Generative Engine Optimisation (GEO) is the process of optimising a website to rank in AI search results. GEO includes optimising content to gain features in AI Overviews, the current AI-generated feature on Google Search, and getting your business referenced and recommended in AI-generated chatbots like ChatGPT, Claude, Perplexity, and Google Gemini.

This guide will break down the jargon surrounding GEO, explain where it came from, and what you need to do to rank effectively in AI-driven search. We’ll cover practical steps you can take to optimise your website and search strategy to ensure maximum visibility even when users bypass traditional search engines.

What Is Generative Engine Optimisation (GEO)?

Generative Engine Optimisation, or GEO, is a technique to optimise website content so it’s referenced and prioritised by AI-driven search engines. Unlike traditional SEO, which focuses on ranking in search engines, GEO helps generative models understand and highlight your content when crafting their outputs.

AI is generating answers, articles, visuals, and more. Generative models don’t rank content in a list like current Google search results; instead, they generate a rich response by incorporating multiple sources. If you want your website to be among the top sources AI presents, GEO is where to invest your marketing budget.

GEO focuses on increasing visibility within these generative responses instead of aiming for a higher rank on a search results page. It prioritises factors like succinctness, relevance, factual accuracy and authority to rank and reference products, services and businesses.

The Origins of the Term ‘Generative Engine Optimisation’

The term “Generative Engine Optimization” (or “optimisation” if you’re on the British side of the pond) evolved naturally from SEO. With the rise of tools like OpenAI’s ChatGPT, Google’s Gemini, Claude and Perplexity, the need for a new type of optimisation emerged. GEO takes the basics of SEO and adapts them to the requirements of AI-driven search.

The term “Generative Engine Optimization (GEO)” was first used in an academic paper published on arXiv and has started to be used among marketers, content creators, and AI enthusiasts to describe this new style of SEO. It’s a bit jargony, in our opinion, and is not to be confused with “geo” as in “geographical” locations, but it gets the job done.

How Generative Engines Work

Generative models use vast datasets to create responses to user prompts. They don’t rank content in the traditional sense but prioritise the most relevant, credible, and fluent data.

For example, if I ask ChatGPT for a recommendation on the best coffee makers, it will prioritise content that includes direct product comparisons:

Instead of using keyword density or backlinks, generative models focus on contextual relevance, user intent and the ability to fulfil the user’s query. The way AI evaluates content is different from traditional search engines like Google. It’s all about usefulness and context.

If I give ChatGPT more information about how I like to brew and drink coffee, it uses this context to provide more tailored recommendations:

More detail is needed in website content now to maximise the likelihood of these generative models understanding the specificities, nuances and relevance of your product or service to different types of users.

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GEO vs SEO: Similarities and Differences

SEO, AI Overviews (previously SGE) and GEO are the three organic search terms that we are hearing a lot about, but they serve different purposes and use different strategies.

• SEO (Search Engine Optimisation): SEO is the traditional approach to ensuring your content ranks well on search engines like Google. The goal is to rank on search engine results pages (SERPs) when users search for related topics.
• AI Overviews: AI Overviews are the AI-driven summaries directly at the top of search results (previously called SGE or Search Generative Experience). It provides users with quick overviews of information sourced from various web pages.
• GEO (Generative Engine Optimisation): GEO takes optimisation further into the AI realm, focusing on referencing content within generative models like ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Claude. GEO is not just about search rankings; it’s about becoming a part of the AI’s knowledge base so your content is favoured during answer generation.

How Is GEO Similar to SEO?

• Visibility Goals: Both GEO and SEO aim to increase the visibility of your content, whether it’s in traditional search engines or AI-generated responses.
• Content Quality: High-quality, authoritative content is crucial for both GEO and SEO. Search engines and generative models favour content that is reliable, informative and well-structured.
• Keyword Strategy: Just like in SEO, GEO involves identifying relevant keywords and phrases to make content easily discoverable by search engines or AI models.
• Technical Optimisation: Both GEO and SEO benefit from a technically optimised website, including proper use of schema markup, metadata and fast page loading times.
• Importance of Backlinks: Backlinks remain important for establishing authority and credibility in both GEO and SEO.

How Is GEO Different from SEO?

• Target Audience: SEO focuses on improving content visibility in search engine results pages (SERPs), whereas GEO aims to have content referenced in AI-generated responses, such as by ChatGPT, Google Gemini and other generative engines.
• Content Presentation: SEO focuses on ranking on search pages where users choose which link to click. GEO aims to have your content directly included in an AI-generated answer, eliminating the need for users to click through multiple links.
• Authority Signals: While SEO relies heavily on keywords, backlinks, and on-page signals, GEO also depends on brand mentions and having information available in trusted aggregators or directories that AI models may prioritise.
• User Intent Handling: SEO focuses on optimising for a wide range of search intents, from informational to transactional. GEO, on the other hand, focuses on optimising for AI-generated answers, which tend to be more informational and less about driving direct traffic.

“SEO and GEO share a lot of similarities and they pretty much both use all the same building blocks but they put them together in a slightly different way, improving one almost always improves the other as well. You do need to start with a solid foundation of SEO though. SEO is about getting your website found by people, and bots. If the AI bots can’t find and, accurately, index your website, then they can’t evaluate it properly to use in its answers, and that’s where the SEO comes in.”

Andrew Tuxford
Head of SEO

Comparing SEO, AI Overviews and GEO

Let’s get some more details on SEO, AI Overviews and GEO. Here’s how they stack up:

TL:DR:

• SEO is about ranking well on Google and other search engines.
• AI Overviews (previously known as SGE) is about being visible in AI-driven search result summaries.
• GEO is about being recommended by AI tools and generative engines that provide answers or generate content directly. This includes AI chatbots and covers AI Overviews.
• To succeed, you need a mix of all three. You need traditional SEO to build a strong foundation, AI Overview tactics to gain top placement on certain Google searches, and GEO techniques to rank highly within AI-generated outputs.

How to Rank in Generative Engine Optimisation

Want your business recommended more often in generative AI models? We’ve spent a whole lot of time hypothesising, testing and experimenting across industries to understand how to optimise for generative engines. Here are the current theories of how to make it happen:

1. Optimise for Web Search: Many AI tools perform a web search in the background to generate their responses. GEO is built on traditional SEO (yep, spoiler: SEO isn’t dead yet). This means you need to rank in traditional search results to be then picked up by generative models. Essentially, you need to rank well in the old SEO game to be able to play the new GEO game.

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2. Optimise for AI Overviews: Google’s AI Overviews summarise content from web searches to deliver users an answer more quickly. These answers dominate the top of the search results page, though the latest figures show that 7% of searches feature AI Overviews. You want your business to be featured in relevant searches where an AI Overview is present. Read our detailed guide here on how to optimise content for AI Overviews

3. Optimise Your Prompts: Be clear and direct in your content. Craft prompts into your content that make it easy for AI to understand what you’re aiming for. Different types of prompts work well:

• Question-Based Prompts: Asking questions like “What is the best strategy for X?” tends to get specific, in-depth answers.
• Instruction-Based Prompts: Content explaining “How to do X step by step” is highly valuable for AI-generated summaries.

4. Use Relevant Keywords: Forget keyword stuffing (hopefully, you forgot this in 2011). Instead, naturally include relevant terms that help AI see the value and purpose of your content. Use latent semantic indexing (LSI) keywords* to improve content accuracy and help the model form associations.

* What’s an example of LSI keywords? If you’re a personal injury law firm, your primary keyword may be “Personal Injury Lawyer”. Some LSI keywords would be: “Accident Attorney,” “Legal representation for injury,” “Car accident claim lawyer”, “Compensation lawyer for injury” and “Slip and fall lawsuit.”

5. Get Mentioned Across the Web: The more your business or content is mentioned online, the more likely it is that generative models will pick it up.

• Brand Mentions: Digital PR and Content Marketing are key here. Getting brand mentions on other websites ensures AI (these LLMs) has plenty of data about your business during its training phase.
• Recommendations from Influencers: Consider setting up affiliate schemes or having influencers test your product/service and share their thoughts on their websites and/or social media.
• Reviews: It’s not just brand mentions that matter, but reviews, too. Getting first-hand customer reviews on your website and third-party platforms like Google Reviews, Trustpilot, Feefo, Reviews.io and other feeds AI answers. You want both quality and quantity here. If reviews are specific, even better.

6. Show Authority and Authenticity: AI values well-sourced, factually correct content. Back up your information with reputable sources to establish authority and ensure it’s written (or at least reviewed) by an authority on the topic. Essentially, follow the principles of E-E-A-T. If the information you are communicating is based on data you have created yourself, provide the data itself (not just the conclusions from it) in the content. This way the AI can read the data directly and combine it with other datasets it knows, extending your GEO reach.

7. Make Short, Helpful Videos: People want answers, not jargon. Quick, informative videos and shorts addressing popular questions like “How do I apply for a mortgage?” can improve the quality of your content (embed them in your blogs) and also have the potential to rank on SERPs and video platforms in their own right.

Best Practices for Implementing GEO

It’s not just what you do but how you do it. Increasingly, we’re seeing GEO prioritising content that follows these best practices:

• • Good Quality: Nobody wants to read crap content. Be detailed, factual and cover topics comprehensively. Include statistics and data points to reinforce credibility. Write a good author bio and include it in the blog post.
  • Consistent Brand Voice: A consistent brand voice helps AI recognise your authority and credibility. We’ve found the best way to do this when generating content through AI tools or to even out tone consistency is to feed it a full Brand Accelerator report that includes tone of voice, copy examples and customer personas.
  • Simplifies Complex Concepts: Make your content easy to understand. Generative models value fluency and readability, so aim to simplify complex topics while keeping key information intact.
  • Skimmable Content: Make your content easy to skim by using headers, bullet points, and visuals. Generative models prefer skimmable content that can be easily summarised.

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Integrating GEO with SEO

GEO and SEO work hand-in-hand to increase your content’s visibility across both traditional search engines and AI models. By combining these strategies, you ensure your content ranks well in search engines and is referenced by AI models.

Strategies for Effectively Combining GEO and SEO

To get the best of both worlds, we recommend combining GEO and SEO. Here are the strategies we recommend to effectively integrate GEO and SEO into your marketing strategy:

• Optimise for Both Web Search and AI Context: Focus on ranking well in traditional search engines while ensuring your content is detailed enough for AI models to understand its value and relevance.
• Content for Humans and AI Readability: Create well-structured content that is easy to skim by using clear headings, bullet points and concise paragraphs. This helps with traditional SEO while making your content easier for generative models to summarise and reference.
• Backlinks and Brand Mentions: Go bigger and broader with Digital PR, focusing both on building backlinks and gaining brand mentions across many different websites.
• Monitor Visibility in Both Channels: Track your visibility in and traffic from both traditional SERPs and AI-generated responses.

Does Implementing GEO Actually Work?

Research on the effectiveness of implementing GEO is limited, as it is still a new and emerging field. From our experience at Thinkplus, we’ve found that it is effective. We’ve been pioneers in this new type of optimisation, helping clients rank in AI Overviews and teaching other agencies to do the same.

Through using the GEO techniques we discussed above, our Ninja team has secured a whole heap of AI Overview spots for clients across industries. Here’s one example of an AI Overview we’ve secured (and held) for a client in the cleaning sector. This page is consistently the number 1 traffic driver to this client’s website, overtaking the homepage by a lot.

However, we also know that these AI search features and AI chatbots are evolving, and fluctuations happen. Just as with getting the top of Google’s search results, securing AI Overviews or ChatGPT mentions doesn’t mean you’ll maintain them. What marketers can and should do is experiment: figure out how to get them and try different ways to maintain those positions.

We’re not the only ones seeing this. A recent research paper set the SEO world ablaze with its data, finding that implementing GEO techniques can increase visibility in GE responses by up to 40%. The table below from the same paper shows the percentage increases in visibility after making changes to website copy. Greens are new additions, and reds are deletions. Take this relative improvement data with a grain of salt as improvement measures are limited.

Table from GEO: Generative Engine Optimization by Aggarwal et al.

How Can You Measure Results from GEO?

Tracking AI Overviews

SEMrush’s Position Tracking tool tracks AI Overview features for keywords tracked for your campaign. Within the Position Tracking tool, navigate to SERP Features and this will display keywords from your campaign that triggered an AI Overview and whether your website was highlighted.

Tracking Visibility

The primary measure currently being used to track generative engine results is overall visibility. This includes general online visibility metrics like backlinks and brand mentions. You can check your backlink profile using SEMrush’s Backlink Analytics tool. These measures are based on the assumption that the more you’re talked about online, the more likely it is that generative models will include your brand in their responses.

AI Sentiment Analysis

HubSpot has introduced an AI Search Grader tool that measures brand presence by analysing results from GPT-4o. This tool provides a helpful overview of brand sentiment and share of voice.

In practice, the tool runs a series of queries based on the business information you provide, meaning its analysis is limited to the terms you input. However, it can be used repeatedly to evaluate different products or services, giving a more comprehensive insight over time.

Measuring Traffic Referral

The most useful current measure of GEO results are traffic, sessions and conversions on your website that have come through generative engines. At Thinkplus, we set up custom reports using your GA4 data to show GEO results. These reports include AI platform traffic over time, AI platform sessions, AI platform conversions, top GEO landing pages and AI platform traffic and conversion splits.

Tracking Mention Frequency

There is no clear way to track mentions and recommendation frequency within AI chatbots. Currently, the only other way to measure mentions is through manual searches on AI engines. This process is time-consuming and — with the rapid evolution of AI search tools — the gathered data can quickly become outdated.

Challenges of GEO

GEO has its own challenges. One major issue is AI’s inherent bias — generative engines are only as good as the datasets they’re trained on. Bias in those datasets can affect which content is generated. So, content should draw on a diverse range of reputable sources and include information representing different perspectives to mitigate bias.

There are also ethical concerns around misinformation and over-optimisation and ensuring factual accuracy in your content is key to avoiding these pitfalls.

AI is evolving rapidly, and staying up-to-date on algorithm changes and new capabilities is crucial to keeping your content visible. Additionally, the winner-takes-all nature of generative models means that only a handful of top responses get the bulk of visibility, making it essential to ensure your content is as authoritative and high-quality as possible.

That’s where Thinkplus comes in: we’re pioneers of AI search, having led the way in uncovering ranking factors for and getting our clients featured in AI Overviews and on AI chatbots. We keep on top of all the AI search updates so you can focus on other important stuff in your business. Get your free website and marketing review and find out how we can do the same for you.

“Traffic from these generative engines is increasing rapidly, so although they are very new and currently small fry against traditional search, smart marketers are putting in the groundwork now to build visibility in anticipation of the continued consumer shift towards AI.”

Tim Cameron-Kitchen
Founder

The Future of Generative Engine Optimisation

While only a fraction of searches are carried out on AI chatbots and Google still has the vast majority of search market share, some marketers are viewing this moment as a land grab. Integrating GEO into your marketing strategy now puts you ahead of competitors. Many have not yet understood the shift that’s happening.

We Ninjas don’t have a crystal ball here. Still, it’s not absurd to think that generated AI answers could become the primary method for content discovery, especially with its integration into search engines and virtual assistants. If you’re serious about dominating your marketplace, then GEO should be in your game plan.

Move beyond SEO as we know it and get to grips with GEO techniques to future-proof your business

Get GEO insights from our Ninjas by requesting a free website and marketing review. Contact us directly to discuss our Generative Engine Optimisation services.

Listen to Our Podcast on GEO

Join Charlie, Tim and Jess for our podcast on GEO and the future of search. They talk about the rise of GEO and why it matters to marketers.

Written by Charlie Marchant and first published on 15th October 2024. Updated 4th November 2024. Expert review by Andy Tuxford on 11th November 2024.

Charlie Marchant is the CEO of Thinkplus. With over a decade of experience in organic search and content creation, Charlie has driven the growth of the agency’s Content Marketing, Digital PR and Branding services. She is co-author of the book The Ultimate Guide To Content Marketing & Digital PR.

Andy Tuxford is the Head of SEO at Thinkplus. Andy has over 8 years of direct SEO experience and over 20 years in various marketing and management roles. He has driven significant organic growth for businesses of all sizes, from local plumbers to multi-national eCommerce websites. He has played a leading role in AI search experimentation and rankings at Thinkplus.

The post Generative Engine Optimisation: How to Gain Visibility in New AI Search appeared first on Thinkplus.

May 2024 Update – Google has officially released its Generative AI feature for its search engine, called AI Overviews (formerly the “Search Generative Experience” covered below). You can learn how AI Overviews work in this post: How To Rank in Google’s AI Overviews.

Something HUGE is coming. You’re probably no stranger to AI and have seen its increasing integration into marketing life. Google’s AI integration into SGE (Search Generative Experience) is likely to impact ALL businesses significantly with a reduction in organic website traffic of between 15 and 64%!

