Selling and buying are not purely intellectual exercises. Buyers and sellers are emotional human beings, which is why great salespeople are always masters at managing their own emotions. Based upon my observation (and some pretty hefty research in emotional intelligence), highly successful salespeople cultivate the following five emotional traits:

1. Assertiveness

This allows you to move a sales situation forward without offending or frustrating the customer. Think of it as being located halfway between passivity and aggressiveness. For example, suppose a customer is delaying a decision. There are at least three basic responses:

Passive: “Could you give me a call when you’ve made a decision?”

Aggressive: “If you don’t buy right now, the offer is off the table.”

Assertive: “Can you give me a specific time and date when you’ll make your final decision?”

The passive response puts the sale on hold indefinitely (or give your competitor the opening to outsell you). The aggressive response creates pressure and resentment: Even if it works, you’ll be seen as a typical pushy salesman. The assertive approach sets up the specific conditions for the close, without forcing the customer’s pace.

2. Self-Awareness

You need to be able to identify your own emotions, understand how they work, and then use them to help you build stronger customer relationships. This is a four-step process:

• Identify the emotions that you’re feeling,
• Based on experience, predict how those emotions will affect your sales effort.
• Compensate for negative emotions that might hinder the sale.
• Expand your positive emotions that might help you make the sale.

For example, suppose you feel furious that an important customer stood you up. You might take a break before your next meeting in order to remind yourself of all the times you’ve succeeded in the face of challenges. Or you might, as an ice-breaker, tell your second customer that you’re having a tough day and why.

3. Empathy

This entails adapting your behavior to the customer’s moods and emotions. It begins with listening and observing, but simply knowing what the customer might be feeling is not enough. You must be able to feel what the customer is likely to be feeling.

Suppose, during a sales call, you discover that the customer’s firm just announced major layoffs. You could ignore the news and proceed with the sales call as if nothing had changed, or you could focus on your own desire to make the sale and ask your contact who will have buying authority after the layoffs are over.

Both responses to the event make business sense–but if you want to build a better relationship, you’ll be empathetic and imagine your contact’s sense of fear and confusion. Then, depending on your emotional reading of the customer, decide whether the customer would prefer to commiserate, complain or (alternatively) be distracted from the situation

 

Too many marketing activities still happen in silos, and search engine optimization (SEO) is one of the most isolated. While SEO and lead generation are primary drivers of new leads for most B2B organizations, these teams typically only collaborate when new content needs an SEO review (if that).

The general understanding seems to be that SEO helps the website—and all the content therein—get noticed online, which generates leads in a big-picture sense, while lead generation is a completely separate set of tasks targeted specifically at acquiring new leads.

But a changing marketplace is placing new demands on how marketers (and sales reps, and…just about every part of an organization) relate to their target audiences. Lead generation strategies are evolving to meet new expectations, but the one element still missing from most play books may be the one that could make the most dramatic improvement: SEO.

Modern SEO Strategies Need User Intent Research

Marrying SEO and lead generation strategies starts with a modern understanding of SEO—specifically a concept called “user intent.” User intent is the real meaning behind the keywords people type in a search engine text box.

There are two primary types of user intent:

• Inform: When someone is looking to learn about a topic
• Purchase: When someone is shopping for something described by the keyword

Discovering what your audience really means when they use your keywords is as simple as Googling them. The pages that rank highest for a keyword represent the type of content people are looking for most often when searching that particular keyword. How do we know? Because Google is heavily invested in providing the best user experience, and their algorithms are working 24/7/365 to decipher the intent behind every search term.

For example, a search for the term “email marketing” yields search results that are mostly marketing software companies trying to sell their platforms. In other words, when most people search for “email marketing,” they have a purchase intent. They want to buy software. The term “marketing automation” yields very different results. Most of the Page 1 results are definitions and basic information about the concept of marketing automation. People are looking for information.

