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July 9, 2018 by

How To Find Commercial Intent Keywords For B2B Lead Generation

The Big Picture

In this post, you will discover several examples of finding keywords for lead generation through the search engines for business-to-business (B2B) queries across a wide range of intents. While most people want to jump into the conversation about which keyword tool to use, there are dozens of great articles on how to use a handful of quality keyword tools for various purposes.

Instead, this post is going to focus on what actually happens in the real world from nearly a decade of my interacting everyday with clients who simply want one thing: a steady flow of qualified, prospective customers (or clients) whom they believe that they can convert into long-term business once on the phone or communicating by e-mail or other means.

While this may seem to be “pedestrian” to seasoned internet marketing professionals, akin to helping the local plumber who wants more calls by just posting a simple ad on Craigslist, the truth is that even the B2B space company owners and executives simply want more leads. Remember that if they could grow their businesses at a respectable level by word-of-mouth, trade shows, mailings, TV ads or other older models of marketing and advertising then they would do so instead of having to trust outside help for the “confusing” internet marketing such as SEO, YouTube ads, Facebook ads with retargeting, hashtags and other things which (at first) they don’t believe have anything to do with their particular business models.

Real World Conversations

Everything I will mention here is based on dozens of actual conversations which have taken place with owners and executives over the phone, in their offices’ coffee break rooms, via e-mail, in fancy executive offices, in car rides, or over lunch and coffee shop conversations. These conversations took place with companies across vary different parts of the United States and Canada such as Los Angeles, suburban New York, Dallas Texas, mountain areas of Colorado, Chicago, Tucson Arizona and other United States cities and small towns.

One other way you can pick up new keywords, along with the prospective customer’s (client’s) motivating reasons for calling, is to listen to actual customer phone calls or first e-mail communications to the company. If you can get access to these calls, such as archived audio files from lead generation tracking phone numbers or copies of e-mails to the sales department, you will glean a lot more than you probably realize!

Examples Of Clients For This Post

To help you discover how to find good B2B keywords, in addition to your listening to actual customer calls and reading initial customer emails, here are the examples I will be using:

  • Manufacturer of a specific kind of part you find in laptop computers, tray tables on airplanes, consoles for trucks and SUV automobiles and small medical devices

  • Attorney who wants to reach owners and executives of healthcare practices and related businesses who need legal representation when accused by the government of fraud and other federal healthcare violations

  • Concrete company based in the suburb of a top-five United States population area who needs to reach property owners and managers for B2B sevices like parking lot repair, concrete containment pads, dock leveler construction, and concrete core drilling

  • Advanced experiential design and visual content studio which works with Fortune 100 companies, NBA and NFL teams, major universities and top 20 U.S. City museums on interactive/immersive experiences. These include augmented reality trade show exhibits, creating VR sports games for professional teams, 3D building projection mapping for museum openings, and related services

International B2B Manufacturing Keywords

For the manufacturer of parts which wants to reach mechanical engineers and product design engineers around the world, this can be more challenging than you may believe initially. In addition to foreign translation of landing pages (along with geo-targeted AdWords campaigns also translated into the foreign language), just finding out what is being sought in this B2B dynamic is not always so easy.

We started by going back through Analytics and determining if there were some special phrases which were not obvious that kept repeating. The president of the company and I sat down for over an hour and went through about 300 phrases, narrowing the list down to 15-20 keyword phrases which we would not have thought of originally.

As for the main keywords, we used the various forms of the product sold by the company. There are 4 versions which customers use all the time, so we built our keyword lists from those root phrases.

To modify for the B2B space, and also to “get inside the mind” of a mechanical engineer sitting in a cube deep in an office somewhere in North America (not the easiest target audience to reach!), we also went back to the original emails and remembering real world conversations the president had at trade shows and customer meetings. The big keyword modifiers in this case were:

  • “OEM”

  • “custom” (the company designs custom parts to then be used when an engineer is trying to spec in the part into the design)

  • “manufacturers” (and “manufacturing”)

Only once all of this work was done did we go into the Google Keyword Planner and use the various features such as related keywords, seeing what competitors were targeting on their meta title and meta description tags, etc. We then used the Keyword Planner to see if there was any demand (at least 10+ searches/month) for the specific phrases; and we found about 40 more keywords which were based on concepts which engineers seemed to be entering including:

  • Direction-based such as “one-way”, “360 degree”, “pivot”, etc.