At Thinkplus we win business (and awards) for our clients through digital marketing. It’s our job to be ahead of the search game – read on to learn more about the future of search or request your free digital marketing and website review video.

Search in 2024: Businesses Could Lose As Much As 15-64% Of Website Traffic

In May Google started testing one of the biggest changes in Search Engine history. As an award-winning global digital marketing agency, we’re used to big changes – but this one takes the cake.

We’ve marketed through some of the most radical moves Google has made. We’ve rescued businesses from the wrath of Panda, the clutches of Penguin, and the interrogation of Medic. Yet even through all of this, Google’s new AI-powered search engine, SGE, is set to take the crown for unprecedented changes to how businesses make money online.

The move to SGE is modelled to be significant with many businesses being heavily impacted. Although Google are yet to give a launch date, Google CEO Sundar Pichai’s announcement to investors in Q2 and an ‘end date’ for the test of December 2023, let us know that the launch of SGE (or its bigger brother or sister) are not many steps into our future.

What is it?

Google’s SGE (search generative experience) is the integration of generative AI into Google’s search engine.

Why will SGE mean my website traffic decreases?

Google’s SGE provides answers to a visitor’s search directly on the search engine results page. Using generative AI, Google can present a fully formed answer, using websites only as a means of ‘corroboration’. This changes the way that visitors interact as Google’s goal is no longer to send its visitors to the best-fit page. Instead, it provides the answers directly.

The potential impact of this on businesses is huge. With a steep reduction in the number of visitors needing to click on a website for their information, businesses will experience drops in their page visits when this rolls out. Analysis suggests that the drops could be anywhere between 15 and 64%, depending on the type of search, the industry, and how many key searches SGE shows up for.

Traffic drops of this magnitude will not only put marketers in a tricky position, but also will likely impact the number of visitors who convert on websites from a very ‘top of funnel’ informational search. Fewer visitors will need to visit a website to get the answer to their questions, and so fewer visitors will be exposed to the calls to action businesses rely on to collect leads and nurture new sales.

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The looming launch of SGE is likely to mean stark reductions in traffic for many businesses, less business generated from informational terms and a ‘shake up’ in which businesses are winning in the search engine results. 

Marketers are left with a choice: prepare or risk the impact.

At Thinkplus we have been preparing our clients for SGE’s launch and we have tested and identified how to rank in SGE. Though we anticipate that SGE will continue evolving before its launch, there are steps you can take now to help prepare. The first is to register for your free digital marketing and website review where one of our marketing consultants will assess your digital marketing and where your focus should be. They’ll assess your site’s preparedness for SGE and let you know what you should do next.

If I rank well currently, I’m safe – right?

Although businesses who are currently well placed on search engines seem to be referenced more in the SGE results, it is by no means a guarantee that the bot will reference them. 

In our experiments we have found that in some cases even websites who hold the Featured Snippet and Position 1 in the ‘classic’ listings, were not referenced by SGE’s answer. So despite the classic algorithm seeing a website as an authority on a particular topic, it is not at all a guarantee that SGE will make the same calculation. 

This extends even to searches for some brand names not ensuring that SGE uses the brand’s website as the corroborating link.

How do I rank on SGE and Bing Chat?

The good news is that our experiments so far suggest that the work you do to help SGE understand and cite your website, also positively impact how you rank in Bing’s Chat.

Just like classic SEO, there is no ‘one size fits all’ but there are a number of things we have discovered about how to rank in SGE. At Thinkplus, we are one of the few agencies that has both played with and understood how SGE works. We’d even go so far as to say we’ve cracked it! We’ve identified several ways to rank in SGE and have shared this piece on how to do it. We anticipate that it will continue to evolve as it is tested further and as with all Google products, there will be iterations. 

At Thinkplus we set out to be the leading example of how a digital marketing agency should be. For us, this definition includes staying ahead of the trends, sharing what we know and preparing our clients for changes before they land. 

If you are looking for help with your SEO and to be in the arms of an agency who knows how to prepare you for this, the first step is to request your free digital marketing and website review. One of our Marketing Consultants will analyse your website and will share the priority actions needed to get your website on top, if it looks like we’re a match, they’ll share with you how we might be able to work together.

The post The Future of Search: Ranking in the Next Generation of AI Search appeared first on Thinkplus.

Winning the Business Game with a Ninja Touch!

Welcome to the B2B marketing dojo: the place to become a Ninja in B2B marketing strategies.

We’re here to prepare you for the year 2024 and beyond, where high-performance B2B digital marketing strategies will be vital to winning you more clients.

From mega-effective tips and tricks to real-life examples of business-to-business success stories, you can rest assured that we’ll have you dancing circles around your competitors in no time.

So buckle up and prepare for a wild (but entirely safe) ride in the B2B marketing world!

Content Marketing Is Mandatory

Content is an essential B2B digital marketing tool for businesses of all sizes.

From blogging to creating social media posts and videos, it’s all about creating high-quality, relevant content that draws in the target audience and builds strong relationships with them.

B2B marketers know that high-quality, valuable content can help bring in leads and drive profitable customer actions. By creating captivating content, B2B companies can showcase themselves as industry leaders and remain top-of-mind for key players in their field.

There’s no denying that content marketing takes a lot of work, but the end result is worth it! Here’s why.

• Attracting the right crowd: By creating targeted content that addresses your audience’s specific needs and pain points, you’ll draw in the folks who are most likely to benefit from your products or services.
• Showcasing expertise: High-quality content allows you to demonstrate your knowledge and position your brand as a thought leader in your industry. That’s instant credibility, folks!
• Building trust: Consistently delivering valuable content helps you establish trust and loyalty with your audience. When they see that you’re invested in their success, they’ll be more likely to choose your brand over the competition.
• Driving conversions: Content marketing is fantastic for nurturing leads and guiding potential customers through the buyer’s journey. By providing helpful, informative content at each stage, you’ll increase your chances of turning prospects into paying customers.
• Long-term gains: Unlike paid ads that vanish once the campaign ends, content marketing keeps working its magic long after you hit “publish.” It’s the gift that keeps on giving, with lasting SEO benefits and the potential for evergreen content that remains relevant over time.

Unlocking the Power of a Content Marketing Strategy

Now that you understand the value and importance of content for your B2B marketing let’s dive into what a content marketing strategy is and explore some examples that can fuel your success.

A content marketing strategy is simply a comprehensive plan outlining how your business will create, distribute, and promote content to attract, engage, and retain your target audience.

It focuses on consistently delivering valuable, relevant, and engaging information to drive measurable results, such as increased brand awareness, lead generation, and customer loyalty. A well-crafted content marketing strategy is the cornerstone of an effective B2B marketing campaign.

Here are some examples of different content marketing strategies to inspire your own:

• Thought Leadership: Position your brand as an industry expert by creating insightful, authoritative content that addresses current trends, challenges, and innovations. Share your expertise through blog posts, whitepapers, webinars, or podcasts to build trust and credibility with your audience.
  • Example: A cybersecurity company produces a series of in-depth articles and webinars discussing the latest threats and best practices in the industry.
• Case Studies & Success Stories: Showcase your product or service’s effectiveness by highlighting real-world examples of how your solutions have helped clients overcome challenges and achieve success. These stories provide social proof and also demonstrate the tangible benefits of working with your company.
  • Example: A marketing automation software provider publishes case studies detailing how their platform has helped clients streamline their marketing efforts and boost lead generation.
• Educational Content: Provide valuable, informative content that addresses your audience’s pain points, answers their questions, and helps them make informed decisions. This type of content positions your brand as a helpful resource and encourages potential clients to engage with your company further.
  • Example: A B2B SaaS company offers free eBooks, webinars, and blog posts covering topics such as software implementation, best practices, and industry trends.
• Interactive Content: Engage your audience with interactive content that encourages participation and fosters a deeper connection with your brand. Quizzes, polls, surveys, and interactive infographics are excellent tools for capturing attention and gathering insights about your audience.
  • Example: A B2B financial services company creates an interactive calculator that helps businesses estimate their potential cost savings by using its services.

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One of the most important things to remember about an effective content marketing strategy is the value of repurposing a single piece of content into multiple formats. For example, you can write a blog post and then leverage it to create a podcast, video, webinar, social media posts, and more.

This means you can reach a wider audience and maximise the value of your content while providing your audience with diverse ways to engage with your brand.

Remember, a well-crafted content marketing strategy is an essential component of your B2B marketing success.

By understanding your audience, providing value through various content formats, and consistently delivering high-quality content, you can achieve your marketing goals and differentiate your brand from the competition. Let’s take a look at what that looks like in practice with a real-world example of an organisation that excels at content marketing — HubSpot.

Content Marketing Example

HubSpot is a shining star in the content galaxy. Their tantalising mix of blog posts and whitepapers has clients buzzing around like bees on a honey mission.

HubSpot’s blog is a treasure trove of fun, easy-to-digest nuggets on inbound marketing, sales, and customer service. They dish out useful tips and tricks that businesses of all sizes can’t resist. Their posts are well-researched, engaging, and so practical you’ll want to high-five the screen!

And let’s not forget those scrumptious whitepapers, research reports, and eBooks. HubSpot serves up deep dives into hot topics, with a side of case studies, data, and action-packed strategies.

It’s like an all-you-can-learn buffet for hungry business Ninjas!

By dishing out irresistible content in all shapes and sizes, HubSpot has become the life of the inbound marketing party. Grab a plate, join the fun, and watch your business groove to the rhythm of success!

In a nutshell, content is a powerhouse B2B marketing tool as it helps attract the right audience, showcase your expertise, build trust, drive conversions, and offer long-term gains.

By creating top-notch content that resonates with your target audience and addresses their needs, you’ll position your brand as a go-to source of valuable information – and that, my friends, is a recipe for B2B marketing success!

Lesson learned: Give ’em valuable content in multiple formats, and they’ll give you their business. Consistently offer quality, and you’ll become an industry leader.

Social Media, Supercharged

Get your digital mingle on! Social media is where connections and conversations happen, so jump in and make a splash.

B2B marketers looking to maximise their digital presence should consider a social media marketing strategy. Social media platforms like LinkedIn, Twitter, Instagram, and TikTok are invaluable for building relationships with your target audience and boosting visibility.

B2B companies can use this powerful combination of content sharing, community interaction, and real-time engagement to craft effective B2B marketing strategies that deliver an unbeatable competitive advantage.

With its highly targeted approach, social media marketing is the ideal way to show off your brand’s value while increasing your chances of success in the B2B digital marketing space.

But why is social media marketing such a game-changer for B2B brands? Let’s break it down:

• Targeted outreach: Social media platforms offer advanced targeting options that allow you to reach the exact audience you’re after. Zero in on industry professionals, job titles, and even specific companies to ensure your message hits home.
• Two-way communication: Social media enables real-time interaction with your audience, fostering genuine relationships and allowing you to gather invaluable feedback directly from your target market.
• Expanding your reach: Social media platforms have massive user bases, so there’s ample opportunity to connect with new audiences, influencers, and potential partners in your industry.
• Boosting brand awareness: Maintaining a consistent presence on social media will increase your brand’s visibility and recognition, making it easier for potential customers to find and engage with your business.
• Establishing thought leadership: Share valuable content, join industry discussions, and showcase your expertise on social media to position your brand as a thought leader and go-to resource in your field.
• Driving website traffic: Sharing content, promoting events, and offering exclusive deals on social media can help drive traffic to your website, ultimately leading to higher conversion rates.

Mastering Your Social Media Marketing Strategy

A well-crafted social media marketing strategy enables you to reach a massive audience and engage with them meaningfully. Here are some tips for developing a successful social media marketing strategy:

• Define your goals: Start by defining your social media marketing goals. Do you want to increase brand awareness, generate leads, drive traffic to your website, or boost sales? Clearly defining your goals will help you create a targeted strategy that aligns with your business objectives.
• Know your audience: Identify your target audience and tailor your content to their preferences. Understand their demographics, interests, and pain points to create content that resonates with them.
• Choose the right platforms: Determine which social media platforms your audience frequents and focus on creating content for those channels. Each platform has a unique audience and user behaviour, so choosing the right platforms that align with your goals and audience is essential.
• Create engaging content: Develop high-quality content (yep, it always comes back down to the content you create) that encourages your audience to interact with your brand. Mix up your content formats and use various media, such as images, videos, infographics, and live streaming, to keep your audience engaged.
• Optimise for engagement: Use tactics like hashtags, polls, and questions to boost engagement and encourage conversation. Respond to comments and messages promptly to foster a sense of community and build brand loyalty.
• Measure your results: Use social media analytics tools to track your performance, identify areas for improvement, and adjust your strategy accordingly. Keep an eye on metrics like engagement, reach, conversions, and ROI to measure the effectiveness of your social media marketing efforts.

One simple but highly effective strategy is repurposing your existing content specifically for social media. Highlight key points from your blogs, infographics, and webinars in attention-grabbing social media posts to maximise your reach and engage a wider audience.

With these tips and the power of social media on your side, you can create a dynamic, results-driven social media marketing strategy that elevates your brand.

Looking for inspiration? Stay tuned as we take a closer look at Salesforce, a brand that’s mastered the art of social media marketing.

Social Media Marketing Example

Hold onto your hats, folks, because we’re about to unveil a B2B social media wizard: Salesforce! This trailblazer has turned social media into a customer connection wonderland.

Salesforce sprinkles magic on its LinkedIn page, turning it into a bustling engagement hub. With a mix of informative posts, quirky visuals, and industry insights, they’ve got B2B professionals hooked like kids in a candy store.

But wait, there’s more! Salesforce’s Twitter game is on fire, too. They serve up bite-sized tips, news, and shout-outs that make their audience feel part of an exclusive club. And with their lively conversations and timely responses, they’ve built a tight-knit community that keeps coming back for more.

So, what’s the secret behind Salesforce’s social media success? It’s simple: be authentic, be approachable, and never stop dazzling your audience. Follow in Salesforce’s footsteps, and watch your B2B social media strategy soar to new heights!

By embracing social media as part of your B2B digital marketing strategy, you’ll tap into a world of opportunities to connect with and impress potential customers, partners, and industry influencers alike. Now go forth and conquer the social media realm!

Your mission is to be the life of the social media party, and clients will come flocking.

Lesson learned: Approachability and authenticity win hearts.

Personalisation Power!

Know your audience and speak their language. Personalisation is the key to winning hearts and minds, so take the time to understand what makes your clients tick.

So, what’s personalisation all about? Simple! It’s the art of making your customers feel special and unique. Because, let’s be honest, who doesn’t like feeling like a VIP?

B2B marketing strategies have come a long way in the past few years, and personalisation helps B2B marketers keep up with the fast-paced and ever-evolving digital world by tailoring their campaigns to meet each customer’s preferences, interests, and needs.

By utilising B2B digital marketing strategies such as creating segmented customer journeys, collecting customer data from various channels, and leveraging AI technologies, B2B marketers can bring their brand closer to their customers than ever before.

This results in meaningful relationships that result in more leads and loyal partners eager to do business with them.

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Personalisation: The Key to Unlocking Your Marketing Success

Personalisation has become a buzzword in the marketing world, and for good reason. By tailoring your marketing messages and experiences to individual customers, you can increase engagement, loyalty, and sales. Here are some tips for personalising your marketing strategies:

• Leverage data: Collect data on your customers’ preferences, behaviour, and purchase history to create personalised messages and experiences. Use tools like customer relationship management (CRM) software, web analytics, and social media listening to gather valuable insights about your audience.
• Segment your audience: Divide your audience into groups based on shared characteristics, such as age, location, interests, or behaviour. This allows you to create targeted messages and experiences that resonate with each group.
• Personalise your content: Create content that speaks directly to your audience’s interests, needs, and pain points. Use their names, provide personalised recommendations, and tailor your messaging based on their previous interactions with your brand.
• Automate your campaigns: Use marketing automation tools to deliver personalised messages at scale. This can include triggered emails, personalised offers, or targeted ads based on customer behaviour.
• Offer personalised experiences: Personalise the customer experience by providing tailored product recommendations, custom landing pages, or personalised offers. This can help build brand loyalty and increase customer retention.

Incorporating these personalisation strategies into your marketing campaigns can create a more engaging, relevant, and memorable experience for your customers. Remember, personalisation is not a one-size-fits-all solution. It requires careful analysis of your audience and an ongoing effort to create tailored experiences that resonate with them.

Looking for inspiration? Check out how one of the world’s most recognisable brands used personalisation to drive their marketing success.

Personalisation Example

You’ve probably seen those Coca-Cola bottles with names printed on them, right? Well, that’s personalisation in action! By putting a name on a bottle for their legendary Share a Coke campaign, Coca-Cola transformed a simple beverage into a meaningful, shareable experience.

Suddenly, customers weren’t just buying a Coke; they were sharing a moment with friends, family, and even total strangers.

