Dedication
This book is dedicated first and foremost to my mom and dad, who gave me the stepping stones into my career, not to mention the stamina to withstand the school of hard knocks—LIFE! And to my two children, Chloe and Daniel, who enable me to continue doing what I do best with my career and growth, so graciously and lovingly accepting me, with all my competing priorities, as their mother.
Special acknowledgment goes to My former business school faculty members at Lincoln University, New Zealand, namely Diane Mollenkopf, David Dean, and Mark Fearing. I have taken what you taught me academically and transformed it into real-life business in applied marketing science!
Introduction
Being online is an essential part of having an effective business presence today. The internet is a primary means for potential clients to locate businesses serving their needs and research a company’s offerings before they visit a physical location or make a purchase. Those people must be able to find and learn about you online whether you have a large company with many locations, an e-commerce site, or a local brick-and-mortar store or practice operating in a relatively small geographic area.
Your War Game Defined
Of course, consumers use search engines like Google to filter, control, and sort the overwhelming amount of information on the internet to pinpoint what they’re looking for—so as a business owner, you’ve undoubtedly been told that search engine optimization (SEO) is absolutely critical for your company to boost its profits.
Too often, though, that much-hyped solution doesn’t live up to its promise. You pay to achieve first-page Google results and…nothing happens. No new leads, flat sales. If being seen on the internet is the key to business growth, why doesn’t it always work?
The truth is that getting to the first page is not enough. We know the essential missing piece that makes SEO fail—but that can also turn ordinary SEO into SEO2Sales™.
Chapter 1
The Blind Leading the Blind, Part I
Imagine this scene—or maybe you don’t have to. Maybe your business has been through it already. You hire an SEO specialist or SEO marketing agency to improve your rankings on Google. They assure you that better visibility will produce an automatic increase in sales and leads for your business. After sinking thousands of dollars into SEO, though, you don’t see increased profit—you’ve just wasted money. What went wrong?
Who gets the blame when a digital marketing campaign goes wrong?
There’s a natural tendency in cases like these for the business owner to blame the agency they hired for a bad SEO experience. Believe it or not, though, the problem may not be with the specialist they selected (or not entirely, anyway). Before you conclude that the agency is at fault for failing to turn your investment in SEO into growth for your company, ask yourself these questions:
1. Do you have a marketing plan?
2. Do you have a sales strategy?
3. Do you know what your competitors are doing?
4. Are your brand and messaging easily understood?
Point your finger to success or failure, but it has to start and stop with you as a business owner.
If the answer is yes to all of these questions, then the lack of results isn’t your fault.
If, however, you answered no or I don’t know to any of these questions—well, you have some responsibility for an unsatisfactory outcome. Why? Because achieving first-page Google results isn’t what you’re really after, is it? What are you bringing traffic to your website for? If you aren’t crystal clear on what you want visitors to your site to do and what you want to sell them once they’ve gotten there, then pumping money into SEO is like setting out on a road trip, stepping on the gas, but not mapping a route to your destination. You might be moving fast, but you’re not going to reach your goal.
The bottom line is that increased internet traffic does not automatically equal sales. You must have a strategic marketing plan and sales strategy in place to guide your SEO if you want tangible results!
Chapter 2
The Blind Leading the Blind, Part II
The E-Myth and the Technician
Where does that strategic marketing plan come from? Too often, it’s not coming from your SEO agency.
In his book The E-Myth, Michael Gerber described three types of business personalities: the Technician, the Manager, and the Entrepreneur. The message of his book was about why many small businesses fail, but a key point he makes about the reason behind that failure is an essential insight into why many SEO agencies can’t seem to turn improved search results into profitable sales results.
He notes that most people start their businesses as technicians—they have a particular skill, so they open a business delivering that service. This is exactly the case with a number of SEO companies. They were started by talented specialists who developed their expertise in a large corporate environment. Understandably wanting to be more than just a cog in a machine, they left and went out on their own to put their abilities to work on their own behalf.
On paper, this should be a success, right? These people have very real technical skills that can deliver first-page Google rankings. However, what they don’t have is the marketing and sales background to create an SEO strategy focused on increasing sales and leads. They have never really SOLD anything in their careers! In a corporate environment, sales and marketing are handled by other specialists, so these SEO technicians are used to following a game plan someone else has created. If their clients aren’t providing a mature marketing strategy for them to follow, the improved rankings they generate aren’t going to translate into improved profits. They may get you visible on Google, but are you getting the right leads?
