SEO On-Air: Strategizing SEO for Different Stages of the Marketing Funnel

In this episode, we cover:

Today, we speak to Garrett Mehrguth, the CEO of Directive- a next-gen performance marketing agency for software companies.

As a thought leader, Garrett speaks at Digital Summit (13 events in 2019 and 20 events set for 2020), MarketingProfs B2B Forum, Search Marketing Summit, UnGagged NYC, SMX West, State of Search, General Assembly, MozCon, etc. Garrett has also been featured by Salesforce, SEMrush, Marketing Land, Moz, Marketo, Search Engine Land, Ahrefs, Convince & Convert, Search Engine Journal, and more.

In this episode, he will tell us how to strategize SEO for different marketing funnel stages.

Stay tuned for the next podcast episode, where our guest, Shounak Gupte, tells us ways SEO agencies can delight clients during crises.

Show Notes Explanation

Hey guys, welcome to another episode of SEO On-Air. There are lots of debates surrounding marketing funnel, regarding who owns it, whether it is the marketing team or sales team, or whether it is still relevant in the consumer-buying process today.

What if we tell you that an effective SEO strategy can play a bigger role in the entire marketing funnel stage? To speak more about it, we have Garrett Mehrguth, the CEO of Directive- a next-gen performance marketing agency for software companies.

Welcome to our show, Garrett. Our topic for today is “Strategizing SEO for Different Stages of the Marketing Funnel.”

Time Stamp: 01:19-02:07

Q. How important is the user intent of a keyword in different stages of the marketing funnel?

• The intent is really important. The problem is that we try to understand keyword intent using SEO tools instead of SERP.
• As you become more aligned with your customers, the biggest mistake you can make is to analyze your customer intent using tools.
• You actually have to spend more time on the search engine to understand the intent of a given keyword.

Time Stamp: 02:38-08:27

Q. When it comes to SEO, what is the best way to achieve synergy in the stages of the marketing funnel?

• I don’t like the middle funnel because I’ve not come across anyone who could give me a proper explanation of the middle funnel, so there are only the top and bottom of the funnel for me.
• If you want to start with the top of the funnel, you have to start with your reality to execute your strategy. The early “what is,” “how-to,” and “why” stage of your product cycle lies on the top of the funnel. This content we can scale with a glossary.
• The glossary at the top of the funnel is a resource of definition-based and research-based content.
• You don’t need a particular word-count to overcome your competitors but write something better than them in terms of quality.

Time Stamp: 08:45-16:48

Q. What is the next step after creating the glossary content?

• I start with the business, so I want to understand where I’ll be allocating my time and money to get the highest returns in the shortest amount of time.
• Next, I’m going to create clusters around cornerstone pieces of content such as guides and ebooks.
• However, that’s doesn’t work for e-commerce or SaaS products. For them, we need to create clusters around profitable products.
• Most businesses do keyword research from what they can rank for categorically and not product-wise. They don’t back into their keyword research. They start with interest instead of money.
• As an e-commerce shop, your advantage lies in what you can do that no one else can. You can compete at the product level if not at the category level.

Time Stamp: 19:33-21:30

Q. When an SEO agency signs up an e-commerce client, the objective will be looking at the revenue growth, but in reality, they talk about keyword growth. Only the paid marketing team talks about the ROAS. In this approach, we can actually tie-up SEO with the sales because the whole concept is related to the products.

• Correct. We need to normalize SEO. The only way I can charge for SEO is by normalizing SEO with PPC.
• I need to empower CMOs and decision-makers with the capital allocation model that allows them to see SEOs as an investment in a driver of value, not cost.

Time Stamp: 21:23-23:08

Q. Can you share more about the course you are offering?

• It’s called “The Institute.” The course is only $99 a month and you get over 40 hours of videos, spreadsheets, and tools.
• We give you everything we do here. It includes how we do content briefs, how we do financial modeling, how we do conversion rate optimization, and much more.
• Many agencies use it for their training program and can get fully certified with the course.
• It’s probably the only online course that talks about SEO and PPC, CRO and Analytics only for $99. It’s genuinely very good.

Time Stamp: 23:15 -26:14

Q. We’d definitely like to check out your course and add the link to the course in the footnotes as well.

• We focus so much on things that impress each other instead of learning how to drive value for our clients truly.
• If you want to charge $50,000 for SEO and want people to pay for that, you should be able to communicate how your actions affect their budgets, development efforts, etc.
• If you want to make 6 figures as a consultant, you need to learn the game, you don’t need to learn SEO.