Source

You might be thinking, “That’s cool, but how do I add that personal touch to my B2B digital marketing strategy?” No worries, we’ve got you covered! Here are a few fab ideas to get you started:

• Name-dropping never felt so good: Be like Coca-Cola and personalise your products or services with your customers’ company names. It can be as simple as adding their name to your email subject lines or incorporating their logo into your presentations.
• Be the (data) detective: Use analytics to uncover your customers’ preferences, pain points, and interests. Then, create targeted marketing campaigns that address their unique needs.
• Personalised content is king: Create tailored content that speaks to your customers’ specific industries or roles. Think case studies, whitepapers, or webinars that address their pain points and showcase your expertise.
• Become a social (media) butterfly: Engage with your customers on social media by responding to their comments, sharing their posts, and celebrating their achievements. Show them you’re not just a faceless corporation but a real human who cares.

So, there you have it! B2B marketing strategies in 2024 will become increasingly reliant on personalisation to meet and exceed the expectations of clients. Taking the time to understand and cater to specific customer needs will be one of the best B2B digital marketing strategies out there.

By truly getting to know your clients, you’re giving them a customised experience that puts their satisfaction first and helps you build trust — a surefire way to win hearts and minds! Don’t hesitate — start personalising today, and watch the sparks fly in 2024.

Lesson learned: Customisation fosters connection.

Video Verve

A picture’s worth a thousand words, but a video? Priceless!

It’s no secret that people love watching videos, whether it’s cute cats, epic fails, or mouthwatering recipes. But here’s the kicker. Video marketing is a game-changer for businesses, and here’s why.

First off, video marketing is like a superpower for grabbing attention. For B2B marketing strategies, videos are the bomb. Not only do they have that special sauce that captures and holds folks’ attention in a world oversaturated with content, but videos can also powerfully express messages with visuals and audio working together like PB&J.

And, backed by your overall B2B digital marketing strategy, you can leverage video to make the kind of impact that just isn’t possible any other way. Whether you’re looking for recognition or ROI, including video as part of your B2B marketing strategy is a surefire way to get noticed in an ever-competitive market.

But wait, there’s more! Videos are crazily shareable. When your audience digs your content, they’ll want to spread the love, and before you know it, your brand’s reach has gone through the roof. It’s like a giant game of telephone, but way more effective and less garbled.

And let’s not forget the human touch. Videos give your brand a personality and help you connect with your audience on a deeper level. You know that warm, fuzzy feeling you get when you see your favourite brand’s latest vid? That’s the power of video marketing, baby!

So, to put it simply, video marketing is the ultimate tool for capturing attention, boosting engagement, and creating genuine connections with your audience. If you’re not already riding the video marketing wave, it’s high time you hopped on that board and started making marketing magic!

Unleashing the Power of Video Marketing Strategies

Video has become an increasingly popular and effective way to engage with your B2B audience and drive results. By incorporating video into your marketing strategy, you can improve brand awareness, generate leads, and increase conversions. Here are some tips for creating a successful video marketing strategy, and you’ll notice that some of these tips are going to be working across whichever B2B marketing strategy you embrace.

• Define your goals: Like every marketing strategy, always start by defining your video marketing goals. Are you looking to increase brand awareness, drive sales, or educate your audience? Defining your goals will help you create targeted videos that resonate with your audience.
• Know your audience: To create effective videos that engage your audience, it’s crucial to understand their preferences and pain points. Develop audience personas and use surveys or social listening tools to gather insights into their needs and interests. This data allows you to tailor your videos to meet the specific needs of your audience, resulting in more impactful and engaging content.
• Choose the right format: There are many different types of video formats, including explainer videos, product demos, testimonials, and live streaming. Choose the format that aligns with your goals and audience preferences.
• Create compelling content: Develop high-quality, engaging video content that captivates your audience and delivers your message effectively. Use storytelling techniques, humour, and emotion to make your videos memorable and shareable.
• Optimise for distribution: You can optimise your videos for distribution by creating attention-grabbing titles, descriptions, and tags. Share your videos on social media platforms, email campaigns, and your website to increase visibility and engagement.
• Track your performance: Use video analytics tools to track your performance and identify areas for improvement. Monitor metrics such as views, engagement, and conversions to measure the effectiveness of your video marketing efforts.

By following these tips and leveraging the power of video, you can create a compelling video marketing strategy that engages your audience and drives results. Next up, let’s take a closer look at a company that’s using video to fuel its marketing success in a unique way.

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Video Marketing Example

Patagonia might not be a B2B firm, but its savvy marketing squad have flipped the script for video marketing. They’re all about that long-form video content, with many of their online vids clocking in between 10 and 20 minutes.

Whoa, right?

It just shows that so-called “video best practices” don’t always cut it if they’re not right for your brand. Usually, we’d suggest clients keep their videos under two minutes since that’s what seems to work for most people. But Patagonia knows its audience inside out, and they’ve taken a different path. A path that’s paying off!

The video length is just one way Patagonia stands out from the crowd, but there’s more. A lot of their videos don’t even focus on products. Instead, they dive deep into crucial environmental and conservation topics that are super important to their audience.

These videos feel less like your typical marketing spiel and more like documentaries with a purpose. You probably noticed that vibe in the video above.

Heck, they even have a whole section on their website called “Films,” with the tagline, “We are a collective of storytellers who make films on behalf of our home planet.”

Not exactly your everyday video marketing approach, but hey, it’s working wonders for Patagonia!

So remember, sometimes it’s all about knowing when to break the mould and go beyond standard marketing tactics — especially if your customer research tells you your audience wants something different.

The secret to video impact is visual storytelling that tugs at the heartstrings. Give ’em the feels, and they’re all yours.

Lesson learned: Emotions drive engagement.

Account-Based Marketing (ABM) Awesomeness

Zoom in on the big fish with a laser-focused ABM strategy. Identify high-value accounts and tailor your approach to their unique needs. ABM is like a secret weapon for B2B marketers, and we’re gonna spill the beans on why it’s so cool.

Picture this. Instead of just hoping to snag some good leads, B2B organisations can use ABM to strategically target specific high-value accounts, allowing their marketing and sales teams to work together more effectively like a superhero team.

It’s an important part of any B2B digital marketing strategy and requires specialised expertise to craft effective campaigns that cut through the noise. Gathering data on prospects and customers can put your team in a better position to develop creative strategies that will get results and help reel in those dream clients.

But why is ABM so amazing?

First off, ABM is all about personalisation. When you’re focusing on a select group of accounts, you can tailor your message to fit their unique needs like a glove. And let’s be real, who doesn’t love feeling like they’re the centre of the universe?

But there’s more! With ABM, your marketing and sales teams are BFFs, working together in perfect harmony. This means they share info, align their goals, and collaborate like nobody’s business.

The result? A streamlined process that’s more efficient than a well-oiled machine.

And, of course, we can’t forget about the ROI. ABM is like a laser-guided missile for targeting high-value accounts, so you’re not wasting resources on low-priority leads. More bang for your buck? Yes, please!

Crafting a Winning Account-Based Marketing Strategy

You can improve lead quality, increase conversion rates, and drive revenue growth by aligning your sales and marketing efforts around specific target accounts. Here are some tips for creating a successful account-based marketing strategy:

• Identify your target accounts: Don’t just scream into the void. Start by identifying the high-value accounts that align with your business goals. Use criteria such as company size, industry, or revenue to create a list of target accounts.
• Develop account personas: Develop personas for each target account that represent their unique characteristics, challenges, and pain points. This helps create tailored messaging and content that resonates with each account.
• Create targeted content: There’s that content again. Develop content that speaks directly to the needs and interests of your target accounts. Use personalisation and customisation to create messaging that is specific to each account.
• Align sales and marketing: Work closely with your sales team to align your marketing efforts with their sales goals. Develop account-based marketing campaigns that support their sales efforts and work to engage and nurture target accounts.
• Track and measure results: Use data and analytics to track your account-based marketing efforts and measure their effectiveness. Monitor metrics such as engagement rates, conversion rates, and revenue growth to identify areas for improvement.

By following these tips and leveraging the power of account-based marketing, you can create a targeted and effective B2B marketing strategy that drives results. Now let’s take a look at one of the best ABM examples of recent years from a firm that’s nailed its account-based marketing strategy.

ABM Example

When GumGum, a company specialising in computer vision, set its sights on winning over T-Mobile’s business, the CMO went full Sherlock Holmes, investigating the buying committee from the top down.

It turns out, T-Mobile’s CEO, John Legere, is a huge Batman fan. So, GumGum cooked up a genius plan that put Legere smack dab in the middle of their story. They crafted a comic book (T-Man and Gums) featuring their very own team of writers, illustrators, and other creative gurus. After shipping 100 copies to T-Mobile and its agencies, guess what?

They nabbed the account!

Source

Now, this example might be on the extravagant side, so you could save mega-campaigns like this for your VIP accounts. But don’t worry; you can still make a splash with your personal touch.

Start by digging up as much info as possible on your target account contacts. Then, send out customised direct mail campaigns with goodies that’ll make ’em feel special (like merch from their favourite flick or a bag of their go-to coffee beans) to get the conversation rolling.

As for when to use this approach, it’s perfect for kickstarting a relationship with a brand-new account (like GumGum did) or reaching out to fresh buying committees within an existing account. In short, it’s all about making that first impression count!

To sum it up, account-based marketing is your secret resource for scoring those coveted clients with personalised campaigns, teamwork that would make Captain Planet proud, and an ROI that’ll have you dancing all the way to the bank.

So, if you’re a B2B marketer looking for the next big thing, ABM is your ticket to success!

Your task is to concentrate firepower, maximise ROI, and celebrate those sweet victories.

Lesson learned: Prioritise quality over quantity.

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SEO Smarts

The digital spotlight awaits! Get your content in front of the right eyes by optimising it for search engines.

Alrighty, let’s chat about the awesomeness of SEO for B2B marketing and why it’s a total game-changer.

First things first, SEO is like the secret weapon that makes your B2B digital marketing strategy hit its target. It helps your brand rise to the top of search results, so potential clients can find you in a snap.

And let’s be real. Being the first name that pops up when someone’s looking for a solution is like winning the B2B marketing lottery!

Now, for those hot tips to make your B2B SEO strategy shine:

• Know your audience: Before you can dazzle them with your content, you’ve gotta know who you’re talking to. Identify your target audience and learn their pain points so you can create content that truly resonates.
• Do your keyword research: Uncover the magic words your audience is using to find solutions. Use tools like Google Keyword Planner or Semrush to dig up your industry’s most relevant and high-traffic keywords.
• Craft killer content: Once you’ve got your keywords, it’s time to create content that’s engaging, informative, and valuable. This will help you rank higher in search results and keep visitors coming back for more.
• Optimise your website: Ensure that your website is well-structured, user-friendly, and mobile-responsive. Use relevant keywords in your meta tags, headings, and content to help search engines understand the context of your pages.
• Create high-quality content: Develop high-quality, informative content that speaks directly to your audience’s needs and interests. Use a variety of content formats, such as blogs, whitepapers, infographics, and videos, to increase engagement and improve search rankings.
• Leverage link building: Build high-quality backlinks from reputable websites in your industry. Use tactics such as guest blogging, broken link building, and social media to attract links and improve your website’s authority.
• Monitor your performance: Use analytics tools to track your website’s performance and identify areas for improvement. Monitor metrics such as traffic, rankings, and conversions to measure the effectiveness of your SEO marketing efforts.

One effective SEO marketing strategy to consider is local SEO, which involves optimising your website and content for local search queries. This can include creating local landing pages, optimising your Google My Business profile, and building local backlinks to improve your visibility in local search results.

And it’s not difficult to find B2B brands excelling at SEO marketing. It’s one of the main B2B battlegrounds, and competition can be fierce.

So are you ready to be blown away by a B2B brand that’s crushing it with its SEO game? Hold onto your hats, folks — this one’s gonna be wild.

SEO Marketing Example

Fasten your seatbelts marketers. We’re about to take a thrilling ride into the high-octane world of SEO (alright, calm down).

Our travel companion for this trip? None other than MasterClass.com, a business that’s revving the engine of SEO like no other.

The folks at MasterClass.com have done something truly smart. They’ve tuned into the radio frequency of their audience’s curiosity and identified hundreds upon hundreds of questions that people are asking about a whole galaxy of topics.

The work doesn’t end there. They’ve spun an absolute web of knowledge, crafting over 1,300 articles that tackle those questions head-on. In doing so, they’ve built an intricate matrix of information, effectively turning their site into a question-answering powerhouse.

The result of this clever manoeuvre? They’ve hoisted their SEO flag on thousands of keyword territories. It’s like they’ve built an SEO lighthouse that beams brightly whenever someone’s searching for answers online. More often than not, you’ll find MasterClass.com on the shore of your search results, welcoming you into a haven of knowledge.

Want to be an SEO guru just like MasterClass.com? Don’t just answer the expected questions about your product or service. Dig deeper. Unearth those not-so-obvious enquiries, the kind that show real curiosity. Then, craft detailed, SEO-friendly articles that serve up answers on a silver platter.

By doing this, your business won’t just be a flicker in the vast SEO universe but a dazzling star that attracts attention from all corners. So, strap on your SEO jetpack and prepare for an exhilarating journey to the SEO stratosphere, just like the experts at MasterClass.com.

Lesson learned: Visibility equals opportunity.

Find out a bit more about how MasterClass.com uses SEO to generate such whopping traffic volumes in our more in-depth discussion of what masterclass.com is doing to excel in optimising for search engines.

Webinar Wisdom

Teach, impress, repeat! Hosting webinars allows you to demonstrate your expertise and connect with potential clients on a personal level.

Webinar marketing is all about creating live or on-demand online events to educate, engage, and connect with your audience on a more personal level. It’s a powerful B2B marketing strategy that makes it easy to host educational and engaging online events with your target audience — whether live or on-demand.

You can use webinars to give your audience an inside look at what your brand has to offer, present your products and services in a new light, or even host real-time Q&A sessions as if they were a virtual masterclass!

There’s no better way to make real connections with your customers than by bringing them together in an interactive space like this.

So, why is webinar marketing a must-have in the B2B world? Here’s the inside scoop:

• Hyper-targeted content: Webinars let you create content tailored to specific segments of your audience, addressing their unique pain points and interests. This level of personalisation makes your message more impactful and relevant.
• Global reach: With webinars, you can connect with your audience from anywhere worldwide, breaking down geographical barriers and expanding your brand’s reach.
• Time-sensitive topics: Webinars are perfect for discussing current trends, new developments, or industry updates, ensuring your content is timely and relevant to your audience’s needs.
• Measurable results: Webinar platforms often provide detailed analytics and reporting, allowing you to measure engagement, track leads, and optimise your marketing efforts.

Maximising Your Marketing Impact with Webinar Marketing

You can establish your brand as a thought leader and attract high-quality leads by providing valuable information and insights. Here are some tips for creating a successful webinar marketing strategy:

• Choose a relevant topic: Select a topic that aligns with your business goals and addresses a specific pain point or challenge your audience faces. Use surveys, social listening, and industry research to identify topics that resonate with your audience.
• Develop compelling content: Create engaging and informative content that provides value to your audience. Use a mix of formats such as presentations, interviews, and case studies to keep your audience engaged.
• Promote your webinar: Promote your webinar through multiple channels, such as email marketing, social media, and paid advertising to maximise your reach. Use a mix of pre-recorded and live webinars to cater to different audiences.
• Encourage engagement: Encourage audience engagement during the webinar through interactive features such as polls, Q&A sessions, and live chats. This helps create a more personalised experience and can increase the likelihood of conversion.
• Follow up with leads: Follow up with leads after the webinar to continue the conversation and nurture the relationship. Use email marketing, personalised landing pages, and targeted content to keep the conversation going and convert leads into customers.

By following these tips and leveraging the power of webinars, you can create a dynamic and effective marketing strategy that engages your audience and drives results. So who’s doing webinar marketing well?

Webinar Marketing Example

Now, let’s take a close look at Gartner’s winning approach to webinar marketing:

• Wide-ranging topics: Gartner covers a diverse array of subjects, catering to the interests of professionals across various industries.,This ensures they consistently provide valuable content to a broad audience.
• High-calibre speakers: By inviting top industry analysts and experts to present, Gartner ensures their webinars are packed with authoritative insights and credible advice.
• Practical takeaways: Gartner’s webinars go beyond theory, offering actionable, data-driven strategies that attendees can implement in their own businesses for tangible results.
• Regular cadence: Gartner maintains a consistent webinar schedule, keeping their audience engaged and fostering a sense of anticipation for future events.
• Promotion and follow-up: Gartner effectively promotes their webinars through multiple channels, such as email marketing and social media, and follows up with attendees post-event to reinforce key takeaways and maintain engagement.

Webinar marketing is a powerful strategy for B2B brands looking to deliver targeted, relevant content, expand their global reach, address time-sensitive topics, and measure the success of their marketing efforts.

