As marketing moves into more and more personalization, email marketing has taken on renewed importance. Its potential for personalized messaging is high, as brands can segment email lists and send targeted content to prospective and existing customers based on who they are and where they are in the sales funnel. When you optimize email marketing it can foster transaction rates that are 6 times higher than non-personalized alternatives.

Email lists work best when used in conjunction with other types of marketing to foster growth throughout the sales funnel. As brands develop their marketing strategies for the sales funnel, they can use their analysis of where customers are and the types of content they want to see to develop highly personalized strategies. These plans keep prospects moving through the funnel towards conversion.

Download this free paper on how to optimize email marketing and automation.

To maximize this potential, however, brands should understand how email and SEO can work together, and how they can be used to power the customer sales funnel and boost conversions.

How SEO helps inform and optimize email marketing

When creating an effective email marketing strategy, don't neglect the value of SEO. It can be tempting to view them as two channels with no intersections, but if you want to take your marketing efforts to the next you need to understand the importance of integrating them.

SEO can help you uncover popular topics to include when you optimize email marketing. Keyword research makes it easy to see what target audiences search for, and thus the topics they likely want to read about.

You can also look at the traffic rates on your site to determine the most popular pieces for each stage of the sales funnel. This can provide valuable insight into the topics that people on your email list will likely want to read. Use these ideas to both generate content for your email lists and to determine how to construct the segmented email plan.

The targeted keywords and topics that you gather based on SEO rates can also help you construct titles and entice people to open your emails. When someone sees your email in their inbox, they can generally see the title and the first line of the email. Use these spaces to include keywords and terms that you know will attract the attention of your target audience.

How SEO benefits when you optimize email marketing

While your SEO research strengthens your email program, you can also use your email strategy to improve the rankings of individual pages within your domain as well as your site as a whole. By boosting engagement, click through rates, and interest in your emails, you will naturally drive more people to your site to visit these high-value pages and they might like the content enough to link to it from their site or blog.

Even more importantly, the people who click through to the site will likely consist of interested prospective customers: an engaged audience. This means that the traffic on your site will also consist of people who will have low bounce rates and good engagement metrics. These factors will all boost the rankings for the page, and help the domain as a whole.

As brands develop content for the entire customer funnel, they find that top-of-the-funnel pieces receive the most search traffic as they tend to focus around the broadest, education-centered topics. Mid-funnel content, on the other hand, while playing a critical role in nurturing customers, tends to not see as much less search volume.

Email can help ensure that this content gets attention from the people it benefits, boosts engagement with the page, and helps brands better see how their mid-funnel strategy performs. Content targeted towards this segment that does not engage people from properly segmented email lists might need to be adjusted.

Optimize email marketing and the quality of email to help with reputation management. Customers register for your email list because of their interest in receiving relevant email. By fulfilling this expectation, you will build the reputation of your brand in their minds. You will help prospective customers see you as a trusted authority.

Similarly, you will boost brand awareness and familiarity. As customers regularly open your emails, encounter your branding, and read your material, your business becomes one they recognize when exposed to your content and advertising elsewhere on the web. This coaxes them through the funnel and keeps them engaged with your messaging.

Combining email marketing and SEO to drive your customer funnel

As you optimize email marketing and use it with SEO to drive your brand’s success, it will tie closely to your customer funnel. As your email strategy gets implemented, watch your open rates to see how well your different segments respond to content at each stage of the funnel. The more data you can collect, the easier it becomes to make data-driven decisions that power growth and development.

Use your email strategy to draw people through the funnel. The content they engage with, information you can research, and information they offer about themselves will all help you classify each prospect into a potential buyer persona category and your estimate of where they fall on the buyer's journey. This insight will then help you to target them with content specifically developed for this persona at this stage of the journey. This email content, along with conversations with sales representatives, will play a large role in nurturing these prospective customers into and through the middle stage of the sales funnel.

As customers transition to the middle of the sales funnel, they shift from educating themselves about all their options and begin instead to evaluate the options they see in front of them. Keeping the prospect engaged with your organization through a quality, data-driven email content will keep your brand on their short list and keep them moving towards conversion.

Learn more about content mapping with the free BrightEdge content funnel mapping checklist.

