Last updated: March 13, 2024

Demand generation is a relatively new focus area in B2B marketing, and uses a combination of inbound marketing, ABM, and lead nurturing to generate interest in a company’s products and services. In this report, we share our research into 2024’s top demand generation agencies, based on their:

• Years in Business. Longevity alone demonstrates an ability to successfully navigate the rapidly changing B2B marketing landscape, and adaptability to shifting business landscapes.
• Agency Size: We favor larger firms in our analysis, as they are more likely to have the resources to fully execute complex demand generation strategies.
• Headquarters Location: Location is the least important factor in our analysis, and serves primarily as qualitative information for potential clients who wish to engage with a firm in their geographic region.
• Specialty: Demand generation incorporates many marketing approaches, with many agencies choosing to focus their efforts either on inbound marketing or ABM. Our analysis slightly favors inbound marketing approaches due to their increased stability and consistency.

Because demand gen is a relatively new marketing specialty, note that many of these agencies do not describe themselves as a demand gen firm first and foremost. We have not disqualified agencies for describing themselves as a “B2B Lead Generation Agency” or “Digital Marketing Agency”; instead we have examined their offered services through the lens of demand generation.

The Top Demand Generation Agencies of 2024

1. First Page Sage

First Page Sage specializes in inbound demand generation through leadership content and SEO. Campaigns focus on maximizing long-term ROI for clients in complex or highly competitive industries. Notable clients have included Microsoft, Salesforce, and VeriSign.

• Founded: 2009
• Location: San Francisco, CA
• Additional Services: SEO, PPC, Lead Generation, Web Design
• Price Range: $$$
• Editor’s Note: Inbound demand generation is a very powerful approach but if you already have a very robust in-house content team, you may not need the additional thought leadership support.

2. Demand Works Media

Demand Works Media specializes in demand gen through a mix of ABM and email marketing. Accounts or groups of potential B2B buyers are selected based on industry, location, business size, and or other attributes, then individual decision makers are targeted at these companies.

• Founded: 2015
• Location: Chicago, IL
• Additional Services: ABM, Email Marketing, Content Syndication
• Price Range: $$
• Editor’s Note: The effectiveness of ABM is highly industry dependent. Syndicated content runs the risk of losing trust if your prospects see the same content elsewhere.

3. The ABM Agency

The ABM Agency also takes an ABM-centric approach to demand generation, but with a focus on targeting buyers across multiple channels including email, PPC, social media, and retargeted display ads. As an ABM focused agency, they are best suited as a partner for companies in industries with a few very high value clients.

• Founded: 2008
• Location: Atlanta, GA
• Additional Services: PPC, SEO, Email Marketing, LinkedIn Marketing
• Price Range: $$
• Editor’s Note: As mentioned above, ABM is only appropriate for some industries. Multichannel approaches are effective but can quickly become expensive.

4. PineLeads

Founded in 2020, PineLeads specializes in demand gen for companies in Hong Kong, and Singapore. Their approach uses a combination of sales development representatives, LinkedIn influencer marketing, and PR to engage prospective customers.

• Founded: 2020
• Location: Hong Kong
• Additional Services: Lead Generation, Appointment Setting
• Price Range: $
• Editor’s Note: Demand generation requires a high degree of familiarity with the language and culture of the target markets, and working with a local firm is ideal.

5. Pearl Lemon Leads

Pearl Lemon Leads is a UK-based agency that offers a range of outbound demand generation including appointment setting, ABM, and PPC. They also offer some SEO and social media management services, as well as support and training for your sales team.

• Founded: 2016
• Location: London, UK
• Additional Services: Lead Generation, Appointment Setting, Sales Consulting
• Price Range: $$
• Editor’s Note: Pearl Lemon focuses more on the lower funnel and sales side of the equation, and is a good fit for companies who need the additional sales support.

6. Boundify

Boundify’s approach focuses on using paid advertising, including PPC, paid social, and retargeted display ads to create multiple touchpoints with prospective customers. Their customers have included Zipit, Vivo-Comm, and Summit Solar.

• Founded: 2011
• Location: Greenville, SC
• Additional Services: PPC, Retargeted Advertising, Paid Social
• Price Range: $$$
• Editor’s Note: Paid advertising is an effective element of demand gen but results in poor ROI long-term when unsupported by organic channels.

7. Instruqt

Instruqt takes a unique approach to demand generation, working exclusively with SaaS companies to educate their audience through creating software demos and tutorials. Their clients have included Google Cloud, Red Hat, and Nginx.

