satisfaction.