Gartner’s approach to webinars exemplifies how to create a winning combination of diverse topics, expert speakers, actionable advice, and consistent scheduling, all while effectively promoting and following up with their audience.

By implementing these best practices, your brand can also reap the rewards of a successful webinar marketing strategy.

Your game plan should be to offer irresistible value and nurture those leads like a true B2B sensei.

Lesson learned: Education builds trust.

Influencer Ingenuity

Two heads are better than one, especially if one’s a top industry expert! Influencer marketing is all about partnering with influential folks in your industry – the movers and shakers, if you will – to create authentic content and promote your brand. These influencers have a strong following, oodles of credibility, and the power to sway opinions.

But why is influencer marketing a big deal for B2B brands? Let’s break it down:

• Authenticity: By collaborating with influencers who genuinely use and love your products, you create content that resonates with your audience and builds trust.
• Expanded reach: Influencers help you tap into new audiences and amplify your brand message.
• Expertise: When you partner with industry experts, you boost your brand’s credibility and authority.
• Relationship building: Working with influencers can lead to long-term partnerships and a network of advocates for your brand.

Influencer Marketing Example

Now, let’s talk about Adobe’s approach to influencer marketing:

• Star-studded partnerships: Adobe’s B2B digital marketing strategy strikes a chord by partnering with typically untapped creative professionals — leading designers, photographers, and other creative professionals who are already fans of their products.By leveraging star-studded endorsements from these industry leaders, Adobe can gain awareness and recognition in the B2B market, helping them stay on top with one of the best B2B marketing strategies around. Their team-ups have been strategic and well-timed, providing benefits to both sides while driving innovation and creating an explosive atmosphere of collaboration within the B2B digital marketing space.
• Creative content: Influencers have the power to captivate audiences through creative content, and B2B marketers are using this to their advantage. With Adobe’s tools, they can craft stunning visuals and share their creative process in real-life scenarios that show off the product’s capabilities. This B2B digital marketing strategy is an engaging way to reach new audiences and establish brand loyalty. From memes to videos, influencer B2B marketing strategies help businesses bring their content to life and connect with people on a deeper level.
• Word of mouth: Word-of-mouth endorsements from influencers are a powerful tool for B2B marketers, allowing them to bring positive experiences and successes using Adobe products to the attention of their target audience. Influencers can showcase products in entertaining and relatable ways while inspiring their followers, bringing true social proof to campaigns. B2B digital marketing strategies focused on influencer outreach can generate huge gains in brand exposure, trust and loyalty with minimal effort due to the already-established connection between the influencer and the target market. Ultimately, B2B marketers must capitalise on this growing opportunity to ensure success within an ever-changing digital landscape.

The secret to influencer marketing success? It’s all about finding the perfect fit:

• Size vs relevance: When it comes to influencers, audience size matters less than audience relevance. Sure, a large following can help with reach, but it’s crucial to find influencers who have genuine credibility and expertise in your industry.
• Quality over quantity: Focus on partnering with a handful of key influencers who truly resonate with your target audience rather than chasing big numbers.

Influencer marketing can be a powerhouse tool for B2B brands looking to create authentic, engaging content and expand their reach. Adobe’s approach demonstrates the power of partnering with influencers who genuinely love their products and can showcase their capabilities in real-world settings.

By finding the right influencers and focusing on relevance over sheer numbers, you, too, can hit the influencer marketing jackpot!

Lesson learned: Leverage others’ influence to expand your reach.

Lead the Way in 2024

So there you have it — the best B2B marketing strategies to keep you ahead of the pack in 2024. These tactics are your golden tickets to winning the business game, from video marketing and SEO to account-based marketing, webinars, and influencer collaborations

Remember, the secret to success lies in understanding your audience, staying true to your brand, and never being afraid to think outside the box. After all, fortune favours the bold!

As you embark on your B2B marketing journey, consider these winning strategies and take inspiration from the trailblazing brands we’ve discussed. Embrace innovation, be adaptable, and don’t forget to have a little fun along the way!

Because when it comes to B2B marketing, the only limit is your imagination.

Here’s to a smashing 2024 – may your marketing efforts be fruitful, your leads be plenty, and your business will thrive like never before!

If you want some help with your content strategy, we have a team of digital marketing specialists at Thinkplus. Learn more about our digital marketing services here.

What to Read Next

• Looking to rev up your marketing strategy and skyrocket your brand’s reach? Read our Ultimate Guide to Connecting with Influential Bloggers in Your Niche and unlocking your full potential!
• Eager to boost your website’s visibility and attract more visitors without spending a dime? Discover How to Increase Organic Traffic for Your Website in Ten Steps and transform your online presence today!
• Struggling to find the perfect social platform to grow your brand and engage your audience? Learn How to Choose the Social Network That Works for Your Business and make the most of your online presence!
• Unsure about allocating funds for your marketing strategies in the coming year? Dive into How to Plan Your Marketing Budget for 2023 and master the art of strategic budgeting to elevate your brand’s success!

Ready to ignite your online presence and outshine the competition? Request your FREE website and marketing review from Thinkplus, your trusted digital marketing ally, and prepare to be amazed by your brand’s potential to grow!

The post The Best B2B Marketing Strategies in 2024 appeared first on Thinkplus.

Getting enough leads, getting more leads, getting better quality leads.

Here are some of the best ways to increase leads in 2024, starting with some quick wins that can help you get more leads sooner rather than later.

Lead Generation Quick Wins

Before we start, quick wins don’t mean low effort.

You’ve likely already put the effort in, and with a few simple tweaks, you can get that effort to pay off.

High-traffic Pages with Poor CTAs

Every website has a page that gets lots of traffic but isn’t converting as high as you’d like it to be.

It’s one of those things that you leave ticking over because it looks good on your monthly reports.

You’re scared to make changes to improve the conversion rate in case it drops in the search engine rankings.

But you can make small changes to help the page generate more leads.

You might only need to add a more tailored CTA focusing more on a different part of the funnel.

For example, a Hubspot blog about writing a business proposal could include a CTA for their customer management software.

But is someone searching for “how to write a business proposal” ready to invest in Hubspot’s software right now?

It’s unlikely. So, instead, Hubspot shares a template to help the reader write their proposal in exchange for their email address.

This template could help them land investments, grow their business and eventually be in a position where they need Hubspot’s software.

They’re playing the long game. But it’s better than putting off potential leads with a CTA that’s too strong and losing the game immediately.

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High CTR Ads Linked to Poor Pages

Do you have some ads that are getting loads of clicks but not converting at the level you expected?

The pages you’re sending visitors to could be the problem.

And we’re not talking about design.

This landing page for an Airbnb ad targeting hosts has a beautiful design, and the map and calculator are a nice touch.

But the only CTA on this page is to become an Airbnb host. There’s nothing here to capture people who aren’t ready to commit right now but are interested in considering it in the future.

Once they leave the page, there’s no way to nurture these potential leads.

Your pages can have the most beautiful design possible but still not convert visitors to leads if you don’t have the fundamentals in place.

The fundamentals are:

• Sending traffic to a relevant page, i.e. a product or service page rather than your homepage
• Including a clear CTA, possibly two if your main CTA asks for a big commitment
• Handling objections.

The below landing page from Salesforce has a nice design, and it directs users to a relevant page – the ad included the same imagery and talked about AI.

It also includes multiple CTAs — to watch demos (which includes an email address lead capture form once you click on it), chat with someone or try the software for free (free = lower risk) if you’re ready for that.

Review your key pages and consider what might be stopping people from becoming leads after clicking on your ad.

Make small tweaks and see what helps your leads and conversions increase.

Now we’ve covered some quick wins, let’s explore other areas of digital marketing that will help you generate leads and increase sales.

How to Increase Leads Using Content

Content marketing is one of the best ways to generate leads for your business.

But only if it’s done with the customer’s journey in mind.

The type of content you share must match the level your leads are at.

• Some people may become leads right at the top of the funnel, where they watch one of your videos and make a mental note to revisit you later.
• Others in the middle of the funnel may download a template, hand over their email address, and enjoy the automated email sequence you send them.
• Those at the bottom of the funnel could convert immediately and then need to be nurtured further to keep them returning as a regular customer.

The way you position the content matters, as well as the CTA you use.

For example, content made for people at the top of the funnel needs a top-of-funnel CTA.

Don’t try to sell them on your product or service right away.

Instead, offer them a tool or downloadable that they can use in exchange for their email.

This will help you move them down the sales funnel and turn them into a lead.

The same goes for bottom-of-funnel content. If someone is ready to buy but the only CTA is asking them to download a guide, they may assume you don’t sell what they want. Lead lost.

Remember, when we talk about content, we’re not just talking about blogs. Although blogs are great for lead generation, so are:

• Videos
• Downloadables
• Tools and Calculators

Slidebean targets top-of-funnel traffic using YouTube videos.

They create content that business owners and entrepreneurs will enjoy because that’s their target audience.

They don’t directly sell their pitch deck software in the videos, but they’re getting their brand name in front of their ideal customers, who are likely to become leads in the future.

The Thinkplus YouTube channel is more middle of the funnel.

We’re talking about topics that people who need a digital marketing agency are likely to search for.

That said, our YouTube videos still bring in a lot of top-of-funnel leads because they’re rad.

Generating Leads through Lead Magnets

We touched on some types of lead magnets in the content section, but they’re important enough for lead generation to get their own part of this guide.

Types of lead magnets include:

• eBooks
• Checklists
• Webinars
• Templates
• Quizzes
• Calculators
• Whitepapers
• Samples and free trials.

No matter the type of lead magnet you opt to use, you need to ensure that it offers value to your target audience.

Insurance comparison site Money Supermarket offers a tool that helps people compare insurance.

They make it easy for their users to get the information they need by breaking everything down into simple questions.

To get the results, the user needs to input their email address. Then, Money Supermarket can follow up with them via automated email sequences to remind them to make a purchase or suggest other services.

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Quality Pages = Quality Leads

Your website’s pages are useful for getting new leads.

But they can also help you disqualify low-quality leads.

That doesn’t mean low-budget. It just means they’re not the right customer for you.

Let’s take a look at a basic product — earplugs.

Starting with the everyday earplugs from Loop.

They’re nearly £30 for a single pair of earplugs, but they have more features than your standard foam ones.

The product imagery is sleek, and there are colour customisation options.

There’s even an interactive piece of audio that helps you understand how they alter your hearing.

Further down the page are images of cool young people wearing the earplugs, and a list of reasons why these earplugs are worth the £30 price tag.

Someone searching for earplugs for everyday use, concerts, or focus will know this is the right product for them.

Someone looking to buy earplugs for a construction site will know right away that this product isn’t what they’re after. The sleek product photography, multiple features and price point make that clear.

The above page from Screwfix, however, meets their needs right away. The price point is more suitable for this version of the product, and the imagery is basic, as they understand that their target audience knows what they want.

As much as this page qualifies the person hunting for earplugs for a construction site, it also disqualifies those looking for a stylish earplug.

How can you make sure that your landing pages are generating quality leads?

• Include features and benefits that are important to your target audience
• Use imagery that represents your target audience
• Make it easy for visitors to take the next step.

This doesn’t just apply to landing pages. Anywhere you generate leads should be optimised for your target audience instead of casting a wide net and bringing in “everyone” as leads.

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How to Generate Leads through Email

Your mailing list is a gold mine for lead generation.

The people we’re talking about here are those who signed up for downloadables or newsletters (most likely thanks to an incentive, such as a discount or access to exclusive content) but were far from converting.

But, by not emailing these people, you’re missing out on leads for your business.

However, that doesn’t mean you should just start blasting your email subscribers with sales emails.

There are multiple ways you can connect with your email subscribers and convert them into genuine leads instead of making them want to unsubscribe.

Email Segmentation

Email segmentation helps you target specific types of leads and customers in your email list with personalised messages.
This means you can send more sales-y emails to people who are likely to convert and more nurturing emails to those needing more time to become leads.

The more data you gather on your subscribers, the more targeted segments you can create. By understanding user behaviour and interactions, you can craft targeted segments such as VIP customers, inactive subscribers, and repeat leads.

Additionally, by emailing in segments, you can make emails more personalised and targeted to increase the likelihood of engagement.

You’ll get better click-throughs and open rates and better deliverability.

The result? More leads will convert into customers, or potential leads will turn into leads.

Email courtesy of Really Good Emails

Email Automation

Email automation saves you a lot of time. The best part of this type of email is that it will continue to nurture potential leads and new customers throughout their journey once it’s set up.

Instead of sending out email campaigns one by one, you can set up some to be sent after someone takes an action on your site.

Email automations are single or multiple emails sent when a person signs up for your email list.

Email courtesy of Really Good Emails

These automations might be tailored to different actions the person has taken.

• If they download a guide, you could automatically send them a specific set of emails related to that guide.
• If someone has filled out a contact form, you can send an automated email letting them know their response has been received and that they’ll hear back from you soon.
• Once someone has made a purchase, you can send them a post-purchase sequence.
• You could even send them emails if they abandon their cart or browse products without purchasing.

Nurture Email Campaigns

Nurture email campaigns help build relationships and engage people who aren’t ready to purchase just yet. They help introduce your brand’s USPs, core products, blogs and reviews from previous customers.

They help establish trust and keep your business top of mind. They also speed up the buyer’s journey by educating people on why they need to buy from you.

Nurture email campaigns work well for turning existing customers back into leads by offering them relevant upsells, cross-sells or new products based on their past shopping habits.

Email courtesy of Really Good Emails

Get More High-Quality Leads Using PPC

PPC ads on social media and search engines are ideal for generating leads — as long as you have your campaigns set up correctly and have great ad creative.

Otherwise, you’ll spend money getting your ads in front of people who will never become leads.

PPC can help you:

• Get to the top of search engines for high-intent keywords potential leads are searching for
• Connect or reconnect with potential leads on social media where they’re already spending their time
• Offer email sign-up directly in the ads in exchange for a downloadable

If you want to get high-quality leads from your search ads, you need to include the following:

• A strong headline that’s enticing and contains the keywords you are targeting. Think back to the titles of the blogs we discussed earlier.
• A compelling offering in the text. This should clarify your offering and why the viewer should choose you.
• Ad extensions, including other relevant pages on your site or a click-to-call button so viewers can get in touch right away.
• Consider the intent of the search. Ads run on a search where users are not quite ready to convert will have different CTAs to those that are for people ready to get in touch with your law firm.

The process is fairly similar for social media ads, but you must include eye-catching and relevant images or videos.

Eye-catching doesn’t always mean a loud design. It can also be in the style of user-generated content to help it fit better on social media.

Bespoke Landing Pages for PPC

Sometimes, sending ad viewers to a product or category page makes sense for your ad. But other times, sending them to a bespoke, specific landing page can help you get more leads.

These pages get the visitors all the information they need and are designed to turn them into leads there and then.

Below is an ad from the email platform Klaviyo promoting an eBook.

This ad takes the clicker to a landing page dedicated to this guide. The person then doesn’t need to search the website to find the guide — it’s right there.

The landing page shares more information about the guide and makes it easy to download while also capturing information about this potential lead.

If the visitor is unsure if they’re ready to commit to the download, there’s more information further down the page sharing what they’ll get in the eBook.

It helps put their mind at ease and makes sharing their information in return for the guide less of a risk. They know that the guide has information they want to know more about.

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PPC and Email for Lead Generation

When combined, email marketing and PPC can be an even more powerful tool for lead generation.

If you have a large email list, you can use it to reconnect with customers on other platforms.

This works by using the email addresses on your mailing list to place ads in front of people who have signed up for accounts elsewhere with the same email address.

By doing this, you can create PPC ads that align with the content you’ve been sending via email.

You can get really specific, too — only targeting people who opened your emails or clicked on a CTA with ads related to those emails.

Retargeting works for more than just email, too.

Retargeting for Lead Generation

Retargeting is a great way to convert those who nearly became leads into full-blown leads.

We know how life can be. You can get dragged away from a website by any number of distractions.

A retargeting ad could be a welcome reminder to take a look at that business again.

You can tailor your PPC ads to the page they were last on, reminding them of your business and the form they were about to fill out, the CTA they were about to engage with or the purchase they were going to make.

Instead of losing them as a lead, you bring them right back with retargeting.

How to Increase Your Leads in 2024

The key to generating more leads in 2024 is optimising your existing efforts to capture interested people at different stages in their journey.

You can get quick wins by:

• Adding clearer CTAs to high-traffic pages that aren’t converting visitors into leads
• Sending your high-performing ads to more optimised landing pages that make it easy for visitors to convert

Looking beyond quick tweaks, focus on creating valuable content, lead magnets, and landing pages tailored to visitors at each stage of the funnel.

Leverage email marketing and PPC ads to nurture potential leads into becoming sales. Retarget website visitors and email subscribers who have shown interest but have not yet converted.

With some strategic optimisations, you can turn more of your digital marketing efforts into quality leads and sales this year. Now, get out there and capture those leads.