• Founded: 2017
• Location: Hilversum, Netherlands
• Services: Interactive UX-based Marketing, Virtual Product Demos
• Price Range: $$
• Editor’s Note: Intruqt’s approach is excellent for SaaS clients, but must be used in tandem with other interest-driving channels.

8. Hubspot

While HubSpot does not provide demand generation services, no successful demand gen campaign can succeed without software to help track leads and help manage the customer acquisition funnel. Hubspot’s marketing and sales automation software, integrations, and range of pricing options make them well suited for companies who want to manage their demand gen in-house.

• Founded: 2005
• Location: Cambridge, MA
• Additional Services: Marketing Automation Software
• Price Range: $
• Editor’s Note: An in-house approach is the most cost effective for long term demand gen, provided you have an experienced team to execute it.

Source

Last updated: March 13, 2024.

Our team evaluated 63 SaaS-centered SEO agencies to determine the most successful firms based on their SaaS industry experience. We rank-ordered the companies using the following criteria:

• Notable Clients (35%): An agency’s experience with notable SaaS clients is the best indicator of their ability to run successful SEO campaigns. As such, it is the factor to which we assign the most weight.
• Leadership Experience (25%): We assigned each company numerical score from 1 to 5 based on the SaaS marketing experience of each agency’s top executives and marketing leadership.
• Company Size (20%): Although size is not inherently tied to skill, larger companies are both capable of providing a level of support and have the internal infrastructure required for executing complex SaaS SEO campaigns. To grow to a significant size, companies must also maintain strong client retention rates based on successful work.
• Average Review Score (10%): How satisfied clients are when leaving reviews for an SEO agency correlates positively with their ability to deliver results.
• Year Founded (5%): Despite being a relatively new marketing industry, SEO has evolved significantly over the past 15 years. The length of a company’s tenure displays its ability to update its SEO strategy as Google updates its algorithm, as well as weather market cycles and economic downturns.
• Headquarters (5%): SEO agencies in major cities benefit from access to a more diverse talent pool, and a wider array of industry connections, making headquarters location a small but relevant consideration in our ranking.

For each agency below, we also provide their Main Focus, describing their unique approach to SEO. The results of our research are presented in the table below:

The Top SaaS SEO Agencies of 2024

First Page Sage

As the largest SaaS-focused SEO firm in the U.S., First Page Sage has worked with many clients in the software industry, including Salesforce, Verisign, and Credit Karma. They develop personalized strategies for each client and then ghostwrite the needed pages and articles, with an emphasis on thought leadership content. They are clear about the main KPIs of the campaign being MQLs or SQLs.

SaaS companies interested in SEO that prioritizes lead generation and long-term ROI are a good fit for First Page Sage’s services. They’ve worked with a wide range of SaaS companies, from startups to enterprise SaaS. They also offer website design, conversion rate optimization, and SEO audit services.

• Year Founded: 2009
• Company Size: 100-250
• Headquarters: San Francisco, CA
• Average Review Score: 4.8
• Other Services: Thought Leadership, Web Design, Conversion Rate Optimization, Paid Search

REQ

REQ is a hybrid marketing agency that blends traditional advertising and SEO to create a uniform brand strategy for its clients across various marketing channels. Their services include on-page and off-page SEO, traditional PR, and social media in addition to their branding, UX, and SEO work.

REQ’s branding specialization and traditional advertising emphasis makes them best suited for larger SaaS companies seeking to reinvent their image. While they also work well with smaller companies, the cost of their services often makes them a poorer fit for startups.

• Year Founded: 2008
• Company Size: 51-100
• Headquarters: Washington, DC
• Average Review Score: 4.7
• Additional Services: PR, Branding, Advertising

Clay Agency

Clay Agency‘s focus is on the UX design and conversion optimization side of SEO. Their full-stack web design and development can help their clients optimize their websites to push visitors through the digital marketing funnel.

Because of this conversion focus, the best fit for Clay Agency’s services are SaaS companies who have strong organic traffic numbers but fail to capitalize on that traffic to generate leads.

• Year Founded: 2016
• Company Size: 11-50
• Headquarters: San Francisco, CA
• Average Review Score: 4.7
• Additional Services: UI/UX Design, Product and Brand Strategy

Epsilon

Epsilon offers full-service marketing for SaaS enterprises that combines traditional marketing and digital marketing under a single roof. They allow those enterprises to connect with a single vendor for a wide array of services, mitigating the cost of the complex vetting and setup processes those enterprises often have. In addition to their enterprise work, they have also run successful campaigns for high-profile startups such as Faraday.

