Declining Sales? Is it your Marketing or Sales Dept?

It is so common that I consult with a business that has a significant decline in sales and they immediately assume their sales department / reps are the ones not doing their job.

I look at where their leads are coming from, are they creating leads themselves, are they knocking on doors, cold calling, soliciting businesses?  If this has not been successful then obviously the leads are poor in quality and these leads, lead your sales reps into a negative rut that can lead to poor performance, poor sales, terminations, and even company bankruptcy as a worst case scenario.

Quality Leads-
How do you get quality leads?  You get your sales dept / reps quality leads by putting the INTERESTED prospects in front of the sales dept / rep for them.  That sounds simple, and it is that simple.  SEO / SEM / PPC / Social Media are how this becomes a reality.  You need to be seen in order for your phone to ring with interested buyers.  As previously discussed, we all know the market has moved away from traditional marketing methods (phone books, newspapers, television, etc) onto Google, Yahoo, Bing, and social platforms like Facebook, Twitter, etc.

Getting quality leads starts with understanding what your market is wanting, then optimizing your marketing content / material to suit these wants / demands.  Whether its PPC (Pay Per Click) campaigns or SEO, the concept remains the same; build for your demand. 

One simple task can make or break for a quality or poor lead.
Example: If your site is promoting a local diagnostic laboratory with a PPC campaign (bidding $5.50 per click for keyword, laboratory) then you wouldn't want to pay when someone was searching for dental laboratory, so dental would be a negative keyword in your Adwords account; thus preventing it from gaining unnecessary clicks / expenses for people searching for "dental laboratories" when you operate a diagnostics lab.

If your company is seen when someone enters the keywords that represent your company's products service and / or geographic location, then your sales dept / reps will have interested buyers from the day they initiate contact.  This all starts and is maintained with quality SEO- Get a quality online footprint and watch your sales dept soar.

Google, Bing, and Yahoo Rule Biotechnology / Pharmaceutical Company’s

What do you do when you need to research, locate a service, or inquire about a product?  You break

out your smartphone and begin to conduct your research; well your customer does the same thing.

>>>SEO is the backbone of marketing strategy<<<

With the 8 years of SEO (Search Engine Optimization) experience I have, I’ve witnessed horrific scenarios amongst various industries when it comes to adapting to where the market is, the internet.  If you are a growing organization, then more than likely you’re holding a new niche, have an up to date online marketing platform, or both.  Failing / sinking organizations are still running off momentum (customer base) from 10+ years ago or have a golden physical location which holds value in their niche; such as laboratories.  Laboratories physical locations hold value as this plays a significant role in, “turnaround time” for sample processing.  However, with proper marketing and a responsive courier services under an LIS (Laboratory Information System), many labs can reach out and grab many new physicians / clients.  The physician isn’t paying for anything, the reimbursing insurance company is (98% of the time), and so convenience is everything to that physician signing the lab contract.  I won’t get started on the importance of an LIS as this touches a different topic, but with great online marketing you can be sure that your lab is on the top position when a physician is seeking a new laboratory service.  How far you want to reach out is up to the capacity of your lab, but you can research the demand before furnishing a supply if this is an option you’ve been considering.  Same from the lab to the biotech industry, the lab is seeking new deals on equipment, reagents, consumables, new assay developments, etc… How are they conducting their research?  The same way you do, on the internet; so search for your business the same way your customer would and see who populates the search results, this is your competition, and you are in what position?  Want to see a project which I own and can prove SEO strategies highly effective?  Google search for "teeth whitening company" and Lazer Bright will populate on the 1st or 2nd page for a broad global search term, or how about "walmart teeth whitening" and same thing; and those are highly competitive keywords.  I can't disclose too much details with samples, but I founded and own Lazer Bright so I can reveal what I want; which by the way is higher ranked than ZOOM teeth whitening by Philips Oral Care; thus from only 8 months of hardcore SEO, but what would it be worth for your organization to be at the top for search terms like, "vitamin d assay" or "local lab"?  Good SEO can place you at the top for those keyphrases which are entered over 5000 times per month each, by physicians and labs I would assume.