  • Compliance-based such as RoHS, REACH, etc. — as the engineers needed to make sure that the parts that they including meet their needs to reduce liability for their companies. Again, this is “getting inside the head” of the prospective customer to adress his/her needs even before the question gets asked

  • Weight-related such as “foot-pounds”, “under X ounces”, etc.

Discussion of how to integrate all of these B2B keywords we discovered will be mentioned in the last part of this post.

United States-Based High End Service To Major Corporations And Organizations

For the company providing high end “experiential” brand storytelling, this presented a different set of challenges. The company’s market is major U.S. Corporations, professional sports teams, big city museums and major civic organizations and colleges.

The keywords we decided to use needed to meet three different means of being found:

  • Google – both regular search results as well as Google Videos and Google Images

  • YouTube (and Vimeo) for searches being done within the video platform

  • LinkedIn – keywords to be used to “rank” well for queries entered either in LinkedIn’s “people”, “companies” or “content” searches

In this case, many searchers are looking as casual “browsers” rather than “buyers” of the services offered. They search for phrases like “experiential marketing”; but the “buyers” are searching for phrases like “experiential design studios” or “immersive marketing and branding companies”.

The B2B searchers occasionally make question-based searches like “How can I use augmented reality in my trade show exhibit?”. These are tough to determine, so for a high-end service company it will be a case-by-case basis. If time and budget and content permit, then go ahead and pursue those for your SEO efforts.

Otherwise consider a LinkedIn company page post with that question as the lead sentence; and then run a hyper-targeted paid ad to people with the specific job titles and who work at companies of specific sizes to reach the audience with the “question” as the “hook” which encourages the reader (via LinkedIn paid ad) to want to discover more about the company.

Local Businesses In Major City Targeting B2B Phrases

The concrete company in a suburb of a major city, and serving the entire region, gets to play more of the typical “local SEO” game. The keywords here are more straightforward.

We went after three categories of keywords:

  • Services which get entered normally, but only get entered by those with commercial intent such as “parking lot repair CITY” or “concrete containment pads CITY”

  • Services which normally have consumer intent, but modified with the word “commercial” in front of them such as “commercial concrete drilling CITY” or “commercial asphalt removal CITY”

  • The generic phrases like “commercial concrete contractors CITY” and phrases indicating some sort of pre-existing experience such as “bonded concrete contractors CITY”. The latter may be searched by a municipal employee needing to go outside of the normal channels to get something accomplished, but still requiring some sort of reassurance before that person calls the local business

Attorney Reaching Medical Practice Owners/Executives Across USA

The attorney who aims to reach people in all 50 states who own medical practices and other medical businesses such as toxicology laboratories has his own challenges for SEO. Instead of trying to rank locally for phrases like “DWI attorney CITY” or “personal injury attorney CITY” (both of which can be VERY challenging keywords to rank #1 in big cities!!), the challenge is to convince owners/founders/partners of a high-dollar medical business that this attorney can minimize damage to their personal reputations, prevent the loss of millions of dollars of fines to the federal government, and minimize the risk of prison time. Again, these are federal cases so the risks are severe for being charged with Medicare fraud and similar crimes since those convicted get mentioned on the Department of Justice website, local news stations and other outlets which can damage the lives of their loved ones for years.

The types of keywords we chose include:

  • Going after the very specific niche practice area of law. These could include phrases like “Stark Law defense attorney” and “federal healthcare fraud attorney CITY” (for major cities)

  • Giving reassurance of previous indicators (yet no guarantee of future) success. This could manifest in keywords like “former federal prosecutor for healthcare fraud” and “federal healthcare defense attorney case results”

When it comes to marketing for legal practices, be sure that you are compliant with that firm’s state bar’s marketing and advertising regulations. Some states are very stringent and restrictive in terms of what you can do with your online marketing. If you were to outrank another legal firm paying for SEO services (because you know what you are doing!) then any violation of the state bar’s regulations – no matter how out of date those laws may be – could cause fines and reprimands due to the other law firm reporting the violation(s). Tread carefully here, but you could do very well if you speak with law firms (and other licensed businesses) in your state and let them know that you can market them successfully… and within their licensing board’s marketing and advertising regulations.

