No matter what line of business you’re in, you can’t go wrong with SEO. Adding this process to your GTM strategy will help you reach the target audience while simultaneously boosting brand awareness.
However, that doesn’t mean you should add optimization to your go-to-market plan overnight. Your marketing team needs to assess all the risks and benefits of SEO before pulling the trigger. Furthermore, they need to find a way to properly introduce the market strategy to improve current efforts.
The great thing about SEO is that you can combine it with just about any digital marketing approach, such as paid advertising and social media marketing. Furthermore, it provides excellent results when mixed with traditional marketing channels.
In this article, we’ll talk about SEO, go-to-market strategy, and how to mash these two together. We’ll also share some best practices that will help reduce customer acquisition costs while maximizing revenues.
What is a go-to-market strategy?
Basically, a go-to-market strategy or GTM strategy helps you create a specific business model. It’s a set of processes that a brand uses when entering a new market or promoting a new product. Go-to-market strategy is introduced at the very beginning of the company’s existence, and it governs daily operations.
Once established, companies rarely change their digital strategy. You would have to encounter tectonic shifts on the market or have extremely bad results to alter your approach. A business strategy is usually in place for numerous years, and it’s an integral part of a company’s identity.
Companies use marketing strategies to show the general public who they are. This concept isn’t only crucial during advertising but also during product creation, pricing strategy, finding ideal customers, etc.
Most importantly, your market strategy is vital for differentiating yourself from the competition. For example, some companies focus on ease of use, while others focus on excellent user experience. There are also those that position themselves as an affordable option, while others cater to a rich audience.
Some strategies are so powerful and well-thought that they bring life to otherwise boring products and services.
How to create a go-to-market strategy?
So, what does a go-to-market strategy entail?
- Deciding on a product or service.
- Performing market research.
- Creating marketing mix.
- Performing SWOT analysis
- Determining the budget.
- Creating a marketing plan.
GTM strategy is a meticulous process that starts by establishing your position in the market. You need to do it before the product launch, as you need to find an optimal method of presenting yourself to new customers.
Deciding on a product or service
According to economic experts, the strategy starts with a product or service. However, in practice, you’re more likely to start by analyzing the market. In the end, if you can’t create any competitive advantage, it’s highly unlikely that you’ll survive.
Always remember that this is more of an ideation phase. You might have a prototype, but there’s a good chance you’ll modify the product or service before launch. Among others, you’re trying to determine product market fit.
Performing market research
During this step, you’re trying to figure out what you’re going against. Most importantly, you’re trying to find blind spots and potential opportunities for development. If there are too many flexible competitors in a relatively small local market, you’ll probably struggle.
Creating marketing mix
Aside from analyzing competition, you also need to create a marketing mix and perform a SWOT analysis.
The marketing mix consists of 4 Ps: Product, Price, Place, and Promotion. By combining these elements, you’ll be able to find optimal pricing, packaging, warranties, marketing channel, marketing approach, etc. It’s a crucial part of strategizing that helps fine-tune your offer.
Performing SWOT analysis
During this step, you’re performing a SWOT analysis (Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats). You’re trying to see where you scale against competitors and whether your marketing mix is up to snuff.
Keep in mind this isn’t a static category. Given that you’re still in your early developmental phases, you have time to modify your approach to better fit the market.
Determining the budget
Finding the right budget is tricky. According to experts, you can never invest too much in marketing. Then again, spending too much money on promotional activities can have an adverse effect on your daily operations.
Among others, you should also consider financing. Can your company get several loans from a bank, and how much would you need to pay them off? How will debt affect your long-term growth?
Creating a marketing plan
If a marketing strategy is a list of steps you need to take, a marketing plan is a set of processes that help its execution. Unlike strategy, it’s a shorter-lived, more focused approach. Upon establishing a marketing plan, a company starts executing marketing campaigns.
Potential benefits and drawbacks of combining go-to-market strategy and SEO
Despite all the benefits, it’s not always clear-cut whether you should implement SEO in your common sales strategies. Among others, you should consider how this process compares to other marketing methods. Will optimization increase your profits at the end of the day? Can it provide some intangible benefits that other methods can’t?
To help you make the decision, we’ve put all the benefits and drawbacks side by side:
Pros
- Marketing channel diversification.
- Highly scalable compared to other methods.
- Allows you to reach other demographic segments.
- SEO is better in the long run.
- Forces you to improve the site’s functionality.
- Makes you independent from other platforms.
Cons
- Switches the focus of your marketing efforts.
- Forces you to hire a new marketing/sales team.