Monitor every stage of your email segmentation to better understand what customers look at and to optimize email marketing. Know the content that interests them and what receives low engagement metrics. Put your research on keywords and terms to work to ensure that the content you build will engage the interested parties and monitor how well the email lists then perform.

Email marketing and SEO can work well together, powerfully driving customers, particularly through the middle of the sales funnel. Understanding how to get these two sectors to work together and power growth will help brands enhance the power of the sales funnel.

When discussing the customer journey, a lot of people focus on the top of the funnel. They understand the importance of attracting attention through educational and thought leadership pieces. They also produce ample content for high-volume keywords that encourage people to find, explore, and build trust in organizations that gain a visible position in SEO, social, or press.

In addition to the top of the funnel, brands tend to focus on the bottom of the funnel. They offer webinars, demos, and product-oriented content that helps get customers to decision. They want to ensure that people on the verge of converting receive that extra push they need to make the commitment and buy.

Where many organizations fall short, however, is mid-funnel digital marketing. They don't create content that nurtures people from those initial educational stages and warms them up to get them ready for the demos and other end-of-funnel content. This stage, the mid-funnel digital marketing stage, requires special consideration.

Learn more about content mapping with the free BrightEdge content funnel mapping checklist.

Mid-funnel digital marketing is tricky because the prospect is interested enough trust to share some contact information with you, but not yet enough to move forward with a transaction. You need to build that intent before they lose interest.

Brands who are able to master this phase will see a noticeable increase in their ability to nurture customers all the way through the funnel. It's in the mid-funnel that customers look to see what makes your brand stand out against the competition. Here they make the transition from educating themselves about their pain points and possible solutions to evaluating their options. Creating content for this phase will generate warmer leads for the sales team and help the lead nurturing strategy succeed.

We wanted to dive into what makes the stages of mid-funnel digital marketing unique and what types of content you should use to target people here.

How the middle of the customer journey differs from the beginning and end

To begin creating ideal content for customers in the middle of the customer journey, we must first explore what differentiates the top of the funnel from the middle.

At the top of the funnel, people are aware of their pain points. They know that they have a problem that needs to be solved, but they are unsure of the potential solutions. Thus, they conduct research almost always involving SEO, and that's where mid-funnel digital marketing comes in.

By the time someone has reached the middle of the funnel, however, they have already formed some solid ideas about potential solutions for their pain point. Their concern now lies with evaluating these different solutions and selecting the one that will work best for them.

Customers during this stage want to know how you stand out against the competition. They want to know why they should listen to your ideas and purchase your product over that of others in the field. They want to know if they can trust you to solve their problem and provide them with an effective ROI.

In other words, people in the mid-funnel stages have begun to evaluate different solutions and compare you to your competitors. To effectively navigate this stage, you must present them with a strong case for trusting you and your product. These customers are not yet ready to buy. You want to warm them up so that they seize the opportunity to consume your bottom-of-funnel content of promotions and demonstrations.

Common mid-funnel digital marketing mistakes

As mentioned, brands build content for their customer funnels, the most common mistakes involve creating ample top-of-the-funnel content and a decent amount of bottom funnel content but neglecting the middle. Brands work hard to attract attention and readership, and they effectively present how to use their product or service for maximum benefits, but they do not warm people up along the way.

Many marketing teams also neglect collaborating with the sales team. Sixty percent of sales teams say that collaboration with other departments increased their productivity by at least 25%, and this is an excellent opportunity to engage in effective teamwork.

Sales teams can lend valuable insight into what customers like to see as they progress through the middle stages of the funnel, improving the ability of the marketing team to produce applicable content.

In turn, the sales team can use the content produced by the marketing team to engage with prospective customers and have material at hand to offer them when these common questions and objections arise.

How to create content for the middle of the customer journey

As you develop content for mid-funnel digital marketing, there are a few different places you can look. Start by combing through all the existing data you have on your customers. This current information can be used in a variety of ways and will provide you with a number of different content ideas.

Case studies

To begin, develop case studies and similar applied use case exposition. These case studies clearly demonstrate the ROI you achieve for customers within particular spaces. This can be powerful for customers comparing you to other brands within your industry. Showing the ROI that customers in similar spaces saw can help others begin to visualize how you can help them see similar results. For B2B brands that also need to persuade others in their organization to approve budget for the purchase, demonstrating this concrete ROI can be beneficial.