Integration With The Rest Of Your Search Marketing Efforts

You are able to use the keywords you find in several ways. For the keywords with the most demand (monthly search volume), you likely will put those in the SEO meta title and description fields; and you even may use the keywords in the <h1> and other header tags, anchor text for internal links, etc.

Your secondary keywords (or LSI synonym keywords) can be used for other purposes in your search engine marketing and other inbound search platforms. For example, your secondary keywords could included in:

  • The text of the content on a relevant page

  • In the image meta data (before uploading the image) or in the alt text, caption or image filename

  • Tags or description for a relevant YouTube video

  • Text of a LinkedIn company page update

  • For local B2B companies, include the keywords in their citations and Google My Business listings (services section, “about me” section, etc.)

  • YouTube channel’s “About” page and “Discussion” tab

  • Etc.

Additionally, you can bid on the extra keywords in relevant ad groups in a search network ad in Google AdWords; and remember to improve your ad quality scores to lower any “surcharges” you might recognize (per click or per 1000 impressions) assigned to that particular ad/keyword combination.

Finally, by listening to the inbound phone call recordings and/or reading initial inbound e-mails to sales teams, you also can use the keywords or phrases (which lead to problem solving or dealing with high emotion) in your online banner ads, trade show marketing, and other marketing & advertising efforts.

I hope that these examples of actual conversations and real world situations help you with your B2B marketing efforts. If you need any help then you are welcome to reach out and contact me through my website (click here) or LinkedIn (https://www.linkedin.com/company/morethanseo-com).

Filed Under: b2b, keyword research
April 13, 2015 by

Repost – Local SEO And Lessons From The Stock Trading World

Greg used to run Search Simplicity, a website dedicated to SEO and other online marketing topics.  This is a repost from a guest post he added to his site back in the early Fall of 2014.

 

Stock Trading Lessons Applied To Local SEO Search Phrases

The author’s views below are entirely his or her own and do not reflect the views of Search Simplicity

Can Stock Trading be Applied To Local SEO?

In the world of trading financial instruments, such as stocks, many market participants like to time their entries and exits using charts.

A common phrase used to describe the advanced study of using charts in the financial markets is called “technical analysis“.

The big question is, “What does that have to do with local search engine optimization?!?”

Great question!

With the underlying assumption (presupposition) that most local businesses don’t care much about “branding”, and instead just care only about new leads/prospects/phone calls/walk-ins and e-mails, a basic principle from stock trading technical analysis can help you get those new leads and phone calls rather quickly from the search engines.

This principle goes to the core of what SEO was founded upon:  keyword phrases.

 

In stock trading technical analysis, there is a principle called “Multiple Time Frame Analysis“.

Multiple Time Frame Analysis means nothing more than looking at a particular stock symbol or index (like the S&P 500) on charts, representing different time frames.

Doing so allows the market participant an opportunity to develop at least one (or more) competitive edge, in order to profit.  The typical “time frames” for any stock or index are as follows:

  1. Yearly charts – where every bar (or “candle” on some stock charts) represents the high/low/open/close price for an entire calendar year
  2. Monthly charts – where each bar/candle represents one month’s data of the four price points (high/low/open/close)
  3. Weekly charts
  4. Daily charts
  5. Intra-day charts (these could vary from 1 minute charts to hourly charts)

You are welcome to look at some of the various stock trading websites and stock charting software packages to get more familiar with these types of chart representations.

Remember that you are looking at the same stock (or index) at the same point in time, just represented in different time frames; and each may give you reason to buy, sell, initiate a “short” position (attempting to make money when a stock drops in value), or be “flat” (not have any position).

The lessons from the principle of multiple time frame analysis can be applied by anyone into Search Engine Optimization (SEO), including local SEO.

Please Note:
For the remaining of this article, let’s use the example of a competitive market, something similar to; Real Estate Broker in Lexington Kentucky (a major city) – (called “CITY” for the rest of the article) or very large suburb.

We can determine if, nationally, there is demand in the search engines for specific phrases related to any particular industry.

