“The good news is long-term SEO… is a lot more profitable. Advertising is only gonna get more expensive, and in [the] long term, you don’t have to keep investing the same amount [in SEO].”
With customer acquisition costs on the rise, your ads have a target on their back. They have to be precisely accurate, like a laser. If you don’t nail your targeting, you end up losing a lot of money in customer acquisition. SEO and content marketing are cheaper approaches in the long run. However, most D2C brands don’t take it seriously largely because they love fast sales and the quick return-on-investment that comes from paid marketing.
In episode 86 of the Customers Who Click podcast, Brad Smith, Founder of Codeless Interactive and CEO at Wordable, shares great actionable tips on how you can give your SEO a boost, suggests where unexplored opportunities may lie, and discusses key challenges brands are facing in this space.
Brad is the owner of three different content marketing companies. He is the Founder and CEO of Codeless Interactive, a content strategy, and content production agency. He’s also the CEO of Wordable, a Google Docs to WordPress uploading tool, and founded uSERP, a PR distribution, and link-building company.
You can talk to Brad on LinkedIn or check out his agency’s website Codeless.io to check out their case studies.
Key Highlights:
02:45 – 08:01 – Optimal Content Distribution Strategy – Understand your channels and break your goals into channel-wise targets when planning your content distribution strategy. You don’t need to cover every channel, but it’s also crucial to have channel-specific optimizations built into each piece of content. What works in a press release may not work on Facebook, Twitter, or LinkedIn.
08:02 – 12:27 – Does Help A Reporter Out (HARO) work? – It takes time and a lot of consistent effort on HARO from senior officials of your organization to get the requisite amount of mentions you need. Be prepared and give your outreach manager a list of ideas, quotes, or stories to pitch or tweet so it helps them give context. Also, monitor these campaigns with metrics that matter.
12:28 – 22:26 – Mistakes in Executing Marketing Campaigns – Bureaucracy often slows the internal processes of larger companies. Smaller/mid-sized companies are often more nimble than enterprises. Remote approvals, time zone differences, and unplanned leaves can further slow down this process and create more roadblocks than paving the way. To fasten this process, add a backup approver to grant approvals when the primary approver is not available. Pre-planning campaigns are also helpful in this situation.
22:27 – 27:36 – Getting Featured on Comparison Websites – Comparison websites need to know they have a great product that their visitors will want to buy, an attractive commission split, and an easy way to review your product. Their major revenue comes from affiliate sales and display ads. Use your pitch to explain to them your product’s competitive advantage and its intended target audience.
27:37 – 31:09 – When to Pitch to Comparison Websites – It’s better to find the relevant comparison websites, plan your referral campaign, and pitch to them before they make their comparison page live. Keyword research and analysis will be your first step. Don’t forget to pitch to comparison websites that rank on pages two and three of Google for better coverage.
31:10 – 37:01 – Going Beyond Comparison Websites – Ask your customers to submit their reviews on independent product listing platforms like Capterra, G2, or Amazon. Also, explore sponsored (paid) listings on these websites. When aiming for organic ranking or paid listing on these platforms, explore long-tail keywords that come from your audience’s use cases. Make sure you also host comparison content on your website for multiple products under your brand or product lines.
37:02 – 41:46 – Current Challenges in SEO – It’s hard to rank in the top three to five positions for keywords that will truly move the needle on sales. More of those keywords get quickly saturated with content from major competitors and high DA websites in the niche. Google also uses rich snippets and blended searches which take traffic away from websites that rank in the top fold of page one. It’s, therefore, better to target keywords that will rank quickly and easily.
41:47 – 44:44 – Should You Target Your SEO Efforts Beyond Amazon? – Focusing only on advertising and SEO on Amazon or other platforms is a good strategy for smaller stores. Once you grow to a certain level or if your product isn’t built for repeated ordering, you will need to expand your footprint beyond Amazon and other eCommerce aggregators. Your own online store will let you own your customer data and shape your customer experience.
Who Would Brad Smith Like to Take For Lunch in the D2C Marketing World?
Brad would love to talk to aggregator companies that spend big to buy out existing D2C marketing brands to discuss managing global supply chain issues.
Talk to the Host
You can send any other podcast recommendations, questions to ask, episode feedback, guest requests, or general pleasantries to Will’s email or tweet @ Will!
Marketing Tools Featured In The Podcast
- Wordable.io (to automate – and save time on – uploading several hundred blogs per month to their website)
- Ahrefs
- MarketMuse
- BuzzStream
- Mailshake