These case studies can be sent to prospective customers directly through the sales representative in contact with them. It should also be available through search, optimized for keywords that related to the results customers saw. Look for keywords centered around ‘results’ and optimize the site content for these terms.

Understanding common questions and objections

You also want to connect with your sales team to learn more about the questions and objections prospective customers commonly pose to them. See what often slows down the process of persuading customers to buy. You can then coordinate to create content that addresses these common objections. Share this content with the sales team so they can pass it on to customers who raise these questions.

Optimize your mid-funnel digital marketing content also for keywords related to these objections. Although these keywords may not have the high search volume of your top-of-funnel keywords, they have just as much of an important role: they are targeted to customers who have progressed to the mid-funnel and have raised these specific objections.

Analyze what convinced existing customers

Finally, dive into the deals you have won; specifically those who were sourced through organic. See what types of content coaxed these customers through the customer journey. Gauge the types of content and types of conversations you had with these converted customers as they moved though the journey. Use this to determine the types of content that have the greatest impact on customer conversion. You can use this to guide your preparations for future mid-funnel digital marketing.

The middle may be the most challenging to develop a content strategy and content for. Customers do not have the clear-cut interests that can be measured through keyword search volumes. They also do not have the obvious product questions that arise towards the end of the funnel. Understanding how to optimize for mid-funnel digital marketing, however, can breathe an incredible amount of life into your customer journey and help encourage an increasing number of customers to progress from the early funnel to the end.

Learn more about content mapping with the free BrightEdge content funnel mapping checklist.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Over the past few years, videos have quickly risen in popularity across the digital ecosystem. By the end of 2019, video is expected to account for 80% of consumer internet traffic. Videos not only appear on video hosting platforms like YouTube - which is so large that is the second largest search engine in the world - but also across social platforms and branded domains.

Our own research at BrightEdge also indicates that Google continues to place a growing emphasis on video within the SERP. On mobile devices, video now appears for more than a quarter of all SERPs. Google has recognized the appeal of video for users, and brands need to prepare themselves to take advantage of video in marketing.

Brands that want to tap into this trend have the potential to capture more traffic and engage more users. If you want to get your video production off to a strong start, here is what you need to know about video in marketing and ensuring that your video SEO strategy is powerful enough to drive conversions and engagement.

Forming a video SEO strategy

As video continues to climb in popularity across the web, brands need to pay attention and take advantage of the opportunities that video provides.

Customers appreciate video for reasons such as convenience and the more personalized nature. They give potential consumers the opportunity to hear personally from leaders at the organization and other customers, creating a more individualized experience. Watching someone on a video create a more intimate feeling that simply reading words on a screen. It allows more personality to shine through and gives customers more of a "peek behind the scenes."

It's for these reasons and more that a crucial aspect of your video SEO strategy is the role(s) you want your video content to play. All your video content doesn't have to--and usually should not--fit into the exact same role, but every video you produce should have a role. Here are some examples of roles to categorize your video strategy into:

• Self-guided information or walkthroughs of product(s)
• Comparison guides
• Entertainment
• Brand building and personalization of brand image
• Onboarding for new employees or partners
• Training for new customers or clients

A video strategy allows you to better understand the viewing habits of your target audience and create videos that will engage them. You will develop a better understanding to how your prospective customers engage on YouTube, watch video on social media, and interact with videos within your own domain.

To begin using video in marketing, you will want to gather several types of information.

1. Know where your audience watches videos
2. Track the popular topics for your users. Keyword research can help you uncover the video topics people are most likely to appreciate
3. Learn how to optimize your videos
4. As you create videos, regularly test the different formats and types of videos to see what your audience responds to best
5. Tie your video SEO strategy back in with the rest of your content strategy, linking back and forth between video channels and your website to drive traffic and increase engagement

Types of videos to include in your video SEO strategy

A quality video strategy will include a variety of different types of videos, allowing you to engage with audience members with diverse interests and needs. It will also

Here are just a few of the different types of videos you should consider including and where they could potentially fit in your marketing funnel.

Top of funnel

These types of videos are centered more around informational content and tutorials. This video strategy may not even be centered around your product or services, focusing instead on

FAQ videos

FAQ videos offer fantastic potential for SEO purposes because you can target questions around particular high-value keywords and create optimization-rich videos. They also allow you to offer a more personalized means of answering common questions your customers ask.