SEO technicians aren't marketers or sales people set your expectations right!
Are you a technician or entrepreneur?
It really is the blind leading the blind: you hire an SEO marketing agency expecting them to define the right sales goals for your business. But they follow your lead in deciding what you should be trying to rank for. As we’ll see ahead, your best profit strategy may not be what you think it is, so a strategic marketing analysis must always come first. If your SEO specialist isn’t providing that, they’re only doing part of the job you really need.
Let’s be clear—these agencies aren’t intending to mislead clients. They simply don’t know what they don’t know. In fact, at Iffel International we can work and have worked successfully with just such companies. With our marketing expertise to complement their technical know-how, they can absolutely achieve the tangible results their clients are really looking for in terms of sales, leads, and profits.
Chapter 3
Marketing Is a War Game
When most people think of marketing, they think it’s just advertising or getting on social media—the promotional activity you take to inform your target audience about your service or product. In fact, that’s a wildly incomplete view of what marketing entails!
To understand what marketing is, the first thing you have to understand is the environment in which businesses are trying to find new prospects and increase sales. In the vast majority of cases, you’re not selling a wholly unique product or service that nobody else is offering. Instead, you’re in a crowded field of competitors offering similar things, sometimes at a better price, to the same people you’re trying to appeal to. Philip Kotler, widely considered the father of modern marketing, said it best—marketing is a war game. You’re always working against the competition to gain market share.
Your marketing strategy has to start with knowledge. Knowing what your competitors are doing AND how your ideal clients think and buy is the foundation of that strategy.
If you’re selling a product, that means analyzing what are known as the four Ps: Product (what you sell), Price (how much you charge and how it affects your customers’ view of your brand), Place (where you sell and the distribution channels you use to get your product or service to your customers), and Promotion (how you advertise and promote what you sell). If you’re selling a service, you need to add 3 more Ps: Process (the functions, activities, and tasks involved in delivering your service to a customer), Physical Evidence (tangible items or proof of purchase), and People (not just customers but also employees involved in the marketing and sales process).
All these factors need to be aligned intentionally to attract the right audience. Note that advertising—Promotion—only makes up one minor piece of the big picture whether you’re selling goods or services! If you don’t start with this practical and functional research and analysis, you run the risk of sabotaging any SEO efforts by building them on faulty assumptions.
SEO2Sales™ shortens market research and decision-making
Before information was online, this kind of marketing analysis used to take months. Consultants had to work for six months or more to just study! Now I can complete a full analysis for a client, including reverse engineering the marketing strategies of at least two competitors, in as little as four weeks. This creates a new challenge—while you can’t make effective choices without doing your homework first, you have to balance the necessary analysis with the need to act. The market moves fast—the key is applying knowledge in a timely fashion to get results!
Chapter 4
Your Competitive Advantage
If you’re working against a crowd of competitors who all have similar things to offer, how do you make your company stand out? In Michael Porter’s theory of competitive advantage, there are three general ways to set yourself apart from the rest of the market: Price, Differentiation, and Focus. This is where a business needs a clear vision of the ideal client they’re targeting—while nearly every business owner has fantasies of cornering their entire market, the reality is that no one company has the resources to effectively serve every potential customer they might get simultaneously (of course, excluding the multinationals).
You need to be strategic about who you’re targeting so that the prospects you do attract bring in the most profit for your business. When you do this effectively, you don’t waste time or money chasing customers who aren’t a good fit. It may seem counterintuitive to metaphorically close the door on certain segments of a potential audience, but it’s really a wise move—as Porter wrote, “Being ‘all things to all people’ is a recipe for strategic mediocrity and below-average performance, because it often means that a firm has no competitive advantage at all.”
Determining your best strategy for creating your competitive advantage starts with the data from the analysis I described in Chapter 3. Decisions must be made based on facts, not gut feelings or what you think you know about your market.
Get Data - Apply Data - FAST & EFFICIENTLY
The simplest way to try to grab a competitive advantage is to lower your price—and frankly, if you’re trying to get ahead by simply having the lowest price, then you don’t need SEO2Sales™. But most businesses have and need a more nuanced strategy than engaging in a race to the bottom by undercutting their competitors. Differentiation and focus are about defining the value of what you’re selling on factors other than price alone to persuade your ideal client. This is where SEO2Sales™ shines!
