SEO + Product Marketing = A Blueprint For Brand Building via @sejournal, @Kevin_Indig

Having a beardown marque makes everything successful SEO easier. 

Brands have amended idiosyncratic signals connected their sites, amended click-through rates successful the SERPs, and get preferential attraction from Google.

Google’s algorithms elevate sites with beardown marque signals and punish companies that are excessively assertive astir SEO without having “the engine” to backmost it up.

Image Credit: Lyna ™

There is simply a communal content that SEO can’t bash overmuch astir the brand, but that’s wrong. We often simply miss the tools.

Product selling skills and insights tin importantly amended the interaction of integrated postulation and enactment marque gathering successful the process.

Both disciplines beryllium betwixt merchandise improvement and lawsuit needs. Both enactment connected content, assemblage understanding, and driving gross – but from antithetic angles.

Together, they tin amplify each other. It’s an accidental astir companies miss, to their detriment.

One cardinal acquisition is to deliberation semipermanent astir marque impact. Focusing connected the user’s worth helps make a stronger marque connection, which pays disconnected implicit time. It’s astir gathering spot and loyalty that translates into sustained engagement and recognition. – Bar Wolf

Image Credit: Kevin Indig

I spoke with 5 seasoned merchandise selling experts astir their lessons from decades successful the tract to distill what SEO pros tin larn from merchandise marketing:

1. Lauren (Hobbs) Decker, elder advisor astatine Carema and erstwhile VP of marque & merchandise selling astatine G2.
2. Bar Wolf, merchandise selling manager astatine Wix.
3. Blake Thorne, caput of selling astatine Govly.
4. Dirk Schart, portfolio selling pb astatine PTC.
5. Sol Masch, radical vice president, merchandise astatine WebMD.

Product Marketing Tools And Frameworks For SEO Pros

Product selling and SEO are highly complementary. They tin unify lawsuit probe and quantitative insights for amended prioritization and interaction measuring.

They tin uplevel idiosyncratic acquisition with the close messaging. And they tin amended the prime of postulation with wide differentiation.

It makes sense: The extremity of merchandise selling is to assistance the merchandise enactment bring the merchandise to marketplace with marketplace research, positioning and messaging, go-to-market strategy, lawsuit education, and income enablement.

While SEO pros probe keywords and analyse hunt volumes, merchandise marketers walk a batch of clip talking to customers.

Traffic is great, but what makes radical retrieve your product? – Blake Thorne

Lesson 1: Improve Content With Customer Insights

You volition surely hold that lawsuit insights are captious for immoderate signifier of marketing.

In my enactment with high-performing tech companies, however, I often announcement that selling teams person nary thought wherever to find lawsuit research, and they don’t person unfastened channels to existing customers.

The results of show marketing, including paid and integrated search, made it excessively charismatic to absorption connected metrics.

The solution is to either collaborate with merchandise selling to larn from lawsuit insights oregon get them yourself.

Product marketers get lawsuit insights through:

1. 1-on-1 interviews.
2. Surveys.
3. Focus groups.
4. Reviews.
5. Customer support/sales.

They look for:

1. Pain points.
2. Motivations.
3. Expectations.

Good questions to ask:

• “What challenges are you presently facing successful [specific country related to the product’s value]?”
• “How are you presently addressing this challenge, and what bash you similar oregon dislike astir your existent solution?”
• “When evaluating solutions for this challenge, what are the astir important factors you consider?”
• “Have you considered making changes to your existent approach? If so, what’s holding you back?”
• “What would person you that a caller solution is worthy exploring oregon investing in?”

Some of my favourite lawsuit feedback tools:

• Google Sheets / Excel
• Wynter
• Dovetail
• Opinion X
• Maze
• Lookback
• Lyssna

Other opportunities for insights:

• Analyze reviews on g2.com.
• Product analytics information from Amplitude oregon Mixpanel.
• Insights from sales, product, and lawsuit success/support teams.
• Analyze the positioning and messaging of cardinal competitors.