- It takes much more time to provide results.
- Not the best solution for specific industries.
- A bit longer customer journey compared to other methods.
In many cases, your industry and product affect SEO’s viability. In some cases, it’s much simpler to continue with paid ads and SMM, especially if they provide better results. Furthermore, search engine optimization might be a bad choice if you specialize in some other marketing tactic.
When to start with SEO?
Some business owners are reluctant to implement search engine optimization, thinking they’re too early or too late.
You’ll be glad to hear that it’s never too early or too late for SEO. This digital approach can only boost your current marketing efforts and help you reach a new segment of potential customers. Aside from generating lots of leads, optimizing your site for search engines can also do miracles for your brand awareness.
However, if you had the choice, we suggest that you start SEO as soon as possible. This is a long-term marketing strategy that yields proper results after a few months and even years. So, the sooner you invest in it, the better.
SEO is especially important for brands that primarily work online. During optimization, you will learn more about the competition and how they tackle social media and search ads. So, the very fact you’re active online will provide you with lots of valuable insights that you might not have gained with different approaches.
How to implement SEO in your go-to-market strategy?
Unlike go-to-market strategies, which can vary from company to company, SEO usually has very similar goals across the board. With this method, a brand is trying to drive as much relevant organic traffic to its site and increase conversions.
And while you have to slightly adjust your optimization efforts based on product and industry, the basic process is almost always the same:
1. Start by optimizing your site
Even if you have a functioning site, it doesn’t necessarily mean it’s well-optimized. In other words, it might be slow, mobile-unfriendly, or hard to navigate. Furthermore, it might attract the wrong audience or rely on a poor marketing funnel.
With optimization, you’re not only making your site better for Google but also for target customers. It serves as a basis for all your marketing operations, so it needs to provide excellent UX to anyone who visits the platform.
Start by making sure there aren’t any errors on the site. A visitor should reach any page in three clicks or less, and every page should load in less than three seconds. Naturally, your landing page should be well-designed, with beautiful graphics, while also being optimized for mobile devices.
2. Perform keyword research
Given that you probably know who your ideal buyer persona is, you can simply go forward with keyword research. During this process, you’re trying to find phrases with high organic volume in Google and other search engines. At the same time, these keywords should have low difficulty and high commercial value.
In other words, you’re interested in phrases that can drive users directly to your product pages.
The optimal keywords should also reflect your sales strategy. For example, some companies will focus on keywords such as “cheap sneakers,” while others will go for something like “elegant sneakers.” The fantastic thing about SEO is that it allows you to go for a specific target market.
3. Develop a content marketing plan
If you already had a go-to-market process in place, there’s a good chance you had a content marketing team. In the end, whether you’re advertising via billboards, brochures, emails, or social media, you need someone to write compelling copies.
This time around, you create a plan based on the keywords and their value to the company. Obviously, you should start with lucrative phrases that are easy to optimize for and go down the list. Generally speaking, the content team should work hand-in-hand with the sales manager.
If you wish to introduce SEO to your existing market GTM strategy, it’s very important to synchronize between teams. You can multiply the value of every piece of content and every marketing campaign by simply sharing your message on several channels.
4. Create content
Let’s be honest. People don’t care about websites and social media channels unless they can offer them something of value. So, the best way to generate goodwill with a target audience is to create actionable content.
When talking about websites, most websites still drive traffic with their articles. Videos and images are also nice, although users don’t necessarily go to commercial sites to consume this type of content.
Content should always meet user intent. It should provide value and stand out from the crowd. Many business owners believe that it’s good enough to simply copy-paste articles from other sites. However, the only way to truly succeed in digital business is to have a fresh perspective.
Nowadays, Google uses various user engagement metrics to establish the value of a page. The search engine’s algorithm measures things such as time spent on a page, bounce rate, click-through rate, etc. That is an additional argument to push the envelope when producing unique content.
5. Perform off-page optimization
When talking about off-page optimization, we’re primarily referring to links. They are the secret ingredients that push certain types of content over the edge.
Basically, when several pages are of similar quality, we determine the “winner” through backlinks received from third-party sites. They are additional votes of confidence showing Google that this article is truly unique and provides value to readers.
However, links rarely come naturally. You need to pursue them with extensive outreach campaigns. For this purpose, you can use guest posts, broken link building, HARO, and numerous other methods. Keep in mind that it’s much better to get a handful of quality links than to target referrals from low-quality sites.
If you’re struggling with optimization, contact MiroMind today! Our B2B SEO company will help you reach the top of search results.