How does determining the right competitive advantage strategy work in practice? Here are a couple of examples.
Earlier in my corporate career, I was a sales manager for a company that made infrared elevator door sensors designed to keep the doors from closing when an obstacle was present. The company I worked for had competitors in Asia who were producing similar sensors for a much lower price. Our product, however, had superior quality control and was water-resistant, making it a better choice for high-humidity environments where moisture could make a lower-quality sensor malfunction. I emphasized those factors in my marketing strategy to differentiate us from low-cost competitors and tie our higher quality to a higher value that justified our price point. In addition, I targeted the European market, as well as elevator door manufacturers who could bundle our product with theirs to increase the value of their own offerings. I didn’t waste time trying to fight our competitors on their home ground or going after customers whose primary concern was getting the lowest price—and the result was increased sales and profit!
What is your profit on each transaction? Are there dogs in your business? What about cash cows?
What is your ingrown toenail?
More recently, a podiatrist came to me after her previous SEO agency wasn’t able to help her grow her practice. She had felt certain that trying to attract new surgical patients was the obvious way to increase profits. However, when I sat down and did her analysis, the facts turned up a surprise—her best profit strategy was to focus on treating ingrown toenails. That simple procedure was quick and easy to perform, profitable, and in high demand, drawing new patients to her office. After we realigned her marketing and SEO efforts to that goal, growth in demand and profit shot up, to the point where she was able to expand her practice in the middle of COVID!
One thing to keep in mind is that even when you’re pursuing a strategy of differentiation and/or focus, price still plays a role (which is part of the reason it’s so critical to know what your competitors are doing). You need to keep your price competitive, but you have to be careful about chasing a low price to try to increase your market share. While it might work initially, customers often subconsciously connect low price with low quality, and you can end up unintentionally damaging the long-term value of your brand. We work with each client to find the right balance of all three factors when determining their unique competitive advantage. A favorite role I love playing is the mystery shopper, the marketplace private investigator!
Chapter 5
It’s Not About You! Empathy in Messaging
Believe it or not, it’s possible to have all the right information I described in Chapters 3 and 4 and still fail to close the deal with your prospective customers. If your messaging isn’t market-focused and client-focused across all your communication channels, you won’t make the crucial connection that captures the attention of new clients and motivates them to buy.
How can you tell if your current messaging isn’t getting the job done? The bounce rate is high on your web pages—people come, but they don’t stay. Nobody engages with your social media posts. Your blog articles go unread. Sadly, 99% of websites miss the mark on what visitors are looking for. What they’re missing is empathy.
Once you understand this, it’s easy to see why someone might quickly click off of a website that seems to clearly lay out all of the advantages and features of a product or service. The perspective is all wrong, because the copy is bragging about how great the company and what it provides is. What it isn’t doing is telling their audience how it will solve their problem.
How do you empathize with your audience?
Empathy is the key to creating messaging that resonates with your customers. You need to talk about the problem you’re going to help them solve. To do this, you have to understand how your target audience thinks and buys. What motivates them? What do they fear? What outcome are they hoping to achieve by purchasing the product or service you have to offer? You can’t assume they’ll automatically understand how the benefits or features you describe in the abstract apply to their situation—tell a story that makes the advantage to them crystal clear.
You also need to understand how your audience wants to be communicated with. Even a message with empathy can fail if it’s not tailored to the expectations of who you’re trying to reach or the medium it’s in. For example, if you come from a commonwealth country and live in the USA, your unique offer must be told in US English. The disconnect will cost you!
Another example: in the American market, people expect one focused message at a time. You have a short window to capture someone’s attention, and you’ll lose their interest if you try to go into too much depth or go in too many different directions. And of course, what resonates in one state or region may fall completely flat in another. You’ll need to adjust your messaging to the area you’re targeting for maximum impact.
If you’re working in international marketing, you can’t expect to apply the same approach as you would in the USA! Expectations and preferences will differ wherever you go. Anytime you’re expanding into a new market, whether domestically or abroad, assume that your messaging will need to change to fit your new audience.
