Have you ever gotten an email which says something like, “We are the best at SEO…first page guaranteed”? Sounds pretty good, doesn’t it? But I have learned that it is perhaps not as good as it appears.

Why do I say that?

Let’s start with the buyer’s journey and why firms that only deal in SEO ranking can only get you part of the way to achieving your goals. Getting to the first page of Google is not all that inbound marketing is about! Helping a buyer through their decision process so they can make the right choice among many options is really a bigger objective -- and one that needs you to think about more than just SEO. Search marketing is more than just the right content on the website.

SEO is critically important -- agree, but...

In my new book “On the Brink: A Fresh Lens to Take Your Business to New Heights,” I share a story about a client, Laclede Chain, that was “on the brink.” Stuck or stalled, however you describe it, Laclede had grown and captured market share but then reached a position in the market where it had to rethink its business model.

Despite the fact that the post-recession market recovery is now entering its eighth year, we at SAMC are getting calls from across the U.S. and Canada from companies that are once again facing that “stall point.” They rebounded well from the 2008 Great Recession but aren’t quite sure why, and now are watching sales slow, clients defect to other companies, and buying processes change. Once again, like Laclede, they have to reinvent their businesses. And once again, they aren’t quite sure how.

Can Corporate Anthropology Help Reinvent a Company?

So here’s a question for you (actually two): Do you really need to have a particular person in mind when you’re writing blogs? Isn’t it enough to just put useful, relevant information out there that establishes your products or services as the best solutions for what people are searching for?

Maybe a decade or so ago, yes, but in today’s highly competitive market…no. Knowing who your target market is—i.e., who is most likely to buy what you’re selling—is key to writing effective blogs that get read by the widest possible audience of qualified prospects.

In two previous blogs, I talked about how to write great blogs (“10 Tips For Writing Great Blogs That Get You Noticed”), then how to get people to read them (“How To Make Sure Your Blogs Reach The Right Audience”). Now I’d like to focus on whom you should write your blogs for: the buyer persona.