• Year Founded: 1969
• Company Size: 500-1000
• Headquarters: Irving, TX
• Average Review Score: 4.5
• Additional Services: Digital Media, Data Solutions, Customer Insights

Marketing Eye

Marketing Eye specializes in the technical aspects of SEO, with web development as their primary service. They also offer some strategic consulting for clients that already possess an in-house marketing team, but have more limited capabilities than many of the other agencies on this list. This makes them a better fit for SaaS companies that boast writing teams that can create their own SEO content for Marketing Eye to help optimize.

• Year Founded: 2004
• Company Size: 11-50
• Headquarters: Atlanta, GA
• Average Review Score: 4.3
• Additional Services: Marketing Automation, Marketing Consulting, Web Development

Metric Theory

Metric Theory combines paid search with SEO and visitor tracking to create multiple touchpoints for searchers to convert. They supplement search rankings through remarketing display ads and social media, creating lasting impressions in their target audience. Because their approach makes significant use of paid search, they work best with SaaS companies who prioritize rapid results over ROI.

• Year Founded: 2012
• Company Size: 101-250
• Headquarters: San Francisco, CA
• Average Review Score: 4.4
• Additional Services: SEO, Paid Search, Remarketing & Display Ads

Kalungi

Kalungi offers fractional marketing teams for SaaS companies—in other words, they offer a team that integrates more with their clients companies than a traditional marketing agency. They’re explicit about their ideal clientele: B2B SaaS companies who are expecting growth but lack their own marketing team. This makes them a good fit for high profile, early stage startups.

• Year Founded: 2018
• Company Size: 51-100
• Headquarters: Seattle, WA
• Average Review Score: 4.1
• Additional Services: Fractional Marketing Teams, SaaS CMO Coaching

RNO1

RN01 prioritizes market research and design, offering complete brand explorations for SaaS clients who need to create a unique brand identity. They also emphasize the importance of strong UI/UX design, creating unique digital experiences for visitors to the clients’ websites. They work best with innovative SaaS startups, particularly those with a focus on Web3.

• Year Founded: 2009
• Company Size: 11-50
• Headquarters: Redwood City, CA
• Average Review Score: 3.9
• Additional Services: Brand Strategy, UI/UX Design, VR & AR Design

The Top SaaS SEO Companies by Industry

Our team has compiled lists of the top 5 SEO agencies for each of 4 major SaaS industries:

• Adtech
• Fintech
• Medtech
• Proptech

The results are shared in the tables below:

Source

Last Updated: March 13, 2024

Company size may not be the first factor you consider when it comes to choosing an SEO agency to work with, but it’s an indicator that a company is successful, well managed, and has the resources to make your campaign successful. Often, firms that describe themselves as “SEO agencies” are small 1–5 person companies that are able to provide technical advice and backend updates, but don’t have the staff necessary to manage a multi-faceted campaign. A firm that’s among the largest in the US will necessarily have a proven track record and be a reliable option for businesses looking to outsource their SEO.

In addition to ranking SEO agencies by size, our team also conducted a meta analysis of the agencies’ online reviews in order to produce an overall average. We included reviews from Clutch, G2, Upcity, Sitejabber, Capterra, and Google in our dataset, weighting “pure” review sites that do not solicit payment from agencies for inclusion over those with a more commercial focus.

Finally, because SEO is such a wide field, we’ve separated our list into 10 different niches. We’ve chosen to only list companies that have a laser focus on their particular niche of SEO rather than simply creating a list of the largest digital marketing companies that happen to offer SEO.

The Largest SEO Companies In The U.S. in 2024

For Thought Leadership-Based SEO – First Page Sage

First Page Sage is the largest overall SEO firm in the US, having attained its growth from continual specialization within the field of SEO, as opposed to the more typical agency trajectory of expanding horizontally into other marketing services.

The firm’s strength is combining SEO and thought leadership—a high quality form of content marketing—to turn its clients’ websites into Google-trusted industry resources, essentially automating lead generation for them. The majority of its clients are in technical B2B industries such as SaaS, IT, and manufacturing, with clients including Cadence Design Systems, Logitech, and US Bank; however they also work with a number of large B2C businesses such as Chanel, Nerdwallet, and Wix.

Their campaigns are comprehensive, consisting of SEO strategy, keyword research, technical SEO, content marketing, analytics, marketing attribution, and detailed reporting.