Our SEO2Sales™ process includes optimizing your messaging as part of our comprehensive approach to aligning every part of your online marketing efforts toward achieving sales, not just visibility. Without that step, you may be speaking in a voice your customers just can’t hear, nor understand.
Chapter 6
Sales As Your Focus
What happens when sales is not your focus? Your attention stays on the metrics that matter—like increased revenue, new clients, and repeat sales.
Many, if not most, of the businesses who work with us came to us without a sales or marketing plan in place. If this is your situation, don’t be embarrassed! Most importantly, don’t let that lack of a plan stop you from coming to us to fix it. If branding and marketing have felt like guesswork to you in the past, with no clear connection between what you’ve tried and the results you get, our SEO2Sales™ process is the solution. Starting with your profit strategy provides the answers you need to build your branding and marketing correctly.
The truth is that there are no shortcuts to getting improved sales. You must do the foundational work to ensure that tactics like SEO are deployed effectively in the service of generating sales and leads. You’ll save time and money in the long run by doing this work upfront rather than trying to correct mistakes later.
Ultimately, the critical difference between ordinary SEO and SEO2Sales™ is this—we understand SEO is a tool, not a goal. Online visibility is a method for driving sales and profit, not something to be achieved for its own sake. That’s why our process is a comprehensive approach that from beginning to end aligns your business toward sales and growth, not merely a quick fix for improved search engine results.
Do it right or don’t do it at all!
In the years that I have been consulting and coaching, the most important point I’ve emphasized is that online marketing without an aggressive SEO2Sales™ approach is POINTLESS! But at the same time, SEO2Sales™ does not replace personal selling or business development. It is an approach meant to amplify the effectiveness of your sales and marketing when it is used in conjunction with the resources you already have.
For Every Wrong Move...The Penalty Is Sales! For Every Mistake, You Delay Your ROI. Do Things Right, From The Start!
For example, SEO2Sales™ can be a motivational time-saver for your sales team to help them meet their goals. Because it turns your online presence and website into a tool that brings potential customers to you, your sales staff can focus their energy on closing the deal rather than spending time knocking on doors (literally or metaphorically). They gain the commission and your company sees increased sales and revenue—it’s a win-win.
Finally, SEO2Sales™ does not work for every business model, because there are no one-size-fits-all solutions in marketing. At Iffel International, we will be frank with you if this is not the right approach for your business. The last thing we want is for any business to waste time and money on marketing that won’t work for them.
Chapter 7
Game-Changing SEO2Sales™ designed for Business Owners and SEO Technicians
SEO2Sales™ is about growth—helping businesses expand their market share and reach new customers. Over the years we’ve successfully worked with B2B and B2C clients in a wide variety of industries, including skeptics who didn’t think a website could be an effective source of leads in their field and business owners let down by previous SEO attempts. We even work as consultants for other SEO and marketing agencies to provide the essential foundation for their work on behalf of their clients.
If you’re a business owner, you know that running your business and working on your business are two different jobs—both full-time! Small and medium-sized businesses rarely have the resources to have in-house expertise to guide a sales and marketing strategy, meaning that efforts to improve sales are inconsistent at best. It can be frustrating knowing that your business has untapped growth potential but not knowing how to unlock it.
SEO2Sales™ with Iffel International allows you to give your marketing the attention it deserves without taking you away from your core business. It’s a full solution for your branding, marketing, and sales—including SEO that is laser-focused on tangible results as measured by increased profit, sales, and lead generation. You don’t need to watch market opportunities pass you by. With SEO2Sales™, you’ll capture the advantage you need to help your business thrive.
Taking technical talk into sales mode
If you’re an SEO specialist yourself, are you realizing that many of your clients aren’t coming in with any clear sense of their branding and marketing strategy? Perhaps you’re delivering better rankings on Google, getting consistent first-page results, but without seeing any corresponding rise in client revenue. Or maybe disappointed clients are leaving your agency because they feel like you didn’t come through on the results they expected from your efforts. We can help fix this scenario so your SEO work can do what it’s intended to. When marketing research and strategy are the missing piece, Iffel International can supply it through our fractional CMO services, so that you can focus on what you do best—boosting online visibility.
In an increasingly online world, businesses can’t afford to be left behind. If you’re ready to see the difference SEO2Sales™ can make in turning an online presence into an effective engine for business growth, contact Iffel International here today.
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