What to Watch Next

What to Listen to Next

• How To Prioritise Your Marketing (for Busy People)
• How to Get to the Top of Google Again and Again (and AGAIN!)
• How To Effectively Scale and Grow Your Marketing

What to Read Next

• How to Triple Your Website Traffic in 2024
• How To Create an Effective Go-To-Market Strategy
• The Future of AI Marketing: What You Need to Know

The post How to Triple Your Leads in 2024 appeared first on Thinkplus.

• You’ve been getting a steady flow of leads but you’re not seeing the growth you want.
• You were getting a decent amount of leads but your marketing strategy isn’t getting you the payoff it used to.
• You’re working with a marketing agency but you’re not totally sure what they’re doing and whatever it is doesn’t seem to be getting you leads
• You’ve been losing more leads to competitors.

Whatever the challenges you’re facing with getting more legal leads and clients, this guide is here to help you improve.

10x Your Legal Leads

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Improve Your Law Firm’s Website and Landing Pages

Your website helps you get clients 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.

Consider the information on your website. The way it guides people towards becoming a client. If your website was a person, would they be able to get you new clients?

If they wouldn’t, then your law firm is missing out on some serious lead generation.

In just a few seconds, your website needs to make it clear to potential legal clients:

• What you’re offering
• Why someone should pay you for that offering
• And how they can become a client.

One of the main things you need to think about is conversion rate optimisation, also known as CRO.

Conversion rate optimisation for law firms

Conversion rate optimisation is any action you take on your website to make it easier for potential clients to become leads. You’re optimising your website for conversions.

Let’s take a look at the Lawhive homepage.

Image Source

• The website makes it clear what is being offered — you can find a solicitor in 5 minutes
• It highlights that the service is fast, convenient and affordable
• The site makes it clear this is an online process.

Then, the search box CTA asks, “What is your legal issue?” instead of just “Search”, giving the user guidance on what to search for.
Underneath the search bar are some suggestions to help the user get started.

The Lawhive website also has a benefits bar in case the user is unsure about taking the next step. There’s a price guarantee, reassurance that the quotes are fixed, that the solicitors are legitimate and you’ll get a fast response.

The user is made to feel like there are no downsides to using the search tool. Any questions or objections they might have are answered above the fold (the part of the website that is visible without needing to scroll).

If visitors know what type of lawyer they’re after, they can use the menu along the top to get to that page quickly rather than using the search bar.

Our conversion rate optimisation team know even more ways to increase landing page conversion rates, including several you can learn from our conversion rate explainer videos on YouTube, starting with this one.

Connect with Legal Clients Using SEO

Law firm SEO is key to getting your law firm in front of qualified leads.

It’s especially important for getting in front of these prospective clients when they’re looking for your services.

They’re likely to be asking questions on search engines. They could be ready to convert, searching for things like “solicitor near me”, or considering their options, with searches like “Am I eligible for a personal injury payout?”

Understanding the searches people make just before they become leads is the best place to start when improving your SEO for conversions.

You can use a tool like Semrush (which you can try for free for 14 days with our link) to see the keywords and phrases that your site, and competitor’s sites, are already ranking for.

To find more questions that potential clients ask, you should reflect on conversations with past clients or speak to other lawyers in the firm to find out what questions come up often.

You can use tools like AlsoAsked or Answer the Public to find more questions.

Law firm SEO can feel technical, but really it’s very people first.

By typing “personal injury law” into AlsoAsked, we got some great key questions that could be targeted by blog posts on your website, including:

• Should I use a solicitor for a personal injury claim?
• How long does a personal injury claim take to settle?
• What is the average payout for personal injury claims?

Image Source

If these are the questions people are searching for on the hunt for legal services, then you want your website to appear high in the search results.

The pages on your website that you want to rank for different searches could be:

• Your homepage
• Legal services pages
• Blog content

Your homepage should rank for your most important keyword – for example, “Lawyer Utah” or “Solicitor South London”.

The legal services pages will rank for similar but more specific terms such as “Family law Utah” or “Conveyancing services South London”.

Your law firm’s blog is the place for answering questions and will be one part of your content marketing strategy, which we’ll cover in the next section.

SEO takes time to build momentum but it’s worth it in the long run. It’s an important foundation to have and starting now will mean you have more opportunities to convert those high-quality leads from search engines.

Looking to take a deeper dive into law firm SEO? Download our free guide.

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Content Marketing for Law Firms

Content marketing refers to all the content on your website (page descriptions, blogs, your about page), as well as any content outside your website. This could be video marketing, press releases or digital PR.

Blogging for lead generation

Blogging can be a great way for lawyers to generate leads, but many firms use it solely as a source of traffic instead.

This is great, and it’s important to nurture cold traffic and move them closer to becoming clients.

But, you can also use blogs to attract prospective clients who are on the brink of converting to clients.

Image Source

Your SEO research will have given you some questions people ask just before they convert.

Use blogs to answer these questions. Some questions will need a longer answer than others, but no matter the length of the blog, it should always include a call to action.

Want to learn more about blogging basics for law firms? Download our guide.

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Writing calls to action to generate leads

This call to action should keep in mind the stage of the client journey the reader is at. If the question you’re answering often leads to someone becoming a client, then the CTA should invite them to book a consultation with you.

If the content is aimed more at people early in their journey, then you can convert them to email subscribers instead through a more relevant CTA such as an enticing email list sign-up or through a downloadable guide.

You’ll want to change the tone of your CTA based on the blog content too. How someone feels while searching for a divorce lawyer is likely to be different to someone looking for conveyancing help.

Writing blogs for your law firm doesn’t need to be a chore. Learn how to make the most of your law firm’s blogs in our free guide.

146% increase in organic conversions for Patino Law Firm using CRO, SEO and content marketing

Let’s set the scene.

Just before Patino joined us their rankings had tanked.

They had a poor experience with another SEO agency and needed help getting back on their feet.

Our objectives were simple:

1. Recover from the ranking drops
2. Get the client found and contacted by more quality leads

So what did we do? We worked on improving their homepage using conversion rate optimisation, improved SEO across the site and helped them write lots of articles answering common questions their ideal clients had.

The results?

• 146% increase in organic conversions in 9 months
• 10 new position one rankings
• Global Search Awards 2022 winner (Best Local Campaign: SEO – Large)

Get the full story in our case study.

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Using PPC to Get More Leads for Your Law Firm

PPC, or pay-per-click advertising, is used to refer to any paid ads you see online. These could be on search engines, social media platforms or websites.

PPC is an important part of lead generation for lawyers, as it’s a way of connecting with potential clients in the places they already spend their time online, or when they’re searching for your services.

Search ads

Search ads are great for lead generation. People searching for legal services on search engines are already in the market for what you offer, they just need to find the right firm.

Using your SEO research, identify some search terms that often lead to quality leads converting.

Type these into your search engine (most likely Google or Bing) and take a look at the ads that appear. What are they offering? Which USPs do they include?

You will need to compete with these ads, so it’s important to understand what’s already out there.

Image Source

All the ads in the above image are relevant to the search for “will solicitor near me”; some even highlight a nearby location (in this case, Grantham). All of them include prices and special offers.

When creating a search ad, it’s essential to include the following:

• A strong headline that’s enticing and contains the keywords you are targeting. Think back to the titles of the blogs we discussed earlier.
• A compelling offering in the text. This should clarify your offering and why the viewer should choose you.
• Ad extensions, including other relevant pages on your site or a click-to-call button so viewers can get in touch right away.

Remarketing

It’s unlikely that someone looking for legal help will be scrolling social media in the hopes they see an ad for a law firm.

But, social media ads are still great for generating leads for your firm.

You just need to take the remarketing route.

Remarketing, also something called retargeting, is when you reconnect with a potential client who visited your site around the internet.
You can create ads to target people who visited certain pages on your law firm’s website, meaning they get a really personalised experience.

Image Source

The above ad from Slater and Gordon is great — it has eye-catching visuals that include a question — “injured on holiday?”. This is a great remarketing ad for anyone who visited pages on the Slater and Gordon website about accidents abroad.

The ad copy (the text above the ad) highlights that Slater and Gordon have legal experts who can offer specialist advice, making it clear what the ad is for.

A CTA under the ad reinforces the text in the image, asking again if the viewer has been injured on holiday, stating that they’re an award-winning law firm to build trust and credibility.

The ad above isn’t perfect — the Trustpilot reviews are tiny in the image, and the offering is vague. A viewer might be unsure whether they’ll need to pay to speak to a professional or if they will be taken to a call or an email form.

Law firm PPC best practices

To get more legal leads from your PPC ads you should follow these best practices.

• Use great visuals (in ads that use visuals)
• Include engaging copy that gives the viewer a reason to click
• Add an eye-catching headline
• Adapt your ads for different audiences and searches
• A/B test your ads to see what resonates with your audience
• Monitor analytics like click-through rate (CTR), conversion rate, engagement and return on ad spend (ROI)
• Make adjustments to ad creative (that’s your copy and visuals) if you see a performance dip.

Creating Legal Lead Magnets

A great way of generating leads for any law firm is through lead magnets.

These are downloadable guides or tools that you offer potential clients, often in exchange for their email addresses.

Popular lead magnets include:

• Checklists
• Calculators
• Downloadable guides
• Templates
• Spreadsheets.

Consider the ways you could add these lead magnets to your blogs. They should fit with the content, otherwise, the reader is likely to ignore them.

Offering free legal advice and consultations

Another great lead magnet for law firms is offering a free consultation or advice to potential clients.

Prospective clients are often unsure which legal services they need, or if you can even help them.

They might be wondering if they have a case or not, and they’ll be reluctant to pay for an hour of your law firm’s time if there’s the chance they won’t need your help.

You can take this perceived risk away by offering a free consultation or advice to potential clients.

It’s a great way to get more leads and will help build trust with potential clients.

If you’re worried that you’ll get lots of unqualified leads requesting consultations, then you can use a sign-up form to help disqualify people who aren’t quite right for your law firm.

Want more lead generation ideas?

Check out our lead generation video playlist on YouTube

How Working with a Marketing Agency Can Get You More Leads

Did you know that 83% of law firms outsource their marketing work?

And yes, okay, we’re slightly biased because we’re a marketing agency delivering legal marketing, but there are some real benefits to working with a digital marketing agency like Thinkplus.

Experience and knowledge

The best digital marketing agencies will have a wide range of experience in different industries and a team of trained specialists. Each specialist will have an in-depth understanding of their area of expertise.

A single in-house marketer or a small team could not possibly do the role of 9-10 specialists from a digital marketing agency.

The rapid pace of change in each marketing channel makes it impossible for any one person to keep their knowledge truly up-to-date across these two areas, let alone the 10-plus areas of marketing that businesses need to be up to speed on. Here at Thinkplus, our specialist Ninjas have 15% training time each month to keep their knowledge fresh and ensure their focus is on delivering the best ROI for a channel.

Cost

Hiring a marketing agency can feel very expensive to begin with. But that’s before you take into consideration the following things.

Pensions, salaries and benefits are expensive for new hires and certainly more costly than hiring an agency.

Recruitment costs (if your manager wants to use a recruitment agency) are expensive, and the hiring process itself can be long and complicated.

Training costs can be high depending on the new hire’s experience

If your law firm’s lead generation strategy is feeling a bit stuck, it might be time to speak to an agency about what you can do to improve it.

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Lead Generation for Lawyers

Increasing your number of leads and clients is important to every law firm, but it doesn’t need to be complicated.

It just takes a bit of strategic marketing and patience. But the results will be well worth it.

If you spend the time to:

• Improve the conversion rate optimisation of your website
• Target your SEO towards leads
• Create content that connects with your ideal clients
• Use PPC to reconnect with potential leads
• Create strong lead magnets

Then you’ll be well on your way to getting more qualified legal leads.

What to read next

• Explore more ways you can market a service-based business
• Get to grips with AI marketing and learn how it will impact your law firm
• Thinking working with a digital marketing agency will help grow your law firm? Check out our guide on how to pitch a digital marketing agency to your boss.

The post How To Earn More Legal Leads appeared first on Thinkplus.

Most law firms do a bit of digital marketing. They have a website, and they post on social media occasionally. But they don’t take it much further than that.

This guide is exactly how you can take it further.

Ready to earn more legal leads? Then let’s go.

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Research

You wouldn’t start on a case without research, and your marketing is no different.

It doesn’t matter if you’re a well-established firm or a new one — research is key to running a winning marketing campaign.

So, where do you start?

With your clients.

Client Research

Getting inside the heads of your ideal clients will help you tailor your marketing strategy.

Why? Well, let’s say a potential client is searching for personal injury law. The way they find you will be different than if they’re looking for someone to help with corporate transactional work.

Getting to Know Your Ideal Client

These questions, worries and goals will help you understand why clients seek you out so you can do the best marketing.

Why do they need your expertise and services? What’s keeping them up at night?

Knowing these things will help you reach and connect with them.

One great way to do this is simply by speaking to your existing clients or reflecting on past talks with them.

How did they find your law firm?
What questions did they have?
What did they find easy to understand, and what was harder?

All these questions will help you pin down who your target client is.

Then, you can create client personas.

How to Create Client Personas

Client personas are fictional “characters” based on your ideal client. The purpose of these personas is to guide all your marketing. If you write a blog, you should be writing it with your persona in mind.

Your client persona will help you narrow down your marketing channels (blog, social media platforms, email and more) so that you’re reaching this ideal client.

Your client persona can be based on a current client or be completely made from scratch.

You could include:

• Their age
• Their name
• Their job role*
• Their family situation*
• Their pain points
• Their goals and motivations

*These will be more or less relevant depending on the type of law you practise.

Here are some ways to find the information you need to build a client persona.

• Speak to existing clients
• Speak to team members from your different departments
• Conduct keyword and competitor research (which we’ll cover later in this guide)
• Visit forums like Reddit or Quora to find questions and pain points.

Add these details to a document with a photo of your ideal client. You can grab a free stock photo from a website like Pexels.

Here’s an example of how your client persona could look.

Not sure where to start? Download our ebook on How To Earn 10x More Legal Clients for a free client persona template.

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Competitor Research

Competitor research helps you see what’s working for other law firms and what you want to avoid. It will help with your positioning, too.

We’ll be focusing on your digital competitors here. These are the websites and ads that appear in search engines when people are searching for your services.

You want to take a look at their:

• Positioning
• SEO
• Content
• PPC
• Social Media.

To find your digital competitors, pop your main keyword into Google and see who appears in the results. This keyword could be something like “Property law Chicago.”

Pay attention to the ads, the top results and the businesses that appear in the map pack.

Once you’ve found your competitors, visit their websites and look at what they’re saying on their homepage.

This is something the team at Thinkplus does at the start of every campaign to ensure we fully understand what our client is up against.

You should also input their URL into a tool like Semrush* to see which of their pages are likely to be getting the most traffic. You can analyse their PPC ads using Meta Ad Library to see their social media ads or Semrush’s AdClarity to learn how all their ads are performing.

Finally, look at their social media, both the platforms they post on and the type of posts that do well. It’s important you also look at the profiles of their individual lawyers. This will help you see if they are using personal branding to help bring clients to their firm.

There’s more information on how to do research for your law firm’s marketing strategy in our downloadable guide.

Law Firm Positioning

You’ve done your research and found lots of information about your target clients.

But you’re struggling to stand out from the other law firms in your area.

This is where positioning comes in. Positioning is what will help you stand out from the crowd.

It’ll be a boost to the amazing marketing strategy you will have put in place by the end of this playbook.

How to Find Your Law Firm’s Positioning

Start by looking inward. Are there any causes your law firm supports, or is there anything unique about your staff?

It could be that you get back to potential clients very quickly, or you have a high win rate compared to other firms.

You should also look at your client research and personas. What is important to them?

Here’s an example. Patino Law Firm is veteran-owned and offers a no-win-no-fee deal. Their staff speak Spanish and English, and they have lots of 5-star Google reviews.

They know these things are important to their target clients, so they highlight them in a benefits bar at the top of their website.

According to a study by CallRail, law firms lose 46 clients to slow response times every year.

So, you could position your firm as being the fastest to respond to clients. But you need to actually do this — you can’t claim to have speedy response times and then leave people waiting days to hear from your firm.

Another way to find clients’ issues is through Google’s search autofill. By searching “why do solicitors” and letting Google fill in the rest of the response, you can get an insight into what people are searching for.

We can see that people wonder why solicitors “take so long”, “charge so much” and “never reply”. You could put these concerns at ease with your positioning by being more honest than competitors and including your response times and rates.

Your positioning should be reflected in everything you do. If you pride yourselves on only speaking to your clients in layman’s terms — no legal jargon — then this should be reflected in your blogs, social media, emails…everywhere!

One of the most important places for your positioning to stand out is on your website, which we’ll cover in the next section.

Website

In just a few seconds, your website needs to make it clear:

• What you’re offering
• Why someone should pay you for that offering
• And how they can become a client.

