Using Your Search Engine Presence To Benefit Your Customers

In the world of B2B marketing, what would you say your customers want most from you? Some of the obvious things include quality products, great service, reasonable prices, and solutions that increase profits.

But, what would they really want if they could have anything from you?

How about more customers?

Many companies do support their resellers in some manner, including funneling prospects to them.

Whether your company has a reseller support program or not, there are two very important assets that are probably being underutilized for this purpose—your website and your search engine rankings.

It’s not hard to imagine how you can enhance your website to deliver leads to your customers. By creating a “vendor locator” application on your website you could help visitors find services and products related to your business offerings. Take it one step further and you can use your status as a “trusted source” to gather lead information and allocate leads among your key customers appropriately.

If you are like most companies today, you are likely spending some time and effort optimizing your site for search engine rankings and/or spending money on search engine advertising programs. Companies that are successful in their SEO efforts have one more tool in their marketing toolbox than they might have thought about: leveraging “tertiary” keywords—keywords that are relevant to your website but aren’t “core” search terms—for the benefit of their customers rather than for the direct benefit of the company itself.

A great example would be a manufacturer of printers. Let’s say 3-D printers. While the company likely does not offer “printing” services, it is reasonable to expect that the company’s website could rank high in search engines for “3-d printing.” Much of the SEO effort that a company engages in will produce rankings for these types of tertiary keywords. The traffic that is generated to the website for the “printing”-related keywords may not generate much in the way of sales, but that traffic can be converted into leads for the company’s customers (and used as a selling tool when presenting to prospects).

A smart manufacturer of specialized printers may already have a tool on its website for users to find printing service providers in their area that use the company’s equipment. A really smart company would consider adding a means for users to submit a request for a quote or similar contact request. The printer manufacturer could supply those leads to selected customers that sign up for the program. This would be an excellent sales tool for sales representatives to use in the field when highlighting everything that their company does to support its customers.

Here are 10 other similar tertiary keyword concepts that would fit this model for manufacturers or wholesalers of:

• Air conditioning/HVAC equipment = air conditioning, central air
• Art frames = framing, custom framing
• Construction equipment = construction, construction companies, excavating
• Data security technology = data security companies/consultants
• Environmental testing products = environmental testing, air testing, mold testing
• Industrial gases – neon gas, helium, carbon dioxide (dry ice)
• Packaging equipment = packaging, packaging companies
• Paints = paint, painting
• Prototyping equipment = rapid prototyping
• Warehousing equipment = warehousing, warehouses

Use your SEO investment, and search presence, to increase customer loyalty and acquire new customers. This line of thinking can also help you increase your Internet marketing budget as you discuss the sales benefits with management.

Opinions expressed in the article are those of the guest author and not necessarily Search Engine Land.