Location: San Francisco, CA
Founded: 2009
Price Range: $$$
Average Review Score: 4.6
Services: SEO, Content Marketing, Web Design

For White Label SEO – Boostability

Due to SEO’s demanding nature and the specialized skillset required, digital marketing agencies often find themselves in need of additional support to help manage clients’ SEO campaigns. Many SEO agencies are happy to act as a white label partner, but few make it their specialty. Boostability is the largest SEO firm that specializes in providing white label services to other marketing agencies, partnering with digital marketing agencies that don’t have the resources to offer SEO on their own.

Boostability has also worked directly with small businesses. They offer low-cost packages that are designed specifically for companies that are just getting started, are in low-competition markets, and not yet ready to post blog content regularly. They also provide solutions for scaling businesses, so they can grow with their clients. Clients of Boostability include Bloom Studios, KIARO Computer Solutions, and Peterson Family Orthodontics.

Location: Lehi, UT
Founded: 2009
Price Range: $
Average Review Score: 4.3
Services: White Label SEO, Small Business SEO, Web Design

For Multilingual SEO – Duffy Agency

Multilingual SEO is a difficult practice: as if translation weren’t enough of a nuanced process, when you add keyword strategy and deciphering search intent to the mix, it becomes even more complex. Duffy agency has been successful at doing all that, including in a few more technical markets where an understanding of specialized jargon matters.

Duffy specializes in providing SEO, online marketing, and social media marketing services to companies who have brands with international reach. They’ve worked with clients in fields ranging from Consumer Foods to Medical Services, and their past clients include Napapijri, Cavidi, and the United Nations World Food Programme.

Location: Dover, NH
Founded: 2009
Price Range: $$$$
Average Review Score: 4.5
Services: International SEO, Strategic Consulting, Online Brand Management

For Local SEO – LocaliQ

Not all companies need to compete nationally. A construction firm based in a single city, for instance, will gain nothing from being seen by searchers across the country. Instead, they can focus all of their efforts on geotargeted keywords, which are both lower competition and much more likely to lead to a sale.

LocaliQ (formerly ReachLocal) is the largest SEO agency with a focus on increasing local search visibility. They specialize in working with inherently location-bound companies in industries such as real estate, home services, and automotive sales and service, and their clients have included TGM Associates, Mr. Rooter, and Central Washington University.

Location: Woodland Hills, CA
Founded: 2004
Price Range: $$
Average Review Score: 3.9
Services Offered: Local SEO, PPC Marketing, Marketing Automation

For Amazon SEO – Seller Interactive

Google accounts for over 90% of all general search engine traffic, which is why nearly all SEO agencies dedicate themselves to understanding the nuances of Google’s algorithm. But for many B2C eCommerce companies, making it to the top of Amazon’s search results is just as important as reaching the first page of Google and requires a partner that understands not just Amazon’s search algorithm, but can also help manage their clients’ Amazon marketplace and listings.

As of 2023, Seller Interactive is the largest Amazon-focused SEO agency in the US. They’ve been helping businesses manage their AMS accounts since 2012, and have had particular success partnering with companies in the consumer technology, food &  beverage, and cosmetics industries.

Location: Markham, Ontario
Founded: 2012
Price Range: $$
Average Review Score: 4.4
Services Offered: Amazon SEO, Amazon Account Management, Demand-Side Platform Advertising (DSP)

For Full-Service Enterprise Digital Marketing – Epsilon

Enterprises not only need to ensure that their marketing partner is familiar with enterprise-specific SEO strategies, but because of their size and entrenched processes, often find that they need to find a single agency to handle all of their digital marketing. Attempting to contract with multiple agencies often leads to internal enterprise purchasing processes delaying campaigns, which can result in lowered ROI and poorly coordinated marketing pushes.

Epsilon combines SEO, personalized messaging, and customer data platforms to give enterprises a single-provider option for all of their digital marketing needs. They’re particularly successful in their work with global consumer brands, and their past clients include Walgreens, Coach, and Volvo.

Location: Irving, TX
Founded: 1969
Price Range: $$$
Average Review Score: 4.0
Services Offered: Digital Media, Data Solutions, Customer Insights

For Technical SEO – Marketing Eye

Not all businesses need an SEO agency to write top tier content for them. If producing content is already a core part of their business model, they should look to their SEO agency to provide conversion-optimized website design, technical SEO, and strategy.

Marketing Eye offers a broad range of marketing services, but their strength is in their technical and strategic consulting. Their 15 years of experience has seen them work with clients in consumer goods, logistics, and financial services, counting Botani, Star Source Pty. Ltd., and Mint Money among their clients.

Location: Atlanta, GA
Founded: 2004
Price Range: $$
Average Review Score: 3.9
Services Offered: Marketing Automation, Marketing Consulting, Web Development

For Conversion Rate Optimization – Clay Agency

Conversion rate optimization is a difficult skill to find in an agency; while many companies mention it on their website, few treat it as an art. Because CRO is a mixture of web design, UI/UX design, and analytics, an SEO agency that is strong in this area will naturally have dedicated UI/UX and analytics experts on staff.

Clay Agency places their focus squarely on digital strategy and UI/UX design, making them a good fit for clients whose primary SEO need is improving their conversion rate from organic visitors. Their service involves considerable online research and detailed UI/UX audits.

Location: San Francisco, CA
Founded: 2016
Price Range: $$$
Average Review Score: 4.6
Services Offered: UI/UX Design, Product and Brand Strategy

For Voice Search Optimization – Aumcore

Second only to AI-based search, voice search is the newest SEO niche, and is growing in importance as users begin to rely more and more on Siri, Alexa, and Google Assistant. This user segment is of particular importance for B2C companies, as the natural language processing technologies used in those assistants are currently optimized for everyday, non-technical speech. Aumcore includes Voice SEO as one of their core services, and understands that keyword targeting strategies are fundamentally different for spoken and typed language.

More important than this new niche, however, is mobile search. Google has officially completed their transition to mobile-first indexing, and over half of all web traffic is accessed from mobile devices. Prioritizing mobile users is especially important for B2C companies, as consumers are more likely to be browsing on their phone than professional users. Aumcore is experienced with working with both types of businesses, and their clients have included Comodo Cybersecurity, eviCore, and Delonghi.

Headquarters: New York, NY
Founded: 2010
Price Range: $$
Average Review Score: 4.7
Services Offered: Voice Search Optimization, Social Media, Brand Strategy

For Nonprofits & Charities – Community Boost

Nonprofits and charitable organizations can benefit just as much from SEO as for-profit businesses. The inherent trust that searchers afford to organic search results is just as—if not more—important for nonprofits, who are seeking donations from difficult-to-reach high net worth individuals and sponsors.

As this is a smaller niche, SEO companies that fall into this category are relatively rare and the largest we’ve found is Community Boost. While Community Boost offers a suite of digital marketing services, SEO is one of their core services.

Headquarters: San Diego, CA
Founded: 2012
Price Range: $$
Average Review Score: 4.6
Services Offered: Nonprofit SEO, Youtube & Display Ads, Google Ad Grant Management

The Top SEO Agencies in the US by Industry

Our team also ranked the top SEO agencies in the US based on industry specialty. In doing so, we considered average review score; notable clients; # of employees; and the quality of the firm’s leadership team. We were able to compile data in the following 6 industries:

• SaaS
• Healthcare
• Real Estate
• Financial
• Home Services
• Manufacturing

Source

Last updated: March 8, 2024

When developing a customer acquisition strategy for a real estate company, marketers face a unique challenge: real estate transactions by their nature are high value and complex, leading to relatively long sales cycles. As a result, real estate firms must invest heavily in both lead generation—ensuring their sales teams have a steady supply of new leads—and lead nurturing to convert those leads into opportunities and closed sales.

In this article, we’ll discuss how to optimize your strategy for each of the three stages of the real estate customer acquisition funnel: Lead Generation, Lead Nurturing, and Sales. Here’s a visualization of that funnel along with the common channels utilized in each stage. 

The Real Estate Customer Acquisition Funnel

In reality, prospects are “traveling” through the funnel by visiting web pages and performing online actions as visualized in this example funnel:

Now let’s explore the 3 stages of real estate customer acquisition strategy in more detail.

Stage 1: Lead Generation

Lead generation is the first stage of real estate customer acquisition. In this stage, potential customers discover your firm and your services, learn basic information about your value proposition, and either reach out to your sales team or, more likely, perform a soft conversion action such as signing up for a newsletter or subscribing to your blog. Successfully performing lead generation begins with understanding which marketing channels are most effective for your real estate firm.

The below table comes from a study our first conducted over a 5 year period on the effectiveness of various lead generation channels.

The Best Real Estate Lead Generation Channels – 2024

It’s worth noting that the effectiveness of all these channels depends on providing insightful content that speaks to your audience. Quality matters tremendously when it comes to content, so you should not outsource the writing of marketing materials to a junior team member.  

Creating High-Quality Content

High-quality content that engages the reader and fulfills their intent or curiosity is a prerequisite to successful customer acquisition. Potential buyers or investors are psychologically invested in a certain outcome, and it’s your marketing team’s job to anticipate what it is and describe how your product or service will help them reach it. Here is some general advice that applies to all forms of content in real estate marketing:

• Be concise: The best content begins by immediately answering the searcher’s question and using the article body to further develop the answer while providing essential context and detail.
  
  For example, if you’re writing a blog article entitled “What IRR can I expect on my rental property in the first year?” you want to answer their question right at the top of the article, i.e. “When executed correctly, a rental property should generate an IRR of 15-18% in its first year.” Soon afterwards, it would also be a good idea to provide a table listing the actions that would make it most likely they’ll attain their desired return.
• Guide the reader: Keep your reader engaged by guiding them clearly through the subject matter in a hyper-organized way.
  
  For example, if you’re producing a webinar about home flipping, begin the webinar by telling them what you’ll be teaching them over the next hour, in what order, and what you expect them to take away by the end of the webinar
• Include visual elements: People engage with information in a wide variety of ways. High-quality content recognizes this and should include tables, charts, and infographics for readers who prefer a visual element.
  
  For example, a landing page outlining a custom home builder’s services should include photos of completed projects, an infographic that displays the expected timeline of the design and build process, and a table breaking down common build choices and their impact on cost and completion date.

• End with a relevant CTA: High-quality content will conclude with a call-to-action that is appropriate to the rest of the content. In some instances, posts may link to additional reading to expand the audience’s understanding of the topic; in other cases, a strong CTA may encourage them to make a purchase.

By following these general guidelines for high-quality content, marketers can create content tailored to the target audience’s search intent without sacrificing the overall goals of the company. Additionally, excellent content can nurture leads, which we discuss in the next section.

Stage 2: Lead Nurturing

In real estate marketing, nurturing is the process of keeping prospects engaged by guiding them towards interesting content that eventually pushes them towards buying. It can take the form of an email, social media update, webinar, market forecast, trend report, or even just a web page.

Lead nurturing takes place after a prospect has learned about your company for the first time. For instance, a prospect that discovered your company through a trade show might then receive an email from your firm inviting them to read a report on the latest housing trends. That email, and especially the report, are forms of nurturing: they’re capitalizing on a one-time meeting to remind a prospect of your firm and cause them to spend more time with it, all the while increasing their trust in your brand.

The table below lists popular real estate lead nurturing channels. 

Real Estate Lead Nurturing Channels

These methods allow your real estate company to make better use of its lead generation marketing dollars, and convert a higher percentage of prospects. 

As a note, an efficient way to create lead nurturing content is to repurpose existing content.

Stage 3: Sales

When your lead generation and lead nurturing efforts pay off, there is still that final step of sales. While hiring good, experienced salespeople with experience in your niche of real estate is the most important factor in closing deals, the practices below can substantially increase your customer close rate. 

Personalized Sales Content

Similar to lead generation and lead nurturing content, sales content should be personalized to address the individual needs of your target audience. These needs will become evident in your initial discovery calls and can typically be addressed by two main forms of content:

• Industry Reports: Detailed, data-rich  displaying your company’s expert knowledge on complex industry-related topics

• Case Studies: Especially important in real estate companies that often utilize a B2C business model, case studies essentially serve as a sophisticated customer testimonial that demonstrates your company’s abilities through the eyes of a customer

These types of content lets prospective customers know that you understand their concerns, and demonstrates your real-world success in addressing the concerns of similar customers. Another way your team can do so is to use social proofs, beginning with the proof elements on your website. For example, our Real Estate SEO Services page shows the logos of 4 real estate companies our agency has worked with:

Including these logos demonstrates that other real estate companies have entrusted us with their lead generation, and our work has been successful enough that we feel confident if a lead should reach out to any of the above companies.

Another kind of proof element is examples of previous work. As with social proofs, these trust building elements help shorten sales cycles, warming up leads even before they reach out to your sales team. One example of this, taken from the same page, is our page section on previously completed work:

Including similar elements will help prospective clients determine that your company has been successful for similar customers in the past.

Sales Tracking Software and CRMs

Sales tracking software and CRMs provide highly useful tools that can improve your close rates by increasing your sales team’s efficiency. Common features include automated follow-up reminders, lead-tracking systems, and conversion analytics. The two most popular platforms are SalesForce and Hubspot. Below, we’ve outlined a few of the key pros and cons of each service. 

These tools can help teams identify kinks in the sales funnel and enable marketers to more effectively and efficiently bring in new customers.

Implementing a Customer Acquisition Strategy for Your Real Estate Company

Creating and implementing an effective customer acquisition strategy requires a wide range of skills. Lead generation, lead nurturing, and sales each demand specialized, expert teams with disparate skill sets. Because of the various specialists needed to construct a successful customer acquisition strategy, many real estate businesses struggle to implement a comprehensive strategy in-house.

As a result, businesses often prefer to collaborate with a marketing team that has the necessary resources and talent. Our firm specializes in building customized client acquisition strategies for real estate clients. Contact us if you’re interested in discussing a partnership. 

Source

Last updated: March 8, 2024

SEO is a discipline focused on understanding the needs of searchers. A well-executed SEO campaign succeeds for three reasons: thoughtful keyword selection, high quality content that responds to the searcher’s intent, and optimized conversion pathways to push visitors along in their customer journey. This article is concerned only with the latter: the series of web pages visitors click through on their way to becoming customers.

This customer journey consists of three stages:

• Stage 1: The visitor clicks through to your website from the Google search results

• Stage 2: The visitor browses other content that acquaints them with the company better and increases their trust (known as “nurturing”) until they’re ready to purchase
• Stage 3: The “warmed up” visitor hits one final page that tips them over into requesting a sales conversation

The most common steps along customers’ SEO journeys are depicted in the table below, along with the specific page types they visit. Note that each web page in the visitor’s customer journey is color coded to match the stage of the journey they’re in.

Below, we’ll examine each stage in more detail and discuss how to create optimized pages for each. 

Stage 1: Clicking Through to an Initial Page from Google Search Results

In the first stage of the SEO customer journey, a searcher clicks through to your website from Google. This initial page is often the first contact a customer ever has with your journey, and therefore these initial pages should prioritize two things: 

1. Quickly provide the visitor with the information they’re looking for, answering their search intent and building trust with them
2. Present actionable next steps including links for further reading, contact forms, email list sign-ups and other conversion actions

Searchers of the most transactional keywords such as the buyer and the veteran will land on product, service, or industry landing pages where the call to action is to make a purchase. This shortens the conversion funnel, increasing the chance that those searchers will make a purchase. Searchers of less transactional keywords instead land on blog articles targeting more research-focused keywords, and will go on to view additional intermediary content before converting.

Creating Initial Pages

Because they are your website’s first chance to make an impression, the tone of initial pages is a key factor in encouraging future conversion. The page must adopt the tone and language of the target industry in order to signal membership in the searcher’s in-group. For example, using the term “users” instead of “customers” when writing about SaaS communicates that the writer has experience in the SaaS industry, which makes the audience more likely to recognize them as an authority in that field. Additionally, writers should avoid unnecessary fluff, colloquialisms, or overly sales-oriented content (unless the initial page in question is targeting a very highly transactional keyword.) Instead of an immediate, the goal of many initial pages is to encourage the reader to seek out more information and deepen their relationship with your company.

Stage 2: Browsing Intermediary Nurturing Content

Intermediary content consists of any pages a visitor reads after their initial page, as well as any content sent through lead nurturing channels such as email campaigns or social media. Intermediary content usually takes the form of:

• Blog articles (these also serve as initial pages)
• “About Us” pages
• Conversion-oriented landing pages
• White papers and reports
• Case studies

The goal of intermediary content is to develop a more trusted relationship with a prospective buyer, nurturing their interest until they’re ready to convert. (In addition to the above, detailed and attractive home pages can also serve as intermediary content.) These pages can begin to introduce the benefits of your products or services, presenting them as a potential solution to problems the prospect may be experiencing. For example: 

Although conversion becomes more of a goal as the reader progresses into the later stages of the customer acquisition funnel, content should continue to focus on providing the reader with high-level expertise.

Creating Intermediary Pages

Intermediary pages should maintain an impartial tone but can begin to discuss the advantages of your products and services from a relatively objective standpoint. These pages can also explain more niche concepts and provide more detailed information than initial pages, making them a good fit for white papers and case studies.

Stage 3: Contact Sales Through a Conversion Page

Conversion pages are the final stop on the SEO customer journey. These pages should present your company’s product or service as the best solution for the reader’s needs. Conversion pages are most often:

• Product landing pages
• Service landing pages
• Features pages
• Solutions pages

Because they take place at the end of the customer journey, conversion pages can use a more sales-oriented tone compared to  both initial and intermediary pages. At this stage readers have formed an established relationship with your content, and simply need a final push to reach out to your sales team.

Creating Conversion-Oriented Pages

While conversion-oriented pages must continue to speak to the needs of their target audience, they can be written with a more sales oriented tone. For example, someone looking at an “About Us” page on a company’s website is likely trying to determine whether they feel the company’s values fit them. Similarly, someone looking at the product page or free demo signup is already interested in reaching out. It’s important to ensure your conversion pages answer all of the questions your searcher may have, with clear CTAs dispersed throughout, presenting several opportunities for the customer to convert. 

Implementing Your SEO Conversion Funnel

The work that goes into a fully-functioning SEO campaign can get the best of even the most seasoned marketers. Intricacies such as developing a hub-and-spoke strategy for keyword targeting, evaluating page performance, and updating regularly using the Corpus of Content model is overwhelming. The expenses alone often lead many companies to consider developing an in-house team to handle these developments, but this can be equally a liability without the requisite experience and training.

For that reason, many companies outsource the heavy lifting of their SEO customer journey to an experienced partner. Our full-service SEO agency specializes in customer acquisition through thought leadership content. Our process is designed to provide campaigns with an expert-level tone that speaks to a wide range of target demographics. We handle everything surrounding content creation, including keyword research, audience targeting, and publishing. Contact us if you’d like to discuss a partnership.

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Our team collected data on the market share of each of the major AI search engines in the U.S. as of March 2024. The results are displayed in the tables below, organized by both market share and quarterly user growth.

For the purposes of this study, the term “AI search engine” refers web & mobile applications used by the public to seek answers or conduct research.

Top AI Search Engines by Market Share – March 2024

The Fastest Growing AI Search Engines

The following table displays the fastest-growing AI search engines in the US as of March 2024, judged by their change in estimated users quarter-over-quarter. ChatGPT remains the market leader, but its growth has eased as both Google and Microsoft release improvements to their AI assistants. Among the startups, general purpose AI search engines have seen slow but steady user acquisition, while specialty AI tools such as developer-focused Phind and business-focused Claud AI top our growth report.

Fastest Growing AI Search Engines by Market Share – March 2024

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Last updated: March 6, 2024

Customer acquisition takes place across multiple channels, with each channel bringing strategic value based on a prospect’s stage in the customer acquisition funnel. These conduits to customers can be divided into two categories:

• Primary Customer Acquisition Channels: Primary channels are the centerpiece of customer acquisition, offering leads both conversion-oriented and educational content meant to “nurture.”
• Supplemental Channels: Supplemental channels are used in conjunction with one or more primary channels, but aren’t effective at generating leads from scratch.

Below, we provide a ranking & brief analysis of every available customer acquisition channel in 2023. We distinguish them by function (primary vs. supplemental, lead generation vs. lead nurturing); pros and cons; and average ROI.

Customer Acquisition Channels, Compared

Next, we’ll discuss how to combine these channels to achieve the most effective use for varying budgets and companies.

Customer Acquisition Channel Budget Breakdowns

In this section, we offer ideal budget breakdowns for your customer acquisition program by company type.

Smaller B2C companies should begin their customer acquisition strategy by investing in SEO to begin building the framework for sustainable long-term customer acquisition. To supplement the SEO campaign at minimal additional cost, content should be repurposed for email and organic social marketing. Paid social campaigns should be used sparingly to drive new sales while waiting for organic campaigns to begin producing results.

As with lower budget B2C companies, most midsized B2C businesses will see the best long-term returns from investing in organic channels for their customer acquisition. With a higher budget, however, these companies can choose to invest more in paid lead generation, both PPC and social.

Due to the longer sales cycles of B2B transactions, filling the sales pipeline as early as possible is important. As a result, these companies should devote some customer acquisition budget to PPC despite its lower long-term ROI. The best long term investment for B2B customer acquisition is Thought Leadership-based SEO, so a larger portion of the budget should go to it.

For midsized B2B companies, public speaking becomes a valuable customer acquisition channel that provides exceptionally high returns if you have a skilled speaker. Paid social can be used in addition to PPC for short-term lead generation that reaches a different audience segment. ABM is often a worthwhile investment as well for many industries, despite its inherent risks. Thought Leadership SEO, Email, and Organic Social require less of the overall customer acquisition budget due to increased efficiencies in content creation.

At the enterprise level, businesses have more choice, as larger budgets support investments into all of the above customer acquisition channels. Putting a little budget into each channel allows for experimentation as well as efficiency of spend, as content can be repackaged across each channel (for example, a white paper can be the subject of a keynote speech, a webinar series, several blog articles, and a podcast).

Choosing the Right Customer Acquisition Channels

Choosing the correct mix of marketing channels and executing well on each one is a challenge for even the most experienced marketing teams. While many companies attempt to do everything in-house to save money, doing so often costs more in mistakes and missed opportunities.

For this reason, many companies choose to work with an experienced partner. Our agency takes a thought leadership-centered approach to customer acquisition, creating unique content that’s useful to your audience for