Great digital marketing campaigns are based upon, among other things, great content. As you might know, the role of content in SEO power is evolving. No longer are keywords central to the way you write your copy. Rather, Google is now looking for how well you answer the question in someone’s search query.

Changes in SEO are forcing us to adapt how we write content

At SAMC, we try to tell our story to the right audience, regardless of how they come up with their search question. Whether they ask Alexa to find them a great business consulting firm or they type in "how to do a Blue Ocean Strategy," we need to be the first answer. This is getting even more challenging with Google’s SERPs (Search Engine Results Page) at the top of the first page of a search.

Furthermore, while great content will always be king, the delivery of that content has changed as well.

How to evaluate your online presence?

Let’s take a look at the SEO changes and how in response, you should look at your online presence with fresh eyes.

Thanks to the digital revolution, people are not buying things the way they used to—they just aren't. The old sales funnel we knew for decades is long gone. 

As entrepreneurs, this means that you now need to build your business growth strategies differently in order to capture buyers on their journey, not yours. Since the buyer’s journey is an essential framework for any marketing strategy, you must start to think like your buyer and understand the steps he or she is taking to make a purchase decision. 

This new mindset is crucial if you are going build your sales volume fast enough to succeed. 

How Has the Buying Game Changed?

As you already know if you've read any of my blogs, I am a corporate anthropologist who launched Simon Associates Management Consultants almost two decades ago to help organizations change using the theory, methods, and tools of anthropology. Before that, I was a tenured professor and then an executive in banking and healthcare—always focused on change.

My husband, Andrew Simon (Andy), joined SAMC several years ago after many decades as a successful entrepreneur. Since he was not an anthropologist, our positioning was not going to be an easy one to fit him into. And yet, the more we thought about it, he fit the modus operandi perfectly, as I describe in a recent article I wrote for Home Business Magazine, which you can read here.

The challenge for us was: How could Andy take his expertise and apply it in ways that worked within our company’s market positioning? We knew he was a great innovator and knew how to grow businesses at all stages of their development — from start-ups and early-stage companies to mid-market companies ready to expand their scope and shape. And when you think about it, growing is all about change.

SAMC is all about helping businesses change but we realized we had to change, too.

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...

Great digital marketing campaigns are based upon great content. But as you know, the role of content in SEO power is evolving, forcing all of us to adapt as we try to tell our story to the right audience.

At Simon Associates Management Consultants, we know that great content will always be king. Yet, the delivery of that content has changed over time. Understanding and adjusting to these changes is what will make you a much better digital marketer.

SERPs are the big thing now

There are several things you should consider up front as you evaluate your website, social media and content marketing strategy. Perhaps the most important one is the growing importance of Search Engine Results Pages, or SERPs. I am sure you have seen this on the top of a page. You might even have scored high on one. But most often, between the paid advertisements and the answer to the search question which Google has identified, your website ranking falls well below the hot spot you thought it would be in.

So what’s going on?

At Simon Associates Marketing Consultants (SAMC), we have been Inbound Marketing/HubSpot partners for three years. What I would like to do in this blog is present a case study to articulate why we believe that Inbound is a very effective vehicle for successfully marketing any organization—in this case, a pediatrics practice. Of particular importance is how to build a brand's online presence.

How to use Inbound Marketing to build brand awareness, attract users and measure progress

SAMC has been deeply embedded in healthcare marketing for several decades, working with a wide array of healthcare clients across the country, including hospital systems, physicians' practices, ACOs and health information management clients.

Three years ago, we were engaged by a multi-specialty practice that wanted to give its pediatricians more visibility and establish a real brand presence in the marketplace for its twelve pediatric offices.

Firmly believing in the power of Inbound Marketing, we began to build a brand identity and consumer awareness of the pediatric practice and its pediatricians, following these 5 specific principles:

Over the past several years, I have blogged about my experiences at the HubSpot Inbound Marketing conference. So, it is time to do so again.

Setting the stage

But wait a minute. Let me set the stage before I talk about Inbound 2016. Simon Associates Management Consultants (SAMC) has built a business around helping organizations change. As corporate anthropologists, a big part of our work is teaching business leaders how to use their own eyes to see, feel and think in different ways about their companies.

Intentionally, our business is eclectic. We have clients in healthcare, higher education and those that are tough to put into a box, such as cement companies, professional organizations and non-profits. Why do all these different companies hire us? Because of our process. As Blue Ocean Strategists®, we help clients forget about the competition and instead, focus on how they can meet their customers’ unfulfilled needs, thus creating new markets.

With that as a backdrop, I’ll now talk a little about the conference, Inbound 2016, within the context of what we do at Simon Associates. It was a well-attended conference (18,000 people) and offered many subject areas across multiple content sessions. But what I would like to focus on here is the keynote speech given by Brian Halligan, HubSpot Co-founder and CEO.

We often get asked, Why use social media? We come back with, Why wouldn’t you?

Twitter is one of the best sources of inbound marketing out there. If your company is not using Twitter, it is time to change. I must confess that I didn't start out embracing Twitter, even though I went to hear Tony Hsieh, Zappos CEO, speak at Twitter Boot Camp (what seems like) many years ago.

As we at Simon Associates Management Consultants see Twitter turn into a must-have for book publishing, client development and growing our consulting and inbound marketing business, it's becoming crystal clear that all those "likes" turn into #hashtags that "love you." And, most importantly for marketers, the conversations are deep and endearing.

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.

In my last blog, “10 Tips For Writing Great Blogs That Get You Noticed,” I wrote about how to create compelling blogs that will propel your company and your solutions to rise to the top of search engines.

I suggested that you should address just one topic per blog, blog consistently and frequently to reap maximum benefits, optimize your content with keywords to get found via search, and add a relevant CTA (Call to Action) at the end of each post to promote lead generation.

Now that you have a great blog, how do you promote it?