How-to and explainer videos

How-to videos also make it easy to target high-value keywords. These terms tend to have strong search rates and often correlate with videos that appear on the SERPs.

Middle of funnel and bottom of funnel

Product videos

Product videos might not target keywords with search volumes as high as other types of videos, but they do serve important purposes. Namely, they can help convert prospects at the end of the sales funnel by demonstrating the product’s potential. They also help to keep existing customers engaged and ensure that they get the most possible out of product.

User-generated content

Prospective customers like to hear from existing customers. They want to see real customers who have had success with your product or service. User-generated content, such as testimonial videos, can provide excellent documentation of the value you offer and serve as a final validation to convince a bottom-of-funnel prospect to transact with you or to take the next step.

Optimizing your video SEO strategy in marketing

While posting videos online provides brands with an excellent means of connecting with customers and creating a superior user experience, you must also take steps to make sure that the videos themselves are found. The videos need to be discoverable on both your domain and on any video hosting platforms that you post them on.

Optimizing for the video platform

The major video platforms, including YouTube, work largely as an independent search engine. Since Google also pulls results to display on the SERP from YouTube, well-optimized videos can receive traffic from people arriving after making a standard Google query.

Like any other search engine, YouTube plays close attention to the terms that you use in your video. Although Google cannot yet interpret video itself, it does look at the video title as well as the description and tags you put on the video. To fully capture all the keywords and terms you use in your video, you should include a very thorough description. You should also consider uploading a transcription of your video, if possible.

YouTube also looks at the quality of the video and your overall channel. They judge this by measuring how long people watch your video and how engaged they see with your overall channel. The number of likes your videos get, the number of followers your channel acquires-- these all positively impact the reputation of your channel, and thus the ranking of each individual video.

Keeping your videos relevant

Relevance remains a critical part of optimization for any platform. To keep your videos relevant, regularly perform keyword research to learn more about the topics and terms that customers want to learn about. You can then use them to create videos that will have the most amount of appeal for your users.

In addition to creating scripted videos, remember that prospective customers also like to hear from other customers who have used your product or service successfully. To ensure that these videos also remain highly relevant, consider creating interview or testimonial videos that center around a targeted topic. You can then use your key term in the video description to help drive traffic.

Optimizing for your domain

When you place videos directly on your website, several steps should be followed to ensure that your video and page remain optimized and ready to attract users.

1. Pay attention to how the video appears on the page. The video should appear clearly and easily play on all device sizes.
2. Watch your load speed. Make sure your video does not slow down your page load speed, which will result in a higher click-off rate.
3. Make the video transcript available so that any keywords you use in the video ‘count’ towards your SEO efforts for the page.

For more advice about optimizing for your video strategy for your domain, read our post about SEO and videos hosted on your website.

Using the BrightEdge platform to drive video strategy

As you create your video strategy, the BrightEdge platform has several features that will help you create videos your customers will enjoy.

Keyword research and finding video topics

Google’s SERP continues to change based on what the search engine interprets as the customer intent. For certain queries, such as ‘how-to’ type questions, videos are more common. Knowing which keywords and key terms have videos appear on the SERP will help you target the appropriate queries and create videos that will be more likely to be featured on the SERP.

On the Google Data Cube, you can research target keywords and see what types of content Google displays for people who search for that term. You can then target the optimal terms where you can work to get a video displayed on the SERP.

Knowing how your videos rank

As Google continues to look for ways to improve the user experience, rankings can change in an instant. You want to know about your users’ experience in the moment, how they see and interact with your content live.

With the BrightEdge DataCube, you can easily see how your domain's videos rank across the SERPs, tracking progress as you build your video strategy.

With BrightEdge Instant, you now have that power, thanks to machine learning.

With BrightEdge Instant, you can see how your videos rank right now on YouTube, while your users look at them. You can also see how your competitors’ material performs, giving you insights into how you can improve your own standings and boost your video SEO strategy.

You will gain insight into the products, topics, and influencers who are quickly growing in popularity across the YouTube platform, allowing you to capitalize on rising trends and getting your content in front of interested users.

Creating a video strategy and using the BrightEdge platform features can propel your brand forward and allow you to tap into the growing popularity of this type of content. With the BrightEdge platform to keep you on top of your video rankings and armed with insight regarding what your customers want to watch, you will find yourself easily moving forward with a strong video SEO strategy.