SEO in the Inbound Marketing conversion funnel
Inbound marketing seeks to reach the target audience in a non-intrusive way and end up turning them into customers and brand influencers. To do this, the conversion funnel is divided into four parts: attract, convert, close and delight.
In the first phase, attract, these are all the users who come to your website through different channels such as social networks, paid campaigns or SEO positioning, and in the last part, delight, we have the users who are customers and brand influencers.
Next, we will analyse the role of SEO positioning in each phase of the conversion funnel.
Attract
This is the first contact with the buyer persona and is reached through the creation of interesting content that solves their problems. In this way, a user who has a concern performs a search on Google, or any other search engine such as YouTube, and finds a post or a video of your company solving their problem.
In this way, for your buyer persona you go from being a stranger to a company that has just found the solution to their problem.
For example, a user looks for what type of glasses to wear depending on the shape of their face and finds a post on your blog where you solve this question. Within the conversion funnel, we are in the first phase, where we attract the customer with quality and interesting content..
That person will probably decide to visit your online sunglasses store in search of a sunglasses model that fits the shape of their face and, perhaps, ends up buying a pair of sunglasses.
You can create excellent content but for the user to find you, it is essential that you are well positioned and appear among the first results. This is where Search Engine Optimization comes into the picture.
In order to create valuable content that has a relevant search volume, it is necessary to carry out a longtail keyword research, that is, to find keywords that have low competition, which will make it easier to climb positions quickly, and that are of an informative nature.
To do this, we will go to the Google Ads keyword planner, there are other alternatives such as Ahrefs, but the Google Ads tool is the most reliable. Here you can find out the average monthly searches, competition and evolution in the last year for the keywords you choose.
Continuing with the example of glasses, we have done a search to find out how the user searches and we see that types of glasses according to your face is a term that fits the type of content we are looking for and also has low competition so it serves to create content that appeals to the buyer persona.
When it comes to finding content, we can rely on tools like AnswerThePublic, a free tool that gives us ideas of content related to a term. Then we can check in the Google Ads planner if these terms have searches.
Convert
SEO is also very important in the second phase of the funnel, in the part of converting the user into a customer. In addition to information queries as we have seen in the previous case, there are also transactional searchessuch as “inbound marketing agency”, “buy sports shoes” or “removal company” where the user goes directly to this second phase..
In this case the buyer persona has a more specific need and there is a greater chance that they will end up buying or leaving their contact details than in the first phase of the funnel, so it is essential to be well positioned for this type of search.
Unlike the first stage of the funnel, here we will choose the main keywords, i.e. business keywords related to the services or products offered by the company. In this case, the keywords have higher competition and it will take longer to climb positions as we saw in this post about how long it takes to position a website.
Unlike longtail keywords, these keywords are more competitive because they are more profitable, since it is more likely that a user searching for RayBan sunglasses will buy a pair of glasses than a user searching for informative terms such as the example we have discussed. In any case, longtail keywords serve their purpose as it is a way to get organic visits faster, make the company known and improve the authority of the domain, in addition to being able to bring sales.
Close and delight
In the last two stages of the funnel, SEO positioning can also have an influence but it is more complicated and there are other actions that perform this function better.
When it comes to closing, it is more important to have a good team of sales people to convert the lead into a customer, if it is a B2B, or a discount code on the website if it is an e-commerce, than a good SEO positioning or a blog with relevant content.
In the last stage of the conversion funnel, it’s all about delighting the user and making them a brand advocate, so that they buy more times and tell their acquaintances that they have bought or are a customer of your company.
In this case it will be more influential to have a good customer service, interesting content on social networks or a newsletter so that they don’t miss anything, than the impact that an SEO positioning action can have.
Conclusion
To attract and convert your target audience it is essential to combine a correct strategy of relevant content for the user with SEO positioning.
In order to attract the user, we will use longtail keywords as they are easier to position and provide value to the buyer persona by solving their problems or queries. For the conversion phase, we will focus on the main keywords that will take more time to position since they are more profitable and we will find more companies competing for them among the first results in Google.