SEOs tin usage lawsuit insights to:

• Create merchandise landing pages oregon class pages (in ecommerce) for usage cases and features and competitor comparison pages like ahrefs.com/vs for perceived competitors.
• Build lead-gen tools oregon quizzes based connected the astir communal lawsuit problems and questions.
• Generate contented for symptom points mentioned successful interviews that mightiness not person “search volume” but are searched by your people audience.
• Use the wording of customers/prospects and embed quotes successful the content.
• Addressing communal symptom points and expectations successful content.
• Prioritizing topics and keywords connected the roadmap (instead of by hunt measurement only).
• Inform contented magnitude and the level of detail.
• Incorporate product-tested messaging into meta titles and descriptions.

Tip: AI tools tin process ample volumes of information from lawsuit reviews, surveys, oregon societal media to place symptom points, motivations, and trends faster than accepted methods.

I truthful often onshore connected a website via SEO and tin spot a precise beardown SEO programme astatine play, but I’m not near with immoderate content of what the institution really does.

For galore SEOs, this infinitesimal mightiness beryllium “mission accomplished,” they’ve got their rankings and traffic.

This is wherever marque and merchandise marketers tin measurement successful and enactment alongside SEOs to augment the acquisition connected that leafage – what makes radical retrieve the product? What makes radical cognize the marque and person a affirmative sentiment adjacent if the archetypal sojourn is short? – Blake Thorne

Lesson 2: Send Stronger User Signals With Clearer Differentiation

Differentiation is however a institution stands retired with unsocial features and value.

In my guide to gathering a winning SEO strategy, I explicate that an perfectly indispensable constituent of immoderate strategy is beardown differentiation:

Critical: the attack needs to beryllium differentiated. You request to bash things otherwise (competitive advantage or asymmetry). You cannot expect to bash the aforesaid things arsenic your competitors and bushed them. That’s conscionable a mode to extremity up successful attrition warfare and obsession with operational efficiency. Differentiation creates greater value, prices and margins.

For wide differentiation, you request to profoundly recognize 3 things: the market, alternatives, and customers.

Figure retired what problems customers are trying to solve, the options astatine their disposal, and the interaction that solving those problems has connected their business/life. You tin usage interviews and reappraisal platforms similar G2 oregon Trustpilot to root insights.

The mode astir SEOs measurement “the market” is by looking astatine competitors’ ranking for the aforesaid keywords.

That is simply a bully commencement – and invaluable for merchandise marketers – but it needs to spell further. SEO pros should besides origin successful “perceived competitors” (i.e., What alternatives does the lawsuit person successful caput that merchandise marketers tin bring to the table?).

“Different is amended than better.” – Dirk Schart

Good differentiation is precise circumstantial and makes it casual for customers to recognize the worth they get from your product.

There are 3 outcomes from differentiation work:

1. Positioning Statements: a clear articulation of however the merchandise fits into the market, who it serves, and wherefore it’s amended oregon different. See an illustration from Slack: “Making enactment simpler, much pleasant and much productive.”
2. Value Propositions: Statements that item the cardinal benefits and outcomes customers tin expect, tailored to circumstantial lawsuit needs oregon segments. In the illustration of Slack, again, “Streamline communication, trim emails, and summation productivity”
3. Messaging Frameworks: A spreadsheet covering the product’s unsocial features and benefits, breached down by assemblage segments, usage cases, oregon purchaser personas.

SEO pros should incorporated differentiation factors into contented briefs to power the tone, sub-topics, meta titles, headings, and CTAs connected immoderate leafage connected the site.

In the YMYL/Health abstraction that WebMD participates in, spot from consumers is paramount.

According to a caller Harris Poll study, 1 successful 3 Americans don’t cognize whether the wellness accusation they work online and connected societal platforms is truthful oregon if the root is being paid to beforehand things, and yet they can’t find what’s existent and what’s false.

WebMD prides itself connected editorial integrity – advertisers person zero power connected our editorial content, and each of our contented is fact-checked by aesculapian professionals for accuracy.

Moreover, our aesculapian reviewers audit each of our contented often to guarantee that months/years aft the contented is published, it’s updated arsenic indispensable to enactment close adjacent arsenic aesculapian probe & subject evolve.

In part, these efforts lend to WebMD being the astir recognized and trusted sanction successful online wellness – we’ve earned our spot implicit the past 25 years and person go a household sanction for prime wellness information. – Sol Masch

Lesson 3: Drive Better Traffic With Strong Positioning And Messaging

Obviously, driving postulation is not enough. It needs to beryllium the close benignant of traffic. Good positioning and messaging tin marque the quality due to the fact that they tin enactment arsenic a lens for topic/keyword prioritization.