We then can assume that a certain %percentage% of people in the local metropolitan market will use the same keyword phrases to look for similar phrases, but at the local level.

Here is how the stock trading time frame charts principle could be applied in a similar manner:

1) YEARLY CHART = the major keyword which would be “Realtor CITY“.

All participants (the Realtors themselves and the clients they help find new homes, plus independent lead-generation companies) are aiming for this keyword.

It’s going to be highly competitive and, even if you reach the first page in (Google) the organic search results, you could possibly drop very quickly, depending on how solid your rankings are and well they’ve been optimized.

Nonetheless, by ranking on page number one, you’ll likely be generating LOTS of highly targeted leads, in a relatively short time frame.

Assuming that the Real Estate Broker has decent search engine visibility, a professional attitude, and does a great job in customer service then he/she may expect a certain percentage of the new customers to become repeat customers.

Follow-up methods such as email marketing, social media marketing, or other methods to keep the Real Estate Brokers name on the minds of (clients) home buyers, could generate repeat business or even a snowball of consistent, referral business.

This is just one very small perk of being in the top spots of Google!

2)  MONTHLY CHART = a modification of the word “Real Estate Broker“.

This could be “24 hour Real Estate Broker CITY”, “local Real Estate Agent CITY”, “licensed Real Estate Agent CITY” or any other similarly targeted search phrase , which has lots of demand (according to the Google Keyword Tool/Planner or other search engine keyword demand estimator).

You won’t have as much demand for this keyword at the local level, but the conversion rate (if you rank near the top) is very high.

Most people wouldn’t type in “24 hour Real Estate Broker CITY” or “licensed Real Estate Broker CITY” unless they have a specific reason for doing so.

The odds of the Realtors website (or other web property like YouTube video, Facebook page, Google Plus page, Yelp listing, etc.) generating conversions, are pretty good here.

Going after business-to-business (B2B) phrases works here as well such as “Real Estate Agent CITY”.

 

 

3)  WEEKLY CHART = a sub-niche of the industry which has lots of demand nationally.

For example lots of people go to the search engines to type in phrases related to certain aspects of Real Estate, like “home buyers”, “luxury homes” or “houses for sale”.

While there LIKELY will be (not necessarily) less demand for “buy cheap house CITY” than “Realtor CITY”, the person searching likely will convert into a phone call or e-mail.

It is then up to the person answering the call or e-mail to make the prospective customer feel enough reassurance and confidence to use the Real Estate company.

Please Note:
The niche (industry) you’re involved in doesn’t matter.

4)  DAILY CHART = low-demand, high-margin aspects of the industry.  In the plumbing industry, certain plumbers are licensed and experienced with high-margin needs such as foundation plumbing testing or backflow prevention.

There likely won’t be much demand for “foundation plumbing test CITY”, but the competition against that keyword likely won’t be very high.

The margins on what that phone call could generate a pretty impressive (!), so it might be worth doing some basic Local SEO for keyword phrases like these.

Make sense?

5)  INTRA-DAY CHART = esoteric aspects where there is some demand and/or modifying a keyword with a brand name.  For example, in the plumbing world some customers want a plumber who specializes in a particular brand of water heater.

They actually may type in “BRAND water heater repair CITY” or a similar phrase.

There isn’t much demand for these phrases, but they do have high “buyer intent”.

For the “Daily Chart” and “Intra-day Chart” type of keywords, you likely won’t need too many inbound, high-authority/quality links to get respectable rankings.

In these cases, make sure that the words are visible to the search engines (e.g. readable text and not just words in an image file) and take care of your basic on-page SEO efforts.

Place the new content on a new page or an existing page that can be accessed through the sitemap and navigation menu, or at least through properly-structured internal page linking.

Continue to earn quality links to your website’s home page and main inner pages, like Greg recommends.

You then will want a few social mentions of the page(s) with the new content such as the brand names and/or high-margin sub-niches.

Mix up Google Plus, a Facebook share, at least 1-2 Tweets for the URL and a few others like:  Pinterest, Stumbleupon, Delicious, Reddit (if appropriate for your industry), etc.

If the sub-niche is a new service (or product) being offered by your company then you may consider an online press release as it would be justified at that point.

