If you are a marketer, you are likely spending the most time thinking about what kind of marketing to do in the new year. With advertising efficiency declining and acquiring customer data becoming increasingly difficult, what kind of marketing should we pursue? As the advertising market changes, SEO marketing, which dominates customer search trends, is emerging as a viable alternative. Elifunt has prepared insights to help anyone get started with SEO marketing!
🎢 Marketing strategies that drive business growth, SEO content marketing.
1. Please introduce yourself.
Hello! I am Yeji Kim, a 3-year veteran founder and a 12-year content marketer. I have worked as a content marketer leading corporate growth across a diverse range of industries, from finance, media, and IT to architecture. In particular, I have gained extensive experience by keenly feeling the power of text-based long-form content. Thanks to this, I am currently running the marketing tech startup 'Elifunt ( https://elifunt.kr )'
2. I sense a strong conviction about your content. Was there a particular reason for it?
There is a common misconception that content marketing is difficult to measure. However, I came to where I am today because I believed that content marketing must also be measurable.
I felt the power of content most intensely during my first startup in 2021. My first venture was a B2B construction materials trading platform. At the time, I heard a lot of talk that this was just another item released every year and was bound to fail. I later realized through experience just how difficult it is to easily improve the practices of the massive construction industry. (Laughs) However, as a marketer, I gained invaluable experience and results. At the time, our main clients were small construction companies and public officials in charge of construction work, but there were limits to visiting them individually to make sales. Because sustainable marketing and sales were desperately needed, I focused on content marketing even before the service launched.
For over a year, I engaged in activities to reach potential customers by publishing a weekly newsletter and including key industry issues in daily blog content. These efforts resulted in not only new customers but also investors and even original team members taking an interest and seeking me out, allowing me to experience firsthand that content is a significant asset to a business. I am convinced that authentic content inevitably drives business growth. I believed that the industry would advance significantly if we could measure the conversion performance of content marketing. This is an area that Elifunt and I are determined to solve as long as we work in the content field.
🏠 Widening the gateway to welcome customers, SEO marketing.
3. What is SEO as defined by Elifunt?
SEO can be described as the work of sweeping and cleaning the entrance—the path customers walk on. The path for customers shouldn't be rough or narrow, right? Therefore, you must open the main gate wide and the road wide with diverse keywords and content. I believe that the organic traffic generated through Search Engine Optimization (SEO) expands the size of the funnel in itself.
The search engine result page is the point of contact where we interact with customers. Customers look to the search bar when they have questions or want to resolve problems. Therefore, the most important thing is,
- You need to know in what language customers search to solve what problems (keyword analysis)
- A relationship with the customer truly begins only when we are able to solve that problem situation with our content and insights (SEO + content strategy).
This is precisely why applying search engine optimization to our websites, blogs, and content is essential. Search results are the primary point of contact where you can meet real customers facing specific problems. That is why I believe that not only the website, but also the blog structure and the content itself must be structured to suit search engines. SEO is no longer a special strategy or tactic; it is a mandatory requirement that must be set up if you have started digital marketing!
⭐️ 4 Things You Must Remember in SEO (Search Engine Optimization) Marketing.
4. When starting SEO at a startup, what areas should be focused on?
I believe this is a strategy that must be established at the stage where you have completed MVP validation and are ready to go full-scale GO TO MARKET (hereinafter GTM) (the momentum required to acquire the first 1,000 customers). If a company in the GTM stage is starting SEO, be sure to check the following four points.
- Establishing Goal and Strategy Alignment: It is necessary to derive site goals by aligning business objectives, sales strategies, and marketing strategies. (For a B2B service, increasing the number of "quote inquiries" could be the site goal.)
- Keyword Analysis: You must use keywords to identify the situations and languages in which customers ask questions. Elifunt interprets the intent of these keywords to define the search journey in funnel units, which we believe is the most effective strategy. We plan to cover this further in the Grow & Better practical seminar, so please look forward to it!
- Performance Analysis: If you want to effectively utilize SEO in your marketing strategy, be sure to measure and analyze performance. There are likely various data metrics ranging from traffic to conversion, so it would be a good idea to start by checking whether you are achieving the target KPIs for your site established in 1).
- Content that drives conversion: that driving customer behavior is achieved not through SEO, but through content that "delivers value." This involves content strategies to turn existing customers into fans and methods to make content search-engine friendly to increase repurchase rates. However, planning content well is not easy. Overcoming this arduous and difficult process to produce authentic content is precisely the role of a content marketer!
Search engine optimization is not a strategy that achieves success in the short term, neither in the process nor in the results. Nor is it a one-time implementation that ends there. It is a process of long-term growth achieved by consistently being chosen as content creates 'value' by solving customer problems, and through this accumulated growth, you build solid 'muscles' (which are difficult for competitors to easily penetrate). To reiterate, this is absolutely not something that is achieved in a short period.
✍🏻 SEO content also grows only when there is a measurable 'growth' perspective.
5. What is 'Content Growth Marketing' as defined by Elifunt?
Elifunt emphasizes content growth marketing, which drives business growth through the power of content. Content marketing is the process of building relationships by providing answers to customers' questions and pain points through content. Therefore , we believed that a 'growth perspective' focused on building relationships with customers was essential in a content marketing market that has traditionally been skewed toward content planning and production . In short, good content marketing requires well-structured means to acquire customer information and encourage engagement in order to build relationships.
6. What insights do you intend to share in this online seminar?
through this seminar, marketerswill leave with the conviction that “you can acquire customers through the power of content!” If you are a CEO who has experienced firsthand what kind of business we do and how well we do it… we would love to work with you!
As a Konma alumnus, I believe SEO is an area where marketers excel the most. They are neither developers nor keyword analysts (SEO specialists). This is because it requires reading beyond the customer's fingertips as they search, understanding their intentions and minds! This is precisely what we want to discuss in this seminar, and we aim to share SEO and content growth marketing strategies that marketers can truly experience in real-world practice!
7. Finally, what is Elifunt's dream?
The Elifunt team is fulfilling its mission to “help ensure valuable services and knowledge do not remain hidden from the world.” We want to grow alongside companies that create services truly needed by the world, building successful experiences together. Our goal is to contribute to the healthy development of the marketing industry by sharing the insights gained in this process with more marketers and practitioners.
Did the conversation with Grow & Better help answer some of your questions about SEO? 😀
If you want to further review the SEO information you already know, I also recommend the article below!
👉🏻 How much do you know about SEO marketing?
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