Do you ever think about hiring an extra hand because you need to organize the amount of data you have on your SEO leads, and keep track of them? For example, their names, contact details, website information, location, occupation, or where they stand in the funnel? Or Is finding the right lead, becoming a challenge in the first place? Are you seeing the need to improve your processes for a more efficient workflow?
This is what an SEO campaign management software is for. Before we get onto the nitty-gritty. let’s observe some numbers first.
In 2019 alone, retail e-commerce sales amounted to 3.53 trillion dollars and it’s projected to reach 6.54 trillion US dollars in 2022. That’s a 90 percent increase in just 3 years. A majority of online sales begin with a single search, this is why services like Shopify SEO are emerging. In the first five months of 2020 alone, Google searches amounted to 2.3 trillion. The impact is obvious to businesses worldwide and this is why there’s a growing need for search engine optimization.
Though SEO is a booming business and even with the growing popularity of SEO outsourcing, not much has been written about managing SEO clients nor how to efficiently find SEO leads and close them. There’s not much spotlight on SEO tools either, especially those that can increase your productivity. Even with the increasing popularity of using a campaign management software, there are unique aspects in the SEO industry which a normal tool won’t be able to address.
Whether you’re planning to start an SEO business or you’re already running one, having a reliable SEO software that can do more than CRM is going to be beneficial to save your time, energy and resources — while increasing your productivity and revenue.
What is an SEO Campaign Management Software?
In simple terms, it deals with the whole process of targeting prospects, organizing and segmenting information, analyzing and managing your processes (which includes everything from managing marketing messages to managing campaign implementation).
In choosing and assessing an SEO management software you have to know what features it needs to have, so here’s a list of questions to guide you in determining those factors:
- What do you need the SEO software for?
- Will you use it with your clients?
- How can this be useful to your clients?
- What features do you need?
- Do you need to automate any part of your workflow and do you need the software to do that for you?
- What do you want to get out of it?
What to consider when choosing your SEO Campaign Management Software?
Now that you have an overall picture of what you need, here’s what you should look for in an SEO Campaign Management Software to help you attain maximum efficiency and results:
1. Lead Tool
At the top of the funnel, is where it all begins: SEO lead generation. You want a campaign management software that not only manages your leads but will also find them for you.
Finding SEO leads can be a time-consuming task, but it’s where everything starts. The solution to that is to find a process that will shorten the time you spend on the task so that you can spend a lot more time on more important tasks like closing a prospect or improving your business strategy to get ahead of the competition.
Choose an SEO campaign management software that does all the legwork fluently, so all you have to do is to choose the lead who qualifies the most, prep the SEO questions to ask clients, and immediately hop into closing them.
2. Lead Closing Functionalities
Finding a lead and closing them – that is the goal. A software that has the capacity to do that for you will save you weeks of effort.
The ideal scenario is to find a lead, get it down the CRM, start a campaign to close the lead, track your progress, send a proposal, make a deal, and close. You will be doing this for every lead you find and as an entrepreneur, you value productivity too much to let a single second go to waste.
A software that has all these functionalities will allow you to do the process in one single dashboard, without closing a window and going to another website to perform another task.
Imagine having to do an SEO audit on the fly because the icon is sitting right next to the lead’s name, that same lead you generated from the same dashboard.
If the lead happens to turn hot, then all you have to do is draft an SEO proposal and present it to them and there you go, you have closed a lead. You got the job done without opening another website or another application.
Having these software features integrated into one dashboard will save you time and increase your productivity by weeks, if not months.
3. Can Automate a Workflow
If you’re doing repeatable business tasks, there’s a high probability that you have grown good at it but it’s killing your time and productivity, along the way, mistakes can happen. Automating a part of your processes will give more time for higher-value work, also it can enhance overall disposition and boost satisfaction.
For example, a CRM that has the features to manage all your contacts and interactions with them, at the same time, can automate email marketing campaigns will lessen your effort and maximize productivity by days. All you have to do is to come up with different strategies and messaging for each niche or target audience, then choose any strategy you’ve formulated depending on where a lead is in the funnel.
4. Unique Features
Unique features play a valuable part in choosing your SEO campaign management software. With the type of feature, you can see how involved and knowledgeable a company is about an industry when they are able to integrate important features into the software that often gets overlooked by others.
An example would be an SEO software that has everything from storing contacts to a user-friendly CRM, up to the ability to automate email campaigns. This will not only decrease potential errors but will allow you to plan a series of email strategies that, in the end, will benefit your sales team.
Here are the identifiable features that you need as an SEO business:
Lead Generation. This feature will find qualified leads that you specifically choose involving a certain niche from a specific location.
SEO Web Audit Tool. A feature that will do a full audit of your client’s website. It should present detailed information about how the site is performing in terms of SEO, SEM, social media activities, online reputation, online security and more.
Marketing Automation Tool. A feature that will enhance your marketing process and automate repetitive tasks.
Proposal Builder. A helpful tool in closing leads, it will persuade your SEO prospect to consider the solution that your SEO agency is offering. A professional and well-structured proposal will enhance your credibility and will allow you to connect with your prospect better.
Customer Relationship Management Tool. A feature that will manage all your agency’s relationships and interactions with clients or future clients.
Analytics Feature. This allows you to see the data or statistics concerning a specific campaign.
Report Overview. A helpful feature that will present you with an overview of important data right on your dashboard.
5. Usability
Usability measures how well a user can use software to effectively achieve a goal. A software that has optimum usability allows all your team members to learn and retain the features quickly which will ultimately decrease training costs and save your agency time.
In looking for the right SEO campaign management software, you should not only look for a clean design that will enhance your productivity. You can judge the usability through the following:
Ease-of-use. Anyone can learn how to use it easily and can accomplish tasks quickly.
How effective its features are. All promoted features perform as expected and results are accurate.
Efficiency. Promotes a quick and easy workflow through a process that doesn’t require effort from the user.
Engagement level. It’s engaging and pleasant to use for whatever task it’s supposed to deliver.
In a nutshell, when you first go into the software, you should be able to navigate your way around and it should easy enough to achieve your goals or do your tasks without much help.
6. Consistency
Consistency is an important factor because not only do you want an SEO software that can do the task accurately, you want it to be dependable enough to deliver all the time. You will be using this tool daily, whether it’s for lead generation, or if you suddenly need to create a client proposal, or you want to run an audit of a potential client’s website — you want these tasks delivered smoothly and fluently all the time. This then translates to progress, better workflow, and success.
How will you know if the SEO software has good reputation? Do some research about the company and the brains behind it. Explore youtube or other social media and see what they’re all about.
KEY TAKEAWAYS
Efficiency and productivity are the keywords here. It’s crucial that your SEO agency’s campaign management software is fully integrated and designed to meet your needs — in every step of the customer acquisition process.
An SEO software is a key member of your team.
To sum it up, here are the activities that the SEO software should be able to provide you:
- Lead Generation
- SEO Audit
- Customer Relationship Management
- Campaign Manager
- Proposal Builder
- Marketing or Email Automation
- Other Functionalities: Rank trackers, Campaign Status Overview & Analytics
An SEO campaign management software is a key member of your team. It should be able to generate leads and build a relationship with them for you, with an accelerated cycle time.
It does all the legwork because as the agency owner you should be pouring your focus and energy on high-value work. In a way, an SEO campaign management tool does the initial work faster giving you more time to improve relationships with existing clients as well as analyze reports and develop your current business strategy.