This is valuable insight for any part of your SEO campaign. When you know users’ intentions, you can steer them to content that meets their needs. For example, based on the information above, a business selling email marketing should make sure their content includes a strong product page that targets “email marketing” and related keywords. Whereas, a business selling marketing automation, on the other hand, should focus on creating high-quality, informative content for that keyword.

Lead Generation Needs User Intent Research

Buyers and are self-educating further into the sales funnel than ever before. They are unconcerned with your carefully crafted buyer’s journey model—entering the funnel wherever they like and proceeding through it completely at their own pace.

Most marketers recognize this and are adapting their lead generation strategies to keep up with evolving trends and expectations. Many are hard at work developing engaging, helpful content. That’s an encouraging first step, but, as with any digital content, it’s important to pause and ask yourself whether it’s reaching the buyers who need it, when they need it.

Building content doesn’t mean the leads will come. While sharing your own content is important, a digital marketplace commonly turns to search engines when they’re ready to research or make a purchase. That means the content you create for every stage of the sales funnel has to be search engine optimized for the user for their unique buyer’s journey.

Buyers at the top-of-the-funnel, or the beginning of their buyers’ journeys, are looking for educational or entertaining information: definitions of key lingo, simple explanations of core industry principles, infographics, and other easily digestible media. That means the keywords that are generating those kinds of search results are the ones most likely being used by the segment of your audience that is at the top-of-the-funnel. Those are the keywords your entry-level content should be targeting.

By contrast, the keywords that generate strong purchase intent search results are likely being used by the portion of your audience that is ready (or almost ready) to buy. Those results include a lot of product pages, vendor comparisons, price sheets, etc. As you create that kind of content, target the keywords that are being used by people who are ready to make a purchase.

How to Use SEO for Lead Generation

From start to finish, here are five steps to use SEO to improve your lead generation strategies:

1. Make a list of relevant keywords. If you’ve never done this before, you can use free tools like Google’s Keyword Planner, Google Trends, and/or Keyword Tool.io. You can also start with a list of your key products and services, and terms that are important to your industry.
2. Google them. You may want to use spreadsheets for this step to help keep everything organized. Google each of your keywords, and make a note about whether the search results primarily reflect an inform or purchase intent, and to what degree. Some will be heavily skewed, and others will be fairly balanced.
3. Organize the results along your sales funnel. Keywords that generate a strong inform intent are most likely going to represent users at the top-of-the-funnel. Those that generate search results with a strong purchase intent are likely being used by people closer to the bottom-of-the-funnel.
4. Optimize existing content. Review content you have already created. If some assets were developed specifically for one stage of the funnel, make sure it is using appropriate language. If a piece of content was created to target a specific keyword, make sure it is addressing the user intent behind that keyword.
5. Create content to fill in the gaps. There will be gaps, and that is where you really get to work. If you have the wrong type of content for a particular keyword/user intent, you don’t necessarily need to remove it, but you do need to create additional content. For example, if an important keyword yields a strong inform intent in search results and all your website has is a product page for that term, you need to start building some informative content assets, such as blog posts, landing pages, and ebooks. If a keyword has a fairly balanced user intent—a few informative pages and a few product pages—it’s 100% okay to create a few (high-quality, engaging, helpful) pages based on related keywords for each user intent.

SEO and Lead Generation

The market is changing, and while most marketers are aware and are working hard to keep up, it can be difficult to stay on top of all of it. SEO itself is constantly evolving, and generating a steady flow of qualified leads is every marketer’s eternal priority. Both strategies can benefit from tearing down some silos and working together.

Start by conducting user intent research on a few of your top keywords. See if the results are what you expected, and, if not, how your company’s content meets the need. With some strategic content, properly optimized for the people who need it most, your lead generation strategy could quickly take on a whole new life.

There are many parallels that can be drawn between flirting and moving leads down the B2B buying cycle. Both go through a number of stages, from initial awareness to developing an interest, and displaying clear signs of a willingness to commit.

