Use SEO and Marketing Automation Together to Optimize Marketing Effectiveness
Search engine optimization has been around for over 15 years. And marketing automation has been taking the B2B world by storm over the past few years. Although each provides distinct capabilities for digital marketing, when combined they make a potent combination.
SEO has evolved as Panda then Penguin have changed search marketing strategies. The evolution of SEO provides an opportunity to leverage the strengths of MA; namely, the ability to understand how well organic and paid campaigns have been and the development of other search marketing practices (such as back linking or social campaigns). The key is to use SEO and marketing automation together to optimize marketing effectiveness.
Marketing automation allows marketers to track lead behavior. Search patterns provide potential indications of buyers’ intentions. It seems like a natural fit to combine your SEO strategy with a marketing automation system. With the information available within an MA platform, SEO campaigns can be linked to a deeper view of Web activity and, ultimately, to conversions. SEO performance can be tracked from click to close. Search campaigns can be evaluated through MA analytics then modified based upon the insight platform users have into keywords and referral sources; campaigns can then be optimized to match traffic patterns. MA can help demonstrate ROI for both paid and organic campaigns.
When integrated with a CRM, such as Microsoft Dynamics, a marketing automation platform like our Lead Management Automation™ can point marketing managers to KPIs where the true dollar attribution is visible. Existing SEO analytics products fall short of that capability. By combining SEO and MA, marketers have a wider scope into buyer behavior. Page views and other content consumption data can provide direction for developing lead-centric content marketing initiatives and site architecture modifications. Not only can MA provide keyword performance metrics for search activities but also within email campaigns and landing pages. Link building is more effective when combining SEO and MA by using the trackable link function, which allows users to follow leads through search, social, and other pathways. The lead intelligence provided through this function can help shape link building strategies more effectively than standalone SEO reporting.
Finally, using MA with SEO allows businesses to budget with more agility, basing decisions on actual revenue generation capabilities of search marketing tactics. Using only SEO analytics requires managers to adjust budget based on traffic, not close rates.