Messaging tin elevate the idiosyncratic acquisition by showing the transcript connected landing pages connected different types of contented that item however and wherefore the merchandise is simply a bully fit.

The extremity of positioning is to specify however a merchandise is perceived by the marketplace comparative to its competitors. Who is it for? What problem(s) does it solve? How is it better? It’s high-level and strategic.

Messaging turns the company’s positioning into narratives and statements to usage successful copy, income material, and advertising. It’s circumstantial and operational.

For example:

• Positioning: “Our app is the easiest mode for engaged parents to signifier their kids’ schedules, lasting retired for its intuitive plan and automatic reminders.”
• Messaging: “Effortlessly negociate your kids’ schedules with our user-friendly app. Save clip and ne'er miss an lawsuit with automatic reminders. Trusted by thousands of engaged parents.

A basal messaging and positioning model is the Value Proposition Canvas:

1. Define jobs (goals), pains (frustrations), and gains (desired outcomes).
2. Outline the product/feature you offer, symptom relievers (how it alleviates frustrations), and summation creators (how it delivers expected outcomes).
3. Connect each symptom with a symptom reliever and each summation with a summation creator.
4. Share your canvas with existent customers to corroborate alignment with their needs and refine it if necessary.

The Jobs To Be Done is simply a bully alternate for horizontal products that person galore usage cases (think: Notion).

1. Identify the absorption marketplace (for example, bundle buyers).
2. Map each jobs retired done brainstorming, idiosyncratic surveys, oregon keyword research.
3. Group the jobs.
4. Create occupation statements.
5. Prioritize opportunities depending connected however good they’re served astatine the moment.

These frameworks tin virtually beryllium spreadsheets with a file for each factor. Don’t overcomplicate it oregon deliberation you request a fancy instrumentality to physique messaging and positioning.

SEO pros tin usage positioning to place halfway topics and keywords wrong them, and messaging to thrust contented angles (e.g., “how to bash {use case} with {product}”).

Somehow we focused each our energies connected rankings/traffic/audience gathering to make this request channel, and not capable connected the things we’d typically bash successful a request channel: Share our brand, get our messaging retired there, get radical excited astir what we do. In different words: really advertise the product. – Blake Thorne

Bringing Product Marketing And SEO Closer Together

Product selling and SEO complement each different by sharing insights similar hunt measurement oregon lawsuit probe and approaches similar positioning oregon messaging.

But astir companies basal successful their ain mode by keeping their respective teams siloed. Shared metrics, i.e., goaling 2 teams by the aforesaid numbers, are the crowbar to interruption the silos up.

Three actionable and broad metrics to share:

• Branded hunt measurement and postulation from branded keywords.
• Customer sentiment (qualitative feedback, NPS, marque sentiment/recall).
• Pipeline publication (influence connected leads and conversions).

The metric premix reflects the full “funnel” oregon idiosyncratic journey, tin beryllium influenced by some teams, and is actionable.

The payment for companies that get this close is 2 teams that are much effectual and impactful.

SEO teams person different mode to not conscionable thrust much and amended integrated traffic, but to measure their interaction from a marque position (customer sentiment).

Instead of stopping astatine postulation oregon obsessing implicit rankings that are little and little valuable, interaction connected lawsuit sentiment and pipeline implicit refuge for a changing SEO landscape.

The question is however to person enactment to springiness it a shot. Test into it. Try improving a fewer merchandise landing pages together, whether you’re successful SaaS oregon ecommerce, and measurement the interaction connected shared metrics.

SEO and merchandise selling are not exempt from AI disruption. Maybe they person belonged unneurotic each along, but the AI tech displacement offers an accidental to tally successful a caller enactment and bring SEO and merchandise selling together.

Brand/product selling focuses connected aligning messaging with lawsuit emotions, behaviour and needs, portion SEO focuses connected visibility.

SEOs tin elevate their interaction by considering however the brand’s communicative fits into the lawsuit travel – moving beyond keywords to a deeper transportation with the audience. – Dirk Schart

Featured Image: Paulo Bobita/Search Engine Journal