News / Blog: #content

How to make yourself independent of expensive search engine advertising

Every online store or provider on the Internet who places online advertising knows the problem: search engine click prices can be so high that they cause even the most conservative business plan to collapse. Customers must be found, but from where? A multitude of competitors join you in bidding on the few search engine advertising slots and vie for the attention of potential customers.

For companies in the B2B sector, the situation is aggravated by the fact that you are usually competing in your niche with larger providers with five-, six-, or seven-figure marketing budgets, even nationally or even internationally, and, that the number of search queries is far lower than in B2C, i.e. end-customer business. It is not uncommon for there to be only a few dozen search queries per day to which suitable search engine advertising could be played out at all. Adblockers further reduce this number. The consequence of this scarce demand: high click prices, not infrequently over 3 or 4 euros, to even get a few visitors daily to the - expensively created - website.

The problem: Even with a four- or five-figure marketing budget, you won't get significantly more leads because there simply aren't enough search queries. For keywords that are searched for relatively infrequently and for which you are competing with many competitors, and with a given conversion rate of a few percent (in the best case scenario), you will thus not be able to scale your sales, the number of customers and thus your business.

The alternative? Direct marketing as well as content marketing! We have developed solutions for both alternatives: Our 2022 Company Database for B2B marketing addresses, our Lettershop service, and our Content Creation Tools.

How to create an editorial plan?

An editorial plan is an important tool for anyone involved in content creation. An editorial plan is a list of the content you want to create and a detailed timeline that specifies the time frame and target audience for each piece of content. To create an editorial plan, you must first create a list of the content you want to create and a detailed timeline that establishes the time frame and target audience for each piece of content. You'll also need to answer a series of questions that will help you prioritize the content, such as which content is most important to my target audience? Which topics are most relevant? How much time do I have to create the content? Then, you can create a detailed timeline that specifies the timeframe and target audience for each piece of content. Finally, you can upload the editorial plan to your website to share with your colleagues and collaborators.

Marketing Budget: Ads vs. Content Creation - What Really Pays Off?

In the B2B sector, e.g. for software, click prices of 5 to 7 € are not unusual. Often, a large number of providers or service providers compete in this not only regionally limited, but nationally or even internationally and vie for the attention of potential customers in the search results.

Apart from the fact that many users nowadays use adblockers, and providers thus do not even come into the focus of prospects, the probability of actually turning "clickers" into customers is very low. The rate that describes the relationship between the number of visitors and purchases in a certain period of time is the so-called conversion rate. Here, rates in the low single-digit percentage range are absolutely common, 1-3% are already quite good values for most online stores.

If it does not succeed, at least the contact details of the potential customer to get, for example, by a newsletter registration, are quickly 5€ or 7€ costs incurred, without the customer would visit the website or the store again with high probability. Because: most of your website visitors will not come back.

It is therefore helpful for B2B providers to record and systematically follow up on any company hosts (IP addresses from a website visitor's company network). Although this is more difficult in times of home office and so decentralized from the private Internet connection called potential customers, there is always the possibility with the right tools to determine which companies have visited your website or your store and thus currently have concrete demand for your products or services.

In order to convince potential customers of yourself and your products and services, it is worth investing in the creation of free content that you provide at regular intervals, e.g. in the blog section of your website. In the course of time you will get more so-called organic search engine traffic and more visibility on the market - without any additional advertising costs. In addition to the use of SEO-relevant terms, consistency, i.e. regular content creation, is crucial. Another measure to get more website visitors is to create a glossary that briefly explains the most important customer- & product-relevant terms. Once created, you will benefit from a higher volume of visitors in the long run.

Customer avatar

A customer avatar is a fictitious profile that a company creates for each of its customers. It includes basic information such as age, gender, occupation, income, and other data that the company needs to build a customer profile and understand how best to offer its products and services. It also helps improve the customer experience by providing relevant content and personalized offers.