Not only that, your offering needs to be enticing enough that the visitor becomes a client rather than heading back to search.

So, how can you do this?

Let’s explore some good law firm websites and point out some common mistakes we see law firms make.

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Design & Conversion Rate Optimisation

When you think of a great website, the first thing you think of is design. But, too many firms fall into the trap of going for great design but no usability.

You can absolutely have a website that looks amazing but also helps visitors get the information they need.

Here’s a website from Grette. The design is stunning — it’s professional and sleek but uses slightly warmer tones to give friendly vibes.

Image Source

The staff photos are super high quality, and there’s not a stock photo in sight.

It’s also clear from the headline that this is related to law.

But…here’s where things start to fall apart a bit.

There’s no clear next step. If you’re hiring a legal professional for the first time, you won’t know what to put in that search bar. You won’t know if this firm will be able to handle your issue. You just know they offer lawyers and expertise. That’s it.

So you leave, potentially missing out on hiring some amazing lawyers.

Here’s another website.

Image source

It’s not as sleek as the first — the design is okay, but that photo in the background makes things feel a bit cluttered.

But, this website is likely to get more clients than the first one.

It’s clear right away the type of law this firm offers — personal injury, criminal defence, bankruptcy and social security disability.

They show they’re trustworthy by including that they have a lot of high-rated Google Reviews.

Then, they make it easy for the visitor to take the next step by offering a free consultation or the option to call the firm.

The Hoglund Law site isn’t perfect by any means — they could tidy up the design and offer an alternative to getting a free consultation, such as learning more about the legal process.

For the most part, though, this website ticks many good boxes.

You need to find a middle ground between these two websites. Something that looks nice but makes it easy for visitors to become clients.

Our Conversion Rate Optimisation team has a near-endless list of ways to increase landing page conversion rates, including several you can learn from our conversion rate explainer videos on YouTube.

Not sure how your website stacks up? Our downloadable guide includes a handy checklist so you can see where your website could be doing better.

SEO

Search engine optimisation. One of the most powerful tools in your digital marketing kit.

It’s crucial. It takes time and dedication. But it’s so worth it.

SEO is one way we helped our client, Patino Law Firm, more than double the organic traffic (no ads here!) they get from Google. We achieved this in less than a year.

And you can achieve it, too.

Starting with keyword research.

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Keyword Research

In digital marketing, keywords are everything.

They influence all the pages and content on your website and help you show up in search results.

To be clear, by “keyword” we don’t just mean individual words. We mean keyphrases, too, which could be a few words or longer sentences. For the sake of simplicity, we’ll just call them all keywords.

Start by listing topics and words related to your law firm. Do this even if you already have a keyword list. It’s good to look at things with fresh eyes.

These will be things like your location and specialities, for example:

• Law firm Atlanta
• Divorce solicitor London
• Family law Utah.

It’s very hard (more likely impossible) to rank for things like “law”, “law firm” or “lawyer”. It’s also fairly pointless if you want to get more clients.

They’re too generic and need qualifying words attached, like in the examples above.

People searching for these terms are likely to be looking up how to become a lawyer or simply what these words mean rather than looking to hire a lawyer.

Next, find the keywords your site is already ranking for using a tool like Semrush (which you can try for free for 14 days with our link). Add any keywords you want to continue ranking for to your list.

Take note of which pages are ranking for each keyword. You might want pages to keep ranking for the same keyword, or you may want them to rank for something different. The opposite is true as well. Some pages might be ranking for the wrong keywords.

Then, look for questions your potential clients are asking. You might have some already from your client persona research, but you can use tools like AlsoAsked or Answer the Public to find more questions.

By typing “personal injury law” into AlsoAsked, we got some great key questions that could be targeted by blog posts on your website, including,

• Should I use a solicitor for a personal injury claim?
• How long does a personal injury claim take to settle?
• What is the average payout for personal injury claims?

Since most law firms are local or focus on one or two areas, you’ll also want to research local keywords.

People will search for terms like “lawyer near me”, “solicitor Nottingham”, or “What is the average payout for personal injury claims in the UK?”

You’ll need these keywords to optimise your website for SEO, which we cover in our downloadable guide, “Earn 10x More Legal Clients”.

Once you have your list of keywords (between 25 and 50), use a tool like Semrush* to analyse them. You want keywords with a decent search volume that aren’t too competitive.

That said if your keyword tool is showing that a search is getting 0 traffic, but you know your clients are searching for it, then you can still target it. Keyword tools aren’t always accurate when it comes to lower numbers.

That’s why at Thinkplus, we’ve developed a specialist method for identifying the best keywords and not just following exactly what the tools suggest.

Local SEO

Local SEO helps search engines understand where this law firm is and show it to relevant people.

If Google shows a law firm based in London to someone in Australia, the user won’t have a good experience. They might decide not to use Google again. And Google doesn’t want that.

So they want to show local results to their users. And they need your help to do it.

There are a couple of ways you can do this. The first is what we’ve already discussed — including the places you offer your services naturally on your pages.

But don’t write the locations in big, bold letters a bunch of times in your text to get Google’s attention. They don’t like that.

Another way to improve your local SEO is through your Google Business Profile.

Google Business for Local SEO

A Google Business Profile is an account set up by you where you can add information about your law firm, such as location, opening times, reviews and more.

Having a well-built Google Business profile helps you appear in the map pack on Google (that map with the red dots that appear sometimes when you search).

We helped our client Lockings Solicitors reach the top of the map pack. The results? Website clicks doubled, in part thanks to the map pack pictured below.

If you want some help getting started with local SEO or want to ensure you haven’t missed anything, download our guide, which includes a snazzy local SEO checklist.

Content Marketing

People looking for legal advice are going to have a lot of questions. They’re likely going to be feeling scared, both about their upcoming legal battle and hiring the right attorney and asking Google for help.

That’s where content marketing comes in.

Content marketing is used to describe a few different types of marketing. In this section, we’ll look at blogging and digital PR.

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Blogging

Blogging is a fantastic marketing asset, but it’s often used poorly by law firms.

Instead of sharing great insights and answering questions their target audience wants answers to, they share news about their firm and jargon-filled updates about the legal industry.

We want to change that!

How to structure your blogs

If you’re new to blog writing, it can feel a bit daunting.

Here are a few tips for writing great blogs.

1. Start with a strong title/heading that includes your keywords, but don’t sacrifice an easy-to-read title just to shove your keywords in there. This title should use an H1 heading.
2. Next up is your introduction. We’d suggest writing this last, as it should be a summary of what you’re going to talk about in the guide. If you’re covering pain points you should also paint an image for your reader — highlight their pain and show them you understand how they’re feeling.
3. After the introduction is the main bulk of your blog. This should be split up into sections, using H2 headings at the start of a new section and H3 headings to break up those sections.
4. Use images and videos throughout. If possible, make your own graphics using a platform like Canva. These graphics should all be consistent and have a similar style.
5. Where possible, use examples of how you helped a client solve the problem you’re describing in the blog. This shows you have the experience to answer their questions and potentially help them with their legal case.
6. Include calls to action throughout your guide. It’s important that these CTAs are relevant to the content you’re writing.

Remember, the overall goal is to create a blog post that is easy to read, informative, and engaging.

Keep paragraphs concise, use a mix of text and visuals, and consider your target audience’s preferences and needs.

These preferences and needs will influence the Calls To Action (CTAs) you use in your blog.

Finally, be careful of the language you use. Your audience probably won’t know legal jargon or the specific ways you refer to different types of law.

You can learn more about how to connect with your audience in our downloadable guide.

Backlinking, Digital PR and Journalist Requests

Once you’ve got blogs out there, you need to get eyes on them.

One important way that Google decides which pages should appear at the top of the search results page is the amount of backlinks to your site as a whole and to that particular page.

You can get backlinks by publishing great content and leading writers from publications to link back to your fantastic insights.

You don’t just want backlinks for the sake of links. You also want to try and get some referral traffic from those websites.

Getting publications to link back to your blogs is one way to get backlinks. You can also reach out to publications who already mention you and ask them for a link if they didn’t include one.

They already like you enough to mention you, so the hard part is done!

To learn more about how to get backlinks, download our guide.

Digital PR for lawyers

Digital PR, or digital public relations, is the strategic use of online platforms and communication channels to manage a brand’s reputation, build relationships with online audiences, and generate positive visibility.

It involves activities such as online media outreach, influencer collaborations, content marketing, and social media engagement to establish and maintain a good online presence for your law firm.

One popular way to get featured is by sharing data in an interesting way. As a law firm, you’ll have plenty of insight into the most common crimes that are committed, the cases that have the highest win rate and more, and you can share this with the world in a way that grabs people’s attention.

This report by the FBI included useful infographics that publications can easily share in their stories about the report. It also helps publications understand what the data means, making it easier for them to report on it.

As a result, this report was linked back to over 6,000 times by 3,000 different websites. A great turnout.

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Journalist requests

Journalists are often looking for expert quotes for their news stories. This helps them add some authority and human element.

Since true crime is a popular topic online and high-profile celebrity court cases, lawyers have many opportunities to give their expert opinions on these topics.

There are a few ways you can find these journalist requests.

• Through HARO or Qwoted, who email you each day with requests that are likely relevant to you
• Through X (formerly known as Twitter), using the hashtag #journorequest or on journalist’s profiles
• Through LinkedIn, using the hashtag #journorequest.

We’ve helped clients get into huge publications like the Daily Mail, the BBC and The Guardian, meaning they have backlinks from well-established websites. Google will take this as a positive signal and boost them up in the search results.

If you’re staring at a blank email and struggling to get started with your outreach for backlinks, digital PR or journo requests, download our email outreach templates. They’ll make contacting publications a breeze.

With AI search becoming more popular, we expect digital PR will be more important than ever before. Check out this video to find out why.

Social Media

Social media is a great tool for legal professionals. In fact, a report by CallRail showed that law firms consider social media to be their most valuable channel.

It also found that it’s the #1 underperforming channel.

Let’s change that together.

Education and Personal Branding

People are unlikely to browse social media hoping the algorithm brings them an attorney because they have a legal issue.

They’re more likely to go to search for that.

They’re looking for entertainment. Maybe even some education. Edutainment, if you will.

This is one way you can connect with potential clients — especially those who don’t need your services right away.

LegalEagle is a great example.

This channel has nearly 3 million subscribers and gets over 1 million views per video.

They share videos about celebrity lawsuits and any high-profile cases.

In each video description, there’s a link to the LegalEagle law website, which invites visitors to find a lawyer. If you need legal help and you’ve watched some of LegalEagle’s videos, you’re more likely to visit their website first.

Download our playbook for a step-by-step guide on how to build your social media presence.

PPC

PPC, which stands for Pay-per-Click advertising but is used to describe all online ads, is an important marketing tool for any law firm.

It can help you get to the top of search engines when potential clients are searching for legal assistance, or it can help you reconnect with people who visited your website but didn’t convert immediately.

Search Ads

Here’s an example of the ads that appear for the search “will solicitor near me”.

All these ads are relevant to the search, and some even highlight a nearby location (in this case, Grantham).

Some include prices and special offers. You can also see that the keywords from the search are highlighted.

When creating a search ad, it’s important to include the following:

• A strong headline that’s enticing and includes the keywords you are targeting. Think back to the titles of the blogs we discussed earlier.
• A compelling offering in the text. This should make it clear what you’re offering and why the viewer should choose you.
• Ad extensions, including other relevant pages on your site or a click-to-call button so viewers can get in touch right away.
• Consider the intent of the search. Ads run on a search where users are not quite ready to convert will have different CTAs to those that are for people ready to get in touch with your law firm.

Take a look at the ads already running on the keywords you want to target to see what competitors are sharing. Then, make something better.

Social Media Ads

Social media ads can be useful for reaching visitors to your website who didn’t convert.

You can target visitors based on the pages they looked at on your site. This is called remarketing or retargeting.

For example, if someone visited a page about accidents abroad, you might retarget them with an ad about making a claim.

This ad from Slater and Gordon is great — it has eye-catching visuals that include a question — “injured on holiday?” You know that if they visited your accidents abroad page or a blog related to this, then they likely were injured on holiday.

The ad copy (the text above the ad) highlights that Slater and Gordon have legal experts who can offer specialist advice, making it clear what the ad is for.

There’s also a CTA under the ad reinforcing the text in the image, asking again if the viewer has been injured on holiday, and stating that they’re an award-winning law firm to build trust and credibility.

Read more about PPC best practices for law firms in our downloadable guide.

How to Measure Success

Ok, so you’re ready to implement the advice in this guide. You can see how you’re getting more clients, but how can you prove that your digital marketing efforts are the cause?

There are a few metrics that you should focus on:

• Return on Investment
• Conversion Rate
• Click Through Rate
• Qualified Leads
• New Clients
• Cost Per Lead.

Download our guide for more information about the metrics you should measure, how to measure them and what you can learn from the data.

How to Calculate Your Marketing Investment

If your law firm is new to digital marketing or has been investing in marketing here and there, then it’s time you put a budget together.

We put together a detailed guide on how to calculate your marketing budget, as well as a video. It’s based on over 10 years of experience helping businesses invest in their marketing, so we know our stuff.

What’s Next?

You should have plenty of ideas to take your law firm’s marketing to the next level.

It’s a lot to take in, so let’s recap everything we’ve discussed in this guide.

• Your marketing strategy needs to start with research. Clients, keywords and competitors. Without that, you won’t know what you’re up against or what type of digital marketing you should do to get the best clients.
• You can then use this research to determine your law firm’s positioning. What will make you stand out while appealing to your target clients?
• Your positioning will influence the information you include on your website. You need to make it clear what you’re offering (don’t assume every visitor knows you’re a law firm), accompanied by an enticing CTA.
• It’ll be hard for potential clients to find you online without some good SEO. Check which pages are ranking for which keywords on your site, and make adjustments if needed.
• Content is a huge part of SEO. This ranges from the content on your web pages to your blog and any digital PR you do.
• Social media is a type of content, too. Law firms can encourage their lawyers to build a presence on social media, connecting with potential clients in a fun but educational way.
• Another way to connect with target clients is through PPC ads. You can reconnect with people who already visited your site through remarketing.
• Once your digital marketing campaigns are running, you must ensure you’re measuring results. Without results, you won’t know what’s working and what needs adjusting.

And that’s everything you need to know to create a high-performance, high-ROI digital marketing campaign for your law firm.

Looking for help with your marketing? Request a free website and marketing review, and one of our marketing consultants will look at how your marketing could be improved.

Otherwise, we have many ways for you to keep learning, including all our videos, podcasts, and blogs.

Want to Learn More?

• Take a closer look at client personas and how to build them
• Find out more about how to do keyword research like a pro
• Get inside the minds of your ideal clients
• Explore the power of positioning and how it can help your law firm stand out
• Learn how to take your website to the next level and turn it into a conversion machine
• Take your content to the next level with this guide on how to create a ninja content strategy
• PPC trends are changing — learn all about what’s new with PPC.

*Some links within this guide are affiliate links, which Thinkplus receives a fee for promoting (these links are not sponsored). Thinkplus only promotes services we already use within our marketing stack.

The post How To Earn 10x More Legal Clients appeared first on Thinkplus.

• But how does law firm SEO differ from standard SEO?
• How can your law firm make the most of SEO and get to the top of Google?

By the end of this guide, you’ll know the answer to those two questions, and you’ll have plenty of actionable insights into how to improve your law firm’s SEO

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3 Free Ways to Get Your Law Firm More Visibility on Google

Here are three of the best ways to get your law firm’s website to the top of Google and in front of more potential clients.

These give you a basic overview of the strategy needed to improve your SEO in each area. You can learn more about each task later in this guide, where we’ll go into more detail.

Before we start, it’s important you realise that SEO takes time. If you create the best piece of content for a certain search term, you won’t rank in a few hours. Or a few days. It might take a few weeks or months.

But the wait is fully worth it.

According to Advanced Web Ranking, the page in position one on Google gets 33% of all the clicks made by searchers for the term it ranks top for. Position two only gets 16% of the traffic.

This is why we’re focusing on getting your law firm to the top of Google.

1. Organic search results

The organic search results are the blue links, featured snippets, maps, videos and other elements that appear for a search term. We’re not including ads here.

Here’s an example of the organic search results for the search “conveyancing solicitor near Nottingham”.

Most of the page is taken up by map results, which are powered by Google Business Profile. Later in this guide, we’ll explain how your Google Business Profile can help your law firm reach the top of search engine results pages.

As we said, 33% of the traffic to search engines click on the first organic link. So that’s the space you want to be in.

If you’re not on page one for the term you want to rank for, you’re getting 1% or less of this traffic.

So, you need to figure out which keywords you want to rank for and then work towards getting on page one for those keywords.

To do this, you’ll need to:

1. Conduct keyword research
2. Conduct competitor research
3. Create content
4. Get backlinks to your website and content.