Not to belittle or oversimplify human relations, but let’s be honest — marketing is a form of enticement (and flirting is a form of marketing). And in order for marketing to be successful, it needs to address different personas at the different levels of interest in a variety of ways.

As you know, the buying cycle maps the progress of leads towards the desired end goal of them making a purchase. During the stages of that cycle, leads can be offered content assets which build their awareness, create and strengthen a conviction and finally lead them to the goal. This is what content selling and content marketing are all about.

Here we will explore the main stages of the cycle and what types of content are relevant for each of its stages.

The Stages of the Buying Cycle

Broadly speaking, the buying cycle can be separated into three main stages:  Awareness, Interest (or Consideration) and Sale (or Purchase).

Different people in the content marketing industry call these in different ways, and further separate them into sub-categories that can reach up to 9 stages in total. These reflect particular instances within each stage and can certainly be very useful for a targeted content selling process.

The Awareness Stage

The Awareness stage could further be divided into: the identification of a problem and the development of criteria on the side of the buyer about what solution they are looking for. This also entails that they will do research to educate themselves and will consider a number of options. Hence, at this stage you need to foresee what kind of information people will look for when researching. Your content should address broader questions and create awareness for the buyers about their needs and pains.

Such content can range from regular blog post articles to more informative eBooks or whitepapers. You could offer how-to videos, tip sheets or even educational webinars. Basically anything broad enough to attract people at the top of the funnel.

The Consideration Stage

The second, mid-funnel stage is Interest or Consideration and means that buyers have already gained knowledge and are now: evaluating the solution you offer and looking for justifications to opt for your solution. Therefore, you can get more serious about solutions. While in the first stage you would educate about problems, here you start to resolve them. In doing this, you strive to get one point across – how your solution is appropriate and desirable.

Case studies and testimonials are a great content asset at this stage. Have a long-standing customer with a great story? Turn the story into a case study and share it with leads. Show them your best side. And nothing speaks as strongly as someone else’s success story.

Offer more whitepapers and eBooks but this time make them in-depth and specific, comprehensive and highly informative, with lots of data. How-to’s are a no-no at this stage. Instead, you need to offer demo videos or guided tours, webinars about your products or even classes. By offering all of these, you are effectively and naturally bridging the gap between educational assets and product solutions.

Finally, repurpose content! If you have some great content asset that generated leads at the Awareness Stage, take it, repurpose it and expand on it. This will only strengthen the natural feel of the content transition, because it will be both familiar and enriching to your leads.

The Sale Stage

At this point your leads or prospects are considered ‘hot’. You’ve got their attention and they’re considering proposing to you, metaphorically speaking. You can now proceed to ’empower’ them, give them a taste of what they’ll receive if they fully commit to your product.

You can achieve this by offering them trials and further demos of your products or services. Basically, you need to get them engaged – help them change from a passive receiver of information to an active participant. This is the moment before they transition to being a customer.

Final considerations are also addressed here, and buyers get to ask very specific questions and receive personal treatment. They’re already knowledgeable enough to understand what it is you’re offering and are just filling in the last blanks. The quality of the content here is high-premium. You can also include special offers or discounts to prospects who are more or less on the edge of purchasing, which usually does the trick.

Beyond the Sales Stage

It doesn’t end there. Beyond the Sales Stage you’re still engaged with your clients. You’ve solved their need but now you have to continue to provide them with relevant and regular information in order to retain them. It pays off to have loyal clients that embrace your barnd. Not only will they get the word out about your products but they will probably make numerous repeat purchases. Focusing on client retention, therefore, further helps the above process repeat itself.

Conclusion

Content selling and content marketing have to work together in order to be effective. You have to have a clear idea with which of your buyer personas you are interacting with at any given moment and at what stage they are. This will determine what kind of content asset they are in need of and how you can pitch it to them in a natural way. If you can create the right conditions for your leads, you will see the results you’re looking for.