For the “Weekly Chart” type of keywords, you will need some quality links.  If you have an official business address, citations always will be great to have as long as they are on high-authority web properties.

Some quality Web 2.0 properties, with unique content and relevant images and/or videos, should be a solid play.  You also can get links from a quality private blog network.

Yes, a REAL private blog network like Greg recommends… not one advertising itself for everyone in the world to join!

For the “Monthly Chart” and “Yearly Chart” major keywords, you will likely need a combination of really good on-page SEO optimization, high quality local citations, high quality links, a strong social media presence and social sharing signals, mentions on local websites (e.g. the local chamber of commerce directory and the BBB) and some properly-constructed tiered link building.  Greg’s suggestions for tiered linking in 2014 (and into 2015) should be sound for you to pursue.

When it comes to these high-competition phrases, you can consider it a “win” if one of your other web properties ranks as long as it has a link to your website and your phone number.

For example, if one of your YouTube videos or your Yelp page ranks # 1 for “plumber CITY” then consider it a win even if it is not your own website ranking.  Use some of the profits generated from the new customers to purchase more authority links and create some terrific unique content.

You also could purchase relevant websites or expired domains that have a clean backlink history AND search engine authority (Moz Domain Authority, Majestic Trust Flow, AHREFS Domain Rank, etc.).

Then convert those into value-added websites/blogs with links pointing back to your website, YouTube videos, Facebook page, chamber of commerce directory listings, etc.

Be sure to mix up the link text (called “anchor text”) using each grammatical version of the keyword no more than once or twice.  Also include lots quality links that have as the text:

  • your business name
  • relevant brand names (e.g. BRAND water heater repair CITY)
  • generic text (e.g. “click here” or “visit this page”)
  • URL (e.g. “http://www.YOURWEBSITE.com”)

Please note that you are NOT subject to a fixed number of five different types of keywords like the stock chart time frames (i.e. yearly, monthly, weekly, daily, intraday).

The big picture is to understand the core principle.  All it means is that you are not mandated to go after only 1-2 major keywords.

Since a local SEO effort is designed, first and foremost to keep the company’s phone ringing each month, be sure to get inside the mind of the customer.

Use the multiple time frame/stock chart principle as a shortcut to help make the phone ring by addressing the main reason someone looks up a local business category in the search engines in the first place:  the prospective customer has a problem and is looking for a business to provide a solution.

Keeping that in mind, take some time to understand (and quantify if possible!) the types of problems that encourage someone to go the search engines in the first place.

By addressing those problems/solutions on your website and other web properties, AND by “playing nice” with the search engines by not over-optimizing or spamming your website, you will be one of the few companies in your metropolitan area to take legitimate steps toward letting the search engines help make your phone ring with new customers or clients.

If you would like more information on this topic then you are welcome to contact me with your questions.

The “multiple time frame” core principle will be the same, but the actual process may vary depending on the type of new local customer or client you are seeking.

Filed Under: keyword research, lead generation, local marketing, Page One, search engine marketing, SEO, small towns
August 27, 2014 by

Stock Trading Lessons For The Selection Of Local Keyword Phrases

Greg, from Search Simplicity, recently asked me to contribute a guest post about helping select solid keywords for local search engine optimization (SEO) efforts.  Often, people only target two or three keywords.  By borrowing from the short-term stock trading principle of “multiple time frame analysis”, one can become much more artful in choosing keyword phrases to help accomplish the ultimate goal of any local SEO campaign:  getting the phone to ring consistently with first-time new customers or clients!

Here is the link to the article:

 

Greg modified the text a little bit in order to emphasize his recent real estate SEO post & industry-specific service.  That is fine with me.  Just know that when you see the word “plumber” that was the original example I used.  He did his best to modify, so I am okay with the adjustments.  Remember, it is his blog and I granted him the professional leeway to modify the text to serve his needs as well!

Feel free to contact me with your questions and if you would like to schedule an appointment about your local SEO efforts, not just the keyword research and selection process.   Thank you and please consider sharing this post (or the specific URL on the Search Simplicity blog) with those whom you think might find it useful.

Filed Under: keyword research, local marketing, search engine marketing, SEO