If you’re on page two or lower down page one, this isn’t the time for complacency. You should still be aiming for that top spot.

What’s awesome about search engines is that they level the playing field — your law firm can compete no matter how much money you can invest in marketing.

You just need to create the best content for that search.

Keep reading to learn how to do high-quality law firm content marketing that will get you leads and traffic.

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2. Local Google search results

Since lawyers work in a local area, a crucial part of law firm SEO is having a great local search presence.

Examples of local searches include:

• Law firm Atlanta
• Divorce Solicitor London
• Family law Utah
• Conveyancing Solicitor Nottingham
• Lawyer New York.

You can rank for these terms by having dedicated pages on your website targeting these areas. You should also optimise your Google Business Profile. This will help you appear in the map pack, which is super useful for potential clients who want to see how close you are to them.

We helped our client Lockings Solicitors reach the top of the map pack. The results? Website clicks doubled, in part thanks to the map pack.

To improve your law firm’s SEO, you need to:

• Conduct local keyword research
• Conduct competitor research
• Optimise your Google Business Profile
• Create local-focused content
• Get featured by local publications.

Local SEO is one of the most important types of SEO for lawyers, so don’t ignore it. Keep reading to learn how to optimise your Google

Business Profile and dominate the local search results.

3. Website features

Appearing on other people’s websites is an important part of SEO. It shows Google that your website is credible.

Credible enough that other site owners want to link to you.

In the SEO world, this is called “backlinking” or “link building“.

Backlinks are the links on other people’s websites (that link back to you), and link building is the act of getting these links.

Here’s an example of a backlink in a relevant article we secured for a client.

The blue text links to our client’s website. Not only does it signal to Google that the website being linked to is credible, but it also gives Google information about what type of website it is.

If a website is being linked to by multiple articles that talk about law and legal services, it helps Google understand that it’s a law-related website.

Finally, backlinks help you get more traffic to your website through referrals. If someone reading this article clicks through to your website, this counts as referral traffic.

To get more backlinks, you need to:

• Compile a list of websites you’d like to be featured on
• Compile a list of websites competitors are featured on
• Produce a study, highlight something newsworthy about your law firm or create some great content that these publications will want to link back to
• Offer to write guest posts for these publications.

This can be a difficult process that takes a long time, but with patience and good content, you can get links from various websites.

Don’t take shortcuts — buying backlinks in bulk is never a good idea.

Quality over quantity.

Keep reading to learn more about link building for your law firm later in this guide.

How to Do Law Firm SEO

We’ve given you the quick and dirty version of law firm SEO, so now it’s time to dive deeper into the different tactics and strategies you can use to get your law firm to the top of Google.

First things first — any good SEO strategy starts with keyword research.

Keyword Research for Law Firms

To get your firm to the top of Google, you first need to know which searches you need to be at the top of. The words people use in their searches are known in the search engine optimisation world as keywords.

Terms like “law” and “lawyer” are a no-go. They’re too competitive, and people searching for terms this broad are probably just looking for information about law as a whole rather than looking to hire a lawyer.

Even terms like “lawyer near me” might be too broad, especially if you specialise in one type of law.

That’s why we take the time to research each of our client’s industries and niches to help us find the best keywords for them.

How to do keyword research

Start by listing topics and phrases related to your law firm. Do this even if you already have a keyword list – you might find something new.

These topics and phrases will be things like your location and specialities, for example:

• Law firm Ohio
• Divorce Solicitor Manchester
• Family law Michigan
• Conveyancing solicitor Cardiff
• Lawyer Houston
• Real estate attorney.

Even “Lawyer Houston”, for example, could be too broad. Especially if you only specialise in one type of law. You’ll get a lot of traffic from people who don’t need your services.

“Family Attorney Houston” could be a better fit. You might even want to focus on an even smaller part of a large city, targeting “Attorney South Central Houston”.

Once you’ve made a list of keywords, use a keyword tool like the one in Semrush (which you can try for free for 14 days with our link) to see how much search volume they get.

Generally, you want to target keywords with a higher search volume but not so high that it would be impossible for you to rank. But don’t ignore low-volume keywords either.

You can also use keyword tools to see which terms your site is already ranking for.

You may find that some pages are ranking on page three for a term you want to be top for, or they could be ranking for irrelevant terms that you don’t want to rank for at all.

Another type of keyword you need to add to your list is questions.

This could be questions leads and clients ask you quite often, or it could be questions you find using a tool like AlsoAsked or Answer the Public.

By typing “personal injury law” into AlsoAsked, we got some great questions that potential clients are searching including:

• Should I use a solicitor for a personal injury claim?
• How long does a personal injury claim take to settle?
• What is the average payout for personal injury claims?

Local SEO for Lawyers

Local SEO helps searchers, and Google, understand where your firm is located.

Google uses this information to show your law firm’s website to people who have their location enabled on the search engine or who include a location in their search. This helps the searcher find what they need fast.

If Google shows a law firm based in Australia to someone in New York, the user won’t have a good experience.

There are a couple of ways you can improve your local SEO.

The first is including the places that you offer your services on your website. Include them on your “About” page and create pages tailored to each area.

The second is fully filling out your Google Business Profile.

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Setting Up a Google Business Profile for Your Law Firm

A Google Business Profile is an account set up by you where you add information about your law firm, such as location, opening times, reviews and more.

You can also give searchers the option to book an appointment through this profile. It’s pretty handy.

Here’s how the Thinkplus profile looks.

Google uses this information to place your law firm in map packs. It also often appears when someone searches the name of your law firm directly so they can get some important information about your firm without having to leave Google.

This might seem like a negative (less traffic to your website), but it’s actually a positive. It means more of the traffic on your website will be qualified.

Searchers won’t be coming to your website to find out your location, opening times and the services you offer and then realising you’re not right for them and leaving. They’ll do that all in Google.

That’s why it’s crucial you fill out as much information in the Google Business Profile about your firm as possible.

No Google Business Profile? This guide from Google explains how to set yours up.

If you’ve been holding off creating one or fully filling it out because you’re worried your traffic will drop, then don’t be. We’ve seen website clicks double for law firms thanks to a great Google Business Profile.

Here’s a list of steps you can follow to improve your law firm’s local SEO.

• Optimise your Google My Business listing. Completely fill out your GMB profile with accurate info, good photos, service list and regular posts.
• Get more Google My Business reviews. Ask satisfied clients to leave detailed 5-star reviews to build credibility. Respond politely to any negative reviews.
• Ensure your name, address and phone number (NAP) are consistent. Use the same business name, address and phone number across directories, websites and profiles.
• Build local citations. Manually submit your NAP to 50+ directories like Yelp and YellowPages.
• Create location pages with unique content. Make location-specific pages with office details, attorney bios, FAQs and community involvement.
• Target local keywords. Research local terms like “personal injury attorney Los Angeles” and optimise for them.
• List your service areas. Include all areas, cities and counties you serve for discovery.
• Measure location insights. Check Google Analytics for geographic data on traffic sources, conversions and rankings.

How to Optimise Your Law Firm’s Website for SEO

You’ve done your keyword research and optimised for local SEO.

Now it’s time to optimise your website for these keywords.

Some keywords will need new pages created. These could be service pages or blogs, depending on the type of keyword. Others can be served by pages you already have on your website.

Shorter keywords are often best served by service pages, whereas longer keywords and questions are better served by blogs.

Let’s use the keyword “Employment law solicitors” as an example of a keyword that will be served well by a service page.

The page should have a strong H1 header. For a service page, it can be as simple as “Employment Law Solicitors”. You may want to include your location in this heading, too.

Next, you want to write a paragraph explaining exactly how you can help the reader. It should include your USPs, too.

For example: “Need legal help in the workplace? We can offer advice on grievances, discrimination, termination of employment, unfair dismissal and settlement agreements. Our family-owned law firm has over 30 years of experience in employment law, and we offer no win, no fee deals.”

This can then be followed by an H2 header for a new section which explains more about the services offered.

Remember to include a CTA too.

One of our legal clients, Patino Law Firm, includes a free consultation form on its service pages. This makes it clear to the visitor that this is the next step they should take.

Your CTA doesn’t have to be a form. In a blog, you might decide that the reader won’t be ready to become a client just yet, so your CTA might be to sign up for a mailing list, download a guide, watch a video or visit another page to learn more.

How to improve your service pages

1. Include service pages for all key practice areas. Make sure you have dedicated pages for your main services so they can rank well in search engines.
2. Craft compelling titles and meta descriptions which draw the reader in and make your page a must-click in search engines (without exaggerating)
3. Break up blocks of text with descriptive headings and bullet points to make it easy to skim.
4. Explain your expertise and experience. Provide details on your firm’s history, credentials, case results and clientele for each practice area.
5. Add attorney bios and headshots. Introduce the lawyers who work in each practice area with photos, backgrounds and credentials.
6. Include a call to action. Have a clear CTA like “Book your free consultation today” so visitors know what action to take next.
7. Update content frequently. Add new FAQs, success stories, trends and developments to give visitors fresh content.
8. Promote services content. Link to services pages from other site pages and mention in outreach to drive visits.
9. Analyse traffic and conversions. Track visits, time on page, and leads generated to see which service pages perform best. Use that data to improve your pages.

Following the above steps will help keep your service pages consistent, too.

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Content Marketing for Lawyers

Content is not only a big part of SEO, but it’s also a tool for educating your ideal clients.

There are two main knowledge camps your ideal clients will fall into.

The first is people who have a problem but don’t know that legal help is the solution.

The second is people who know they need legal help but are scared and don’t know how to get started.

It’s important that your law firm educates both these audiences through content marketing.

We’ve already discussed the type of content you need to include on your service pages, so in this section, we’ll focus on blogs, backlinking and digital PR.

Creating a quality blog for your law firm’s website

Your blog should be used for attracting and helping potential clients rather than for company news — unless that news is relevant to clients, of course.

You should have found some questions that potential clients ask during your keyword research. Blogs are perfect for answering these questions.

Here are our top tips for writing blogs:

1. Start with a strong title/heading that includes your keywords, but don’t sacrifice an easy-to-read title just to shove keywords in there. This title should use an H1 heading.
2. Next up is your introduction. We’d suggest writing this last, as it should summarise what you will discuss in the guide. If you cover pain points, you should also paint an image for your reader — highlight their pain and show them you understand their feelings.
3. After the introduction is the main bulk of your blog. It should be split into sections, using H2 headings at the start of a new section and H3 headings to break up those sections.
4. Use images and videos throughout. If possible, make graphics using a platform like Canva. These graphics should all be consistent and have a similar design style.
5. Where possible, use examples of how you helped a client solve the problem described in the blog. It shows you have the experience to answer their questions and potentially help them with their legal case.
6. Include calls to action (CTAs) throughout your guide. It’s important that these CTAs are relevant to the content you’re writing.

Remember, the overall goal is to create a blog post that is easy to read, informative and engaging.

Keep paragraphs concise, use a mix of text and visuals and consider your target audience’s preferences and needs. These preferences and needs will influence the CTAs you use in your blog.

Digital PR strategy for law firms

Digital PR, or digital public relations, is the strategic use of online platforms and communication channels to manage a brand’s reputation, build relationships with online audiences, and generate positive visibility.

You need a combination of online media outreach, influencer collaborations, content marketing and social media engagement to establish and maintain a good online presence for your law firm.

One popular way to get featured by publications is by sharing data in an interesting way. As a law firm, you’ll have plenty of insight into the most common crimes committed, the cases with the highest win rate and more, and you can share this with the world in a way that grabs people’s attention.

A report by the FBI included useful infographics that publications can easily share in their stories about the report. It also helps publications understand the data, making it easier for them to report on it.

As a result, this FBI report was linked back to over 6000 times by 3000 different websites — a fantastic turnout.

Here’s what you need to do to run a successful digital PR strategy for your law firm.

1. Identify your target audience and create client personas. Understand who you want to reach with your campaign, for example, existing clients, potential new clients or referral sources.
2. Set clear goals and KPIs. Examples could be increasing website traffic, generating more leads or improving brand awareness. Having specific metrics to track makes it easier to measure success.
3. Create a list of the publications you want to appear in. Consider their audiences and the content they already write. This will be important when you pitch them.
4. Promote expertise and thought leadership. Position attorneys as experts on industry topics and have them author bylined articles or offer expert comments to journalists.
5. Pitch to publications. Make it clear what the story is and why their audience will enjoy reading about it. Publications want to know what the benefit is to them and their audience.
6. Don’t be afraid to use paid opportunities. Many publications charge to feature you, but if the publication is a great fit, then this can help your digital PR campaign massively.

The more digital PR campaigns you run, the better you’ll get at it. Don’t be afraid to start small, either. Many local publications are on the smaller side but are likely a perfect fit for your law firm.

Law Firm SEO (Recap)

Getting your law firm to the top of Google isn’t easy, but it’s well worth the challenge.

To improve your SEO, you need to:

• Conduct keyword research
• Optimise for local SEO
• Improve your service pages for search
• Create a blog answering common questions in detail
• Run digital PR campaigns and get featured in publications.

If you do all these things, you’ll be making your way to the top of Google in no time.

What to Read Next

• Want to up your keyword game? Our guide to keyword research will turn you into a pro.
• Explore the benefits of digital PR in this guide.
• Watch this playlist to get more tips on how to rank at the top of Google.

What to Watch Next

• Lessons You Can Learn from Law Firm Marketing
• How to Create the Perfect Marketing Strategy
• How to Write Blogs That Rank Top of Google

What to Listen to Next

• STEAL this (Award-winning) LOCAL SEO Strategy
• How to Do B2C Marketing That CRUSHES
• The Best Lead Generation Strategies for 2024

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Now, there are loads. Maybe too many.

That said, two that always come up in conversations about eCommerce are Mailchimp and Klaviyo.

But which is the best for your eCommerce business? And is there even one right answer?

We’ve got seven different aspects to compare these two email giants on:

• At a Glance
• Ease of Use
• Automation
• Integrations
• Analytics
• Segmentation
• Other Features
• Pricing
• Which Email Marketing Platform Is Right for Your Business?

Mailchimp vs. Klaviyo: At a Glance

In a rush? Here’s how the two platforms measure up across the key areas.

Who Is It for?

Klaviyo is built with eCommerce businesses in mind, but Mailchimp caters to all business types.

Ease of Use

Both Mailchimp and Klaviyo are easy to use. It’s easy to navigate the interfaces and the email builders are straightforward on both platforms. They also offer lots of templates to make things even easier.

Automation

The eCommerce email automations in Klaviyo are better than the ones in Mailchimp, but Mailchimp has options for both eCommerce and non-eCommerce businesses, which could be useful.

Integrations

Mailchimp has more integrations overall, but Klaviyo has better, more in-depth eCommerce automations specifically.

Analytics

Klaviyo has very detailed but easy-to-navigate analytics. Mailchimp has more simple analytics, which may be okay for people who don’t like data as much.

Segmentation

Klaviyo’s segmentation is easy to use and offers more flexibility than Mailchimp. Mailchimp does offer segmentation, but it’s not as intuitive and doesn’t offer the same depth as Klaviyo.

Price

Both Klaviyo and Mailchimp are fairly priced. There’s not much of a difference between the two.

Want to know more about some or all of these areas? Keep on reading. We’ll be going into much more detail — starting with ease of use.

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Klaviyo vs. Mailchimp: Ease of Use

We want sending emails to be easy.

There’s nothing worse than having a piece of software you dread using because it’s too complicated.

Because then you won’t use it — and so you won’t get the maximum benefit out of it.

So, which of these two platforms is easiest to use?

Interface

Well, Mailchimp is known for its usability and simplicity, and it has a very straightforward interface.

It’s straightforward to find your way around Mailchimp, and all of the features are pretty logically arranged.

So, if simplicity is your thing, you’ll be fine in Mailchimp.

What about Klaviyo?

Klaviyo is also easy to navigate and looks similar to Mailchimp inside the dashboard.

Now, one thing you’ll notice about Klaviyo is because it’s designed specifically for eCommerce businesses, most of the functionality is very eCommerce heavy.

When you log into the main dashboard, for example, you’re getting eCommerce stats right in your face.

That makes it much easier for eCommerce businesses to see broadly how they’re performing.

Email Builder

Both Mailchimp and Klaviyo have incredibly easy-to-use email builders with plenty of templates you can just start plugging your content into.

Mailchimp has a broader range of templates for non-eCommerce businesses because it’s designed for non-eCommerce businesses as well.

Klaviyo’s templates are much more focused on selling and promoting products.

By default, Klaviyo’s templates probably look better, but both platforms will help you build good-looking emails, even if you’re not a coder.

So who wins?

Historically, Klaviyo was much more complex and difficult to use and Mailchimp was primarily designed for simplicity.

While Mailchimp has probably gotten a little bit more complex as it’s added more functionality, Klaviyo has gotten simpler, so they are fairly equal here.