Where do you stand in the search engines for the market you’re targeting?  Which are the keyword entries your customer types into Google?  These are your demands, so it’s not out of line to restructure your entire marketing direction based on this data, as this is the demand your organization must furnish a supply for. 

If you have a Google Adwords account then you can do some basic research to get an idea as to what the market is looking for by using their keywords tool.  Enter what you think your customer might search for such as “folate testing” or “immunoassay reagents” and see how many inquiries there are and find the one that has the least amount of competition and the highest amount of entries.  You now know the demand in a specific location and the other related keyword entries (demands) being entered into Google.  Now you would optimize your online marketing strategies around these selected keywords entries, including your websites content, company print, and a ton of other things should all correlate with the demands you just discovered in Googles research tools.

So whether it’s in the lab or reagent manufacturing, SEO is crucial to gain and maintain a competitive edge in your industry, globally and / or locally.  You must know what your market is searching for and this is why it’s not uncommon for an SEO firm to spend hours to days researching the best keywords / phrases before building the website or restructuring the content of the site.  Thorough keyword research is the very first step when creating a new effective online marketing project of almost any kind, whether it’s a social media campaign, website redesign, or an SEO project; thus being the common business fundamentals of “supply and demand” but in the digital age of the net.  The advantage to this is that you can better budget your R&D, customer service, and countless other depts. It’s nice to be able to know what your customers’ demands are prior to vesting your budget into something nobody cares about.  With older traditional methods of marketing this was a hit and miss type of deal, and then we would readjust to fire again.  Not in the internet world and I don’t see this being leveraged as much as I think it should be.  Online marketing is an art and it takes a creative group to strategize your way to the top for many competitive keywords / keyphrases (demands), SEO is not a 9-5 position and it can be tons of work.  Though I always recommend someone to familiarize themselves with SEO work before getting sucked into a $5K to $250K SEO contract, I advise against larger organizations taking on this task in house.  It could be done with a great HR dept, except if they don’t know what they are doing it could cost you everything, Google penalties are a nightmare.  An SEO firm will know Googles latest algorithms the day they warn the webmasters of upcoming changes.

Here’s an example of a Google penalty I’ve witnessed: 

A company had a booming niche market, website was converting leads, sales reps were busy taking inbound sales, then 2013 came and Google latest algorithm hit.  If this company’s Marketing Director knew what algorithms that Google was about to enforce, then they would have not violated these new rules which sunk their robust online marketing system, in turn causing mass profit losses and bored inside sales reps.  Google started penalizing sites which condoned / promoted duplicate content, they gave fair warning to all the webmasters (that were paying attention).  This turned into job losses, huge profit losses, and now they’re way behind their competitors when they once dominated the competition.  They had duplicate content because they allowed B2B sales to sell affiliate websites, which resold their products and so they copied and pasted their existing content into a new domain name for the purchasing company.  It’s easy to understand why Google made the algorithm change, to boost the quality in their search results so people continue to use it.  Though the company was not doing anything corrupt, just doing what was quickest and easiest; it is still suffering to this day because the competition is now too thick and powerful via online visibility.  

These simple yet technical details are why I say just outsource it or trust your HR on finding an SEO wiz that is obsessed with SEO, like myself.  SEO involves industry knowledge, technical strategy, content writers, web developers, coders, programmers, etc… To find any one person fluent in all these critical areas can be a challenging task, so this is why an SEO firm will be best for any larger organization.  Smaller jobs like for a diagnostic laboratory can be done by an independent SEO professional or yourself, if you’re up to learning a few things and feel you have most of the fore mentioned technical capabilities.

Biotechnology can use an SEO overhaul from what I’ve seen, Siemens Healthcare, Abbott Diagnostics, Roche Diagnostics, and a few of these elite business models still lack quality SEO and are losing tons of business.  Labs and Physicians are searching for your products; Google, Yahoo, and Bing and your gateway to those potential customers. 

If you have questions or comments, please feel free to ask or share.