Make pull marketing your cornerstone strategy

So you want to develop your pull marketing strategy more so that you can better your conversion rate? By making pull your cornerstone strategy, you will help your potential customers out there find you and come to you for business. Now doesn't that sound like a great plan?

Pull marketing redux

Now as we mentioned in an earlier post, pull marketing allows people to find and engage you at the time they need your services. The conversion rate is extremely high if you have what they are looking for. It is important to remember that while people might be able to find you easily, it might not be that they would engage you. We will talk about that part of the marketing in another post.

But let's assume for now that you have exactly what your target market needs. So how do we get the pull strategy to work for you?

Search engine marketing

Quickly...if you are in need of finding a good restaurant for succulent steak, how will you find it fast? Nine times out of ten, the answer is, "By Google". As they say, "Google knows everything". Hence, for anyone looking to meet a need, they will simply go to Google, type in their search enquiry, and see what's out there. This has become the number one way people search out for products and services in the market. Therefore, if you do not care what you say and how you are found on the Internet, chances are, you are losing a vast majority of leads. This is called search engine marketing. So how are you using SEM?

Original content

Check out Google's video here. They are very explicit about original content. The number one way to increase your search engine ranking is to have quality content that is not scraped (copied from one site to yours; or from another site you own). You can link to other people's website but you must create your own content to make your site a good one. Failure to do so might lead to expulsion in Google ranking. And you DO NOT WANT THAT!

Search engine optimisation (SEO)

You will want your site to be search engine optimised. This everyone knows and there are many consultants out there trying to sell you their services to optimise your website. If you have the means, do engage them. Or you could either pay a small fee for many SEO tools online that can help you get it done. Either way, if your site is not optimised, you cannot be found.

Paying for Adwords

Bill Belew, content marketing expert (www.billbelew.com) eschews this. He prefers a more organic way to up your ranking. If you know what key phrases your target market is typing in the search bar to look for you, then you just make sure that you talk about that in your site. Paying for adwords can put you up on #1, but it is a slippery slope to travel on. This is because once you start that, you must continue that ad infinitum. The minute you stop paying, even for a day, you will not be found and you must start all over again. There is no staying power for your website when you buy adwords, and ultimately, someone else will bid more for the same words you use and it will lead to a bidding war. Do you really want to throw all that money away?

So what is the solution?

Take a leaf out of the Google's page and do likewise. Listen to them when they say they are keen on original content. Develop your own content, increase its use, "publish, publish, publish". After all, as you publish more content, you are giving more credibility to your ability to serve your market segment. And the more credibility you have, the easier it is for people to engage you.

And that is how you make pull marketing your cornerstone strategy! In a later post, I will talk about the limitations of pull marketing and how you can give it a "push". Stay tuned...