Klaviyo vs. Mailchimp: Automation

Every good email marketing campaign uses automation, and most of the email marketing platforms out there today have automation features built in.

The danger with automation features, though, is if they’re too complex, people just don’t use them.

So, which of these platforms has better and more usable automation?

Well, Klaviyo has lots of built-in eCommerce automations, or “Flows”, as they’re called in Klaviyo. You can either build your own from scratch, or you can use one of their pre-built ones.

All of the main eCommerce automations you would expect to see are here — and even some you may not expect.

But you can also get much more granular.

For example, you might not want to offer international customers the same free shipping in an abandoned cart sequence that you offer domestic customers because the cost of fulfilling that shipping will be so much higher.

These are a really good start for an eCommerce business.

Mailchimp also has automations, which they call “Journeys”.

Just like Klaviyo, you can choose some pre-built journeys.

But because Mailchimp isn’t just eCommerce, there’s a much more diverse range of journeys you can choose from.

These don’t just have to relate to email signups; they can be all sorts of things, like integrating Instagram lead ads or promoting live events to people who’ve signed up through Eventbrite.

Now, we’re going to talk about some of the integration capabilities in just a minute. However, given that Klaviyo is designed for eCommerce businesses, the automations right out of the box are far superior.

Mailchimp — because it’s not just designed for eCommerce — has loads of other automation options that might be useful to non-eCommerce businesses.

Again, this feels like a tie. Klaviyo is much better for eCommerce, but Mailchimp is much better for everybody else.

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Klaviyo vs. Mailchimp: Integrations

Whatever email marketing platform you use, you want it to integrate with the tools and software you already use.

That’s going to save you a bunch of time not having to go between bits of software to update things.

Both of these tools have tons of integrations right out of the box.

You can pretty much integrate Mailchimp with any website platform that you’re using. We’re not going to try and list them all because there are so many.

For anything you can’t integrate natively, you can link to Zapier, which gives you integration with basically every other tool on the planet.

The same is true for Klaviyo, although, as we would expect, Klaviyo’s integrations are much more eCommerce-focused.

Because of that, some of Klaviyo’s integrations with eCommerce platforms, like Magento and Shopify, tend to be much deeper than you’ll get with Mailchimp.

One word of caution. If you’re an eCommerce business, is that some of Mailchimp’s journeys, by default, only work with certain eCommerce platforms.

So, if you use WooCommerce, BigCommerce, or Magento, for example, you won’t get access to some of the journeys designed to work only with Shopify.

Both of these platforms have a ton of integrations, and you can search on their websites to check the apps or software you’re using integrate with them.

On the whole, Mailchimp has more integrations, but Klaviyo has more and better eCommerce integrations.

So again, we’re going to call this a tie.

Klaviyo vs. Mailchimp: Analytics

Without analytics, you won’t know whether your emails are hot or not.

If you don’t know whether they’re hot or not, then they’re not.

So, whatever email marketing platform you’re choosing, it has to have great email analytics.

Klaviyo has nailed analytics.

You can start with some overview dashboards, but you can also create custom dashboards to drill into your performance in more detail.

These analytics can be configured to work with any conversion metric you choose. You can compare the relative performance of campaigns and flows, and you can see how much each campaign has contributed.

You can check out the performance of individual campaigns or emails, and Klaviyo will even judge your performance.

It’ll show you some of your top-performing as well as your worst-performing metrics, and it’ll give you a breakdown of email deliverability.

If you want to see pretty much anything else in your analytics, you can do that through a custom dashboard.

Mailchimp’s analytics are a little more simple.

We get some general performance data and a bit of information about how people are moving through our customer journey.

There’s also some audience data about how many subscribers you’ve got and how fast your subscriber growth is happening.

But, this is a clear win for Klaviyo.

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Klaviyo vs. Mailchimp: Segmentation

Unless you want to annoy and alienate your email subscribers, segmentation is key.

Come to think of it, if you did want to annoy and alienate your email subscribers, segmentation would still allow you to do that even more effectively.

First, a quick primer on what segmentation is for those who don’t know.

Email marketing is built of lists and segments.

A list is like a database of people who have subscribed to your emails.

A segment is a dynamic group of people within a list that meets certain criteria.

Let’s say, for example, you have a list of people who have bought products on your website. You might create a segment from this list and call it “VIP customers”.

These are people who have made five purchases from you in the last six months.

People will come in and out of that segment as they make or don’t make purchases.

You could then send targeted follow-ups to those VIP customers, offering them more incentives to continue purchasing.

That’s why segmentation is important. It allows you to tailor promotions to people based on their behaviours and where they are now.

Klaviyo is built for segmentation.

It allows you to create segments really easily. It’s simple to use and you’ve got loads of different criteria you can build your segments with.

For example, let’s say you wanted to create a segment with people who have opened an email from you at least once in the last seven days and live in the city of Bath.

You could create that segment and run a targeted campaign to them saying, “Hey, we’re doing a pop-up shop in Bath this weekend — come and visit us.”

Mailchimp also has segmentation capability, but it’s a little bit confusing and some of the wording and phrasing are unclear.

For example, I can create a segment of “all of my subscribers who have email engagement that is ‘Rarely’.”

“Rarely,” what?

It’s not clear right away what this means.

What it actually means is you can target all your email subscribers who rarely engage with emails. But that’s not obvious right away.

These issues are fairly consistent in the rest of the segmentation tool.

While there appears to be lots of flexibility in Mailchimp’s segmentation, we think it’s much more tricky to get what you want from this tool.

Both Mailchimp and Klaviyo have segmentation, but we’re gonna say Klaviyo is better here.

Klaviyo vs. Mailchimp: Other Features

Both of these platforms have a bunch of other features, which are worth mentioning but don’t get their own section.

• Both platforms allow A/B testing
• Both platforms have SMS in some of their plans, although Mailchimp only offers it in the US. Klaviyo, however, offers it in more locations and includes it in its flows.
• Mailchimp has built-in AI features. (But don’t get it for that; right now, they’re not that great.)
• Mailchimp has 24/7 customer service, depending on which price package you’re on. Klaviyo has 24/7 customer support by email and 24-hour support by live chat on weekdays.

Klaviyo vs. Mailchimp: Pricing

Now we’re on the literal money question. How much do these platforms cost?

If we compare costs at 10,000 email subscribers, we’ll see Klaviyo starts from $175 a month with email only or $190 with SMS as well.

Mailchimp is a little cheaper at only $100 a month for their Essentials plan, going up to $135 for Standard, which gets you a bit more stuff, and then their Premium plan at $350 a month.

The Mailchimp Essentials plan limits you to only four journey points, which most businesses (if you’ve got reasonably sophisticated automations) are going to exceed.

So, we’d suggest thinking about at least the Standard plan or above.

Pricing is pretty difficult to call a winner on.

Neither of these platforms wins necessarily because whoever’s the better value depends on how many subscribers you’ve got.

But to be totally honest, with the value email marketing can bring, particularly with automations, both of these platforms are a no-brainer for the cost.

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Which Email Marketing Platform Is Right for Your Business?

How do you decide which email platform is best for your business?

Really, the choice is yours.

But, if we have to call it, Klaviyo is a much better platform if you’re an eCommerce business.

It has everything tailored for eCommerce businesses. The functionality right out of the box is fantastic. With some optimisations and tweaks, this can be a really powerful part of your eCommerce stack.

Klaviyo’s amazing capabilities as an eCommerce automation platform are one of the reasons we are a Klaviyo partner.

But if you’re not an eCommerce business, then Klaviyo doesn’t make any sense whatsoever.

Mailchimp is a pretty good option and has loads of the automation stuff you would expect.

If you’re still not sure, both platforms offer free trials, so you can give them a go and see which works best for you.

What to Read Next

• Unlock the power of email automation with our detailed guide
• Build a content strategy that resonates with your ideal customers
• Create the best call to action for your email readers.

What to Watch Next

What to Listen to Next

• How to Increase Your Email Open Rate
• Mailchimp vs. Klaviyo — Which is Best For Your Business?
• What To Send Your Email Subscribers

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There’s a lot of news floating around about Google’s Gemini AI. We know it will impact marketers, but with the information out there at the moment, it’s difficult to understand how and why it will change the way we do marketing.

This guide explains what Google Gemini AI is and how it will affect marketing.

What Is Google Gemini?

Essentially, the task here is to explain the workings of a new type of brain that even the inventors (who happen to include some of the most intelligent humans alive) don’t truly understand.

But we’ve done a pretty darn good job of making information about Gemini accessible to marketers.
We’ve found some ways to explain it that make it slightly less confusing. There’s going to be a lot of jargon here, which we try to avoid, but some topics need it. There will be explanations for every acronym and jargon-y word.

If you’re new to AI, check out our guide, which includes a handy list of common AI terms.

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Google Gemini is a new collection of large language models (LLMs), which Google is building to power its AI tools, much like how ChatGPT is powered by the GPT3.4 and GPT-4 large language models (and extensions, like DALL-E).

If you’re new to large language models, essentially, they’re super-smart computer programs that are really good with words and know a lot of things.

When we say “large,” we mean that this program has learned from many books, websites and other things people have written.

The most popular AI tools right now are generative AI chatbots. You can ask them questions, and they will try to give you answers. They can also write stories, offer advice or chat with you about all sorts of topics. Because of this, tools that use LLMs are great assets for marketers.

The screenshot below shows Bard, Google’s generative AI chatbot.

So what makes Google Gemini different from the existing LLMs that power tools like ChatGPT, Bard and BingChat?

Starting with Bard. It won’t replace Bard, as it’s not a competitor. It’ll be one of the things that powers Bard, meaning Bard will be able to give better answers to users. The same goes for Google’s Search Generative Experience (SGE).

Gemini is sort of like the fuel for Bard and SGE.

It stands out from GPT-4, which is the LLM that ChatGPT and Bing Chat work off (are you keeping up with all these names?) because of the huge amount of things it can do.

According to Google, Gemini is still in training, but the aim is for it to be “multimodal, highly efficient at tool and API integrations and built to enable future innovations, like memory and planning”.

It does this by processing data taken across services, including Google Search, YouTube, Google Books, and Google Scholar.

“That’s great”, we hear you say. “But what does that actually mean? What can it do? Will it impact SEO? And how will it impact marketers?”

What Can Google Gemini Do?

There’s a lot that Google Gemini can do to help marketers by improving Google’s AI tools and search.

But the way Google has explained this isn’t ideal.

Using words like “multimodal” isn’t super accessible to most marketers, so let’s break this down for you.

Multimodal

Multimodal, in very simple terms, means that Gemini can “see” a bunch of different stuff.

If you show it text, it can understand it. If you show it an image, it can understand it. If you show it a video, it can understand that, too.

Thanks to Google images and YouTube (also owned by Google), the tech giant has a huge pool of data to use to train Gemini.

This is what makes it multimodal. If Gemini could only process text, then it wouldn’t be multimodal.

Not only can it understand text, images, and videos; when a multimodal is generative, it can create images, text, (and gradually, as the technology improves) video too.

There are two distinct ways that this can help marketers.

The first is helping with content generation.

According to Google, this will allow for more natural conversations with Bard or other Google AI chatbots.

In the future, it’s expected to be able to use memory to advise you (current chatbots are quite limited in their memory), and it should be able to help you with planning too.

But we decided to think about things on an even bigger scale.

Lots of existing AI tools can help you generate text, images, or video, but it’s not often that one AI tool will do all of these. Then you have issues with the quality.

So, instead of getting the AI to create the work for you, you could work collaboratively with them, using them as an assistant. (which is how you should be using AI tools now, rather than just taking what they say word for word).

With Gemini, it’s likely you’ll be able to create a design for a landing page, for example, and show it to Google Bard and get feedback from the AI on how well-optimised it is for conversions.

• It might suggest that you adjust the padding on the page or move the CTA to a more optimal position based on its research of other landing pages.
• You could even ask it to watch a promotional video you’ve created and get feedback on how strong your hook, pacing and graphics are.

ChatGPT has begun offering something similar.

The downside of this is that now it will be easier than ever for your competitors to produce higher-quality marketing. Perhaps right now, you have the competitive edge because you have the most user-friendly design, but in the future, it will be more difficult to stand out.

We’re potentially still a bit far off from when these tools will be available to everyone and work to their full potential, but these are just some of the ways we see the multimodal side of Gemini impacting marketers.

The other area it will impact is SEO.

Since it will power Google’s Search Generative Experience, it’s likely it will use its ability to “look” at images and videos to influence the generated response it gives to searchers.

It may be able to find the perfect image someone is searching for or find a video about the weird thing they’re describing.

If we want to think about this on a whole other level, it’s possible that Gemini will be able to “look” at websites in order to determine their quality and their position in the Google Search results. Now, wouldn’t that be something?

It won’t just power SGE, but it will also impact it.

The AI-generated result that appears at the top of the search in SGE will become more accurate and helpful to the user.

This means that the number of website visits in a user’s journey will decrease even more. We predict it will go from around eight website visits to potentially as low as three, depending on the type of search.

You might be thinking that this means creating informational content for your website will be pointless, but we disagree.

Gemini will need to get the information that appears in SGE from somewhere. If it’s taking that information from your website, it’s more likely to credit you as a source.

But the decrease in traffic still means that you’ll want to use other content sources to boost your traffic.

This includes running digital PR campaigns and improving your social media presence.

Social media doesn’t just mean the likes of Instagram and Twitter — it also includes places like YouTube or industry-focused forums.

PPC will be another way you can boost your traffic when SGE gets fully rolled out. Google has been testing different ways we’ll see paid results in this new Google experience.

Thinkplus’s AI-forward founder, Tim Cameron-Kitchen, shares his thoughts on how Google Gemini will change SEO in this guide.

What Else Can Google Gemini Do?

The other features of Gemini that Google shared are in very early stages, so there’s less to say about them than the multimodal stuff.

Gemini will be able to integrate with tools and use APIs, which will mean integrating it into more of Google’s existing tools and platforms (Workspace, YouTube, Maps).

The LLM will also come in a number of different models or sizes, which means it will have more flexible uses.

If you only have a model that’s virtually the size of an elephant, but your project is the size of a thimble, you’ll have trouble fitting the elephant-sized LLM into it.

That’s a pretty chaotic metaphor, but it just means that projects that don’t need to use the biggest version of Gemini won’t be weighed down by it. They can use “lighter” models that do what they need.

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How to Access Google Gemini

Google Gemini doesn’t have an official “release” date or way you can access it. Instead, we can expect it to be added gradually to Google’s existing AI tools, like Bard and Search Generative Experience (SGE).

Right now, you can test out SGE if you sign up for the waiting list. Keep in mind that this is still an early work in progress, so it won’t always give perfect answers. Google expects to roll out Search Generative Experience to more users in early 2024.

Will Google Gemini Be Free to Use?

Most marketers won’t have to worry about paying for the use of Gemini. It will be used to power lots of Google’s free tools that use AI. The only people who may need to pay to use Gemini are developers using it in AI projects.

Is Google Gemini Better than ChatGPT?

The question on everyone’s lips (or at least, in their search bars, according to Also Asked) is this — is Google Gemini better than ChatGPT?

This is sort of a trick question, as Gemini and ChatGPT aren’t the same thing.

The real question is this: is Gemini better than OpenAI’s GPT-4?

The answer is a difficult one (sorry), but only because we haven’t been able to get a real, hands-on look at what Gemini can do.

But, from what the developers at Google are saying, it will be better than GPT-4 and, therefore, will make Bard better than ChatGPT.

No disrespect to OpenAI, though. They’ve really paved the way for the future of AI (generative AI specifically) and have pushed companies like Google to speed up the development of their own AI products.

Competition is healthy, and it will be interesting to see what OpenAI will do next with ChatGPT.

Google Gemini for Marketers

Google Gemini AI is a complicated topic. But it’s important that you understand what it is, at least a little bit, so that you can prepare for how it will impact your marketing.

• It’s likely Gemini will improve Google’s SGE, meaning more people will stay in the search results rather than visiting websites. This sounds bad — most websites will get less traffic — but the traffic you do get is likely to be more qualified.
• Gemini will improve Google Bard, which can be a handy brainstorming tool for marketers.
• In the future, it’s possible that AI tools using Gemini will be able to offer feedback on design and video work.
• There’s no sure release date for Google Gemini, but we can expect it to start being used for SGE and Bard in early 2024.

What to Read Next

• Learn more about the impact Gemini will have on marketers
• Get up to speed on the future of AI marketing.

What to Watch Next

• AI Tools Most Marketing and Sales Teams (Probably) Aren’t Using Yet
• 2023 Marketing Changes RANKED
• SGE: The Future of Google Search (How it Works and SEO Impact).

What to Listen to Next

• Google Gemini – The Biggest SEO Disruption in 25 Years
• Google’s AI Search FINALLY Has Links (Maybe?)
• Google’s SECRET SEO Guide (and How to Use It).

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