NO AI WAS USED IN THE CREATION OF THIS
Updated 3/1/2024
A huge part of brands today are about finding the right product/market fit. Not all companies rely on search marketing, and before forcing search down people's throats, it’s important to see how your audiences discover and interact with your product or service.
At the start of 2024, everyones mind is all over Google's SGE and how/when they will roll it out. Preliminary findings from people like Lily Ray, Eli Schwartz, Kevin Indig all herald that it could be a big miss. Time will tell how Google chooses to roll out SGE, but one thing is clear: they will not mess with their ad revenue.
But today, being an advocate for SEO requires you to see how it’s positioned in the marketing mix, and how you might use it as your weapon to get better ROI/CAC to your CMO or CFO (if your CAC payback window is good).
Selling SEO internally or externally requires you to know the fundamentals on how acquisition works for you. Look at data and find where the opportunity is.
Knowing the journeys that audiences take to find your offering is crucial so you can make your case on why investing in the channel is worthwhile.
In B2B land, depending on what stage you are in growth, organic might be a silver bullet or it might not be the right time to invest. Perhaps you’re entering a really crowded space that’s highly competitive and you are just looking for quick wins without needing long term investment.
Maybe you are maturing as an organization and you’re ready to start to build that moat around your brand, investing in content and product marketing could be a smart play.
For B2C, how much is Amazon eating your lunch? Do you have brand recognition, or are people using search to find problems to a solution and you can attempt to intercept with good product marketing content? Are you investing in social or influencer marketing to get your name out there, or does the data show that you have decent branded search?
I’ve had a lot of conversations over the years about if search is a good fit for the maturity of the brand I’m speaking with, and as a consultant in the past it’s hurt money going into my pocket, but transparency and not selling SEO snake oil gave me better relationships because of the choice.
But I’ll tell you one thing. I bet on search when my career started in 2008. Why?
Because people are lazy, and search can get people answers quicker faster than almost any other channel.
SEO is a hard drug that marketing leaders want to leverage for sustained inbound revenue.
But, it’s a resource suck from a lot of business units that can’t be measured on a P&L. Engineering, marketing, analytics, design, product, communications - it’s actually quite pricey when it’s done "right".
Sure, you can feed an SEO IC in a corner like he’s a sourdough starter and hope he produces, but the best SEOs are excellent communicators and bridge the gap between departments.
Most marketing execs will agree that SEO is their most profitable channel in terms of ROI, but might say that it’s because of content that's producing. But, there's likely a composer there, winding the thread between content that's being developed, applying it appropriately to the site for a good user experience, with an engineering team that knows best practices.
Baby, you’ve got a stew going.
Research reports and surveys tells us that search is omnipresent in marketing funnels and if done right is a great sustainable growth engine for companies. While mostly true, it’s because SEOs are forcing the left hand to talk to the right, and we’re sort of matchmakers between content strategists, product marketers, engineers, branding, etc.
When all of those pieces are connected and done right, SEO will just hum, and it’ll be a fantastic growth channel for your business in helping growth, retention and branding. It’ll be a constant factor in your consumer journey.
Smart businesses will want to build a moat around their brand. Not smart businesses will fight tooth & nail at low-hanging fruit, or run outbound marketing efforts and hope things stick.
SEO takes a village to be done right, and it shouldn't be viewed similar to outbound sales or even paid marketing. It also isn't a singular channel that should be seen as better than any other...we all know there is no straight path in attribution anymore :)
A lot of data studies recently have come out saying things about influencer marketing being the hotness, or social being FOTM. Well, search and other channels are not mutually exclusive. They all play in the sandbox together, and they are all tools in a marketers arsenal for achieving results.
Let’s take AI as an example. It’s really hot right now, and most of these AI tools are POC, and are in a rush to be the market leader using it. First to market is great - I think Tom made a bunch of money off Myspace, but then Facebook came in. Alta Vista was sweet, but then came Google.
If you’re still developing a product, how do you know what channel people are using to find or engage with it? If you’re heavily investing in qualitative user feedback, kudos to you, it’ll get you to understanding your audience much faster!
What is constant regardless of where you’re at maturity wise, is that growth is important. You can’t go into your cocoon forever to make the best product possible, you need to realize revenue, through sales and marketing.
Part of what’s important with being an SEO today is reading the tea leaves. Sure, the search pubs and algorithm updates are important, but it’s equally as important to see what other disruptors are coming ahead and know how to adapt. In the last couple years it’s been influencer marketing and AI, and figuring out the story on how search plays a part in that is an important narrative to have in your back pocket.
As markets fluctuate and people panic at the idea of a recession, spend comes and goes with the tide.
I am seeing the importance of search more than ever in this environment, as savvy marketing executives know what’s really important for their short and long term growth, and building that moat around your brand (depending on growth stage obviously).
Headlines have heralded the “Death of SEO” every few years when something comes around, but we’ve seen how durable the channel has been throughout the advent of the internet.
Despite people changing the way they find things, such as promoted posts on Instagram for a product this year, 10 years ago it was Pinterest, and 25 years ago Yahoo, search is more relevant now than ever. And it’s not even about discoverability, it’s about retention. Brands are building up supportive and informative content on their site, just to show how authoritative they are at demonstrating expertise.
When marketers look at attribution for digital channels, it’s unlikely that search is missing from the equation for conversion-oriented paths.
This concept of leaning into people's laziness has benefited me in my career by picking a pretty good channel. Email still crushes it for retention and LTV. Social is still king for discoverability and brand engagement.
Channels all have their focus and relevance.