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Why SEO is still the best B2B long-term marketing strategy [with example]
So, there’s been a lot of hype around podcasts and TikTok and Instagram and blah, blah..
But, here’s the thing.
Unless you’re advertising on those platforms, they will:
1. Take longer to materialize than blog posts
2. Yield a smaller ROI than blog posts.
For the sake of this post, I will concede certain products can do better on social media. Maybe even productized services (OnlyFans lol). And social media and podcasts do have their place in branding.
However, for most service-based businesses? Especially B2B? Yeah.. your ICP is not searching for “the tax liability for cross-border e-commerce sales“ on TikTok.
That said, I’m going to use an example of a financial consulting firm to illustrate how content marketing can basically make you a millionaire over time.
# Consider the landscape [example]
Let’s say, you’re the owner of a financial consulting and accounting firm, and before starting your own firm you did some client work as a freelancer or as part of another company.
Additionally, you’re certified as a CPA, or whatever degree you need to practice your specific financial service.
Now, you know you’re accredited, and you know you’re good at your work, but you need clients to get paid.
At this point most people in your position as a new business owner will start networking, advertising, cold emailing etc. to gain some initial momentum.
Nothing wrong with that.
On the contrary, you need to hustle to get some clients initially. However, you can’t keep hustling for the next client forever. At some point soon, you’re going to want to create a predictable source of leads.
If your plan is to keep hustling for the next client all day and have no freedom of time or money, what was the point in starting a business?
Now, I’m going to demonstrate how content marketing will serve as a predictable, sustainable high-quality engine of clients.
# How blog posts turn your website into a client attracting machine
In a nutshell, blog posts get you paid by motivating readers of your posts to sign with you as a client.
Blog posts achieve this result by:
1. Ranking on Google for queries relevant to your ICP/audience persona, so they can find your post.
2. Converting your ICP to a paying customer by giving them an effective solution to the query they typed into Google.
Here’s why ranking on Google works so well to convert your ICP.
**1. It proves you are an authority on the subject**
If Google has decided to show your website as the one of the first results for your audience’s query, you must have SOME sort of credibility. That’s what goes through your reader’s mind when they see you as the first result.
**2. It shows you have expertise dealing with your reader’s problem**
Once your reader opens your post to read it, and you’ve provided an awesome and well-crafted solution to their problem, they will recognize your expertise in your domain.
Probably even better than if you took a meeting with them because they can pore over every word in your content.
This helps them understand what you’re saying at their own pace.
During meetings a lot of times your leads will just nod along to not sound stupid, but not actually understand a thing. Then they will be too hesitant to bring up the point(s) they didn’t understand and just continue believing you’re not the right solution provider for them.
Written content does away with any ambiguity.
**3. It inspires trust in you and your agency**
Your readers are not stupid.
When they had a query and they see you giving an otherwise paid solution away for free, it makes them believe you’re looking out for their best interests.
Here’s why:
• They know you can provide this solution.
• They know it took you time to write and edit this solution.
• They know that under normal circumstances this is information they would have to pay for.
To your readers this is a gesture of goodwill. It conveys that you are a highly ethical and moral organization to work with.
# So how much can you really make with content marketing?
Continuing our example of the financial consulting firm, let’s say you hire an experienced SEO expert or agency.
They get to work.
They do some robust topic research, identify keyword clusters, ensure your website’s optimized to rank, and get to work creating content for the identified topics.
In about 3 months, they produce 15 long-form posts. After 10-12 months, you notice that 6 of those posts rank, and 9 don’t.
The posts that rank collectively bring in about 6k visitors a month.
Out of which a measly 1% contact you. From which only 10% convert to actual paying customers, so 6 people.
Now let’s do the math, the average invoice for a financial consulting firm is $5k (I’m not even touching firms that serve as fractional CFOs, that’s more like $50k).
So, if you’re invoicing $30k, every month (6 clients x $5k), you’re adding $360k to your revenue annually.
$360k…
For what? $10k – $15k to publish 10 blog posts. That’s a 36x ROI! I could be off by massive amounts and you’d still make money!
You can basically scale this to ends of the earth, and steadily grow your business.
# Why you should scale content to become a brand
Now you know, content attracts huge swaths of clients, and even with measly conversion rates, you’ll still knock out a stellar ROI.
But here’s the true power of content marketing.
Let’s say after the first 10 posts, you have more money available to you, so you go for 50 posts this time.
What you’ll likely end up doing with 50 jaw-dropping articles, other than making millions, is become a whole brand on the internet.
Once you have strong branding, your readers will recommend you to their sphere as the default choice for financial information.
This will bring you very “warm” referral leads.
Additionally, you will:
* Be able to charge premium prices.
* Have YOUR pick of clients.
* See more customer loyalty.
* Create barriers to entry for new competition around your niche.
* Hit the ground running if you want to expand beyond your niche.With that, let’s discuss how you can create content as a business consulting firm.
# Drawbacks to content marketing
Often times, your blog posts will take upwards of 6 months to rank, so it is a bit of a long-term play.
The upfront investment is expensive, not everyone can afford quality agencies and writers.
It takes some work to weed out the good content marketers from the ones that are just going to throw chatGPT spam on your site.
Content marketing works better for high-ticket, remote services than volume-based, local services.
# Conclusion
I say this with no delusion, if you’re a B2B service agency, you can make millions and blow your competition out of the water with SEO and content marketing. A 36x ROI through a single content creation effort is no joke.
If you aren’t already leveraging content, what are you waiting for?
# Bonus: Need a hand?
If you are already posting to your blog, but haven’t been able to move the needle, PM me. I’ll be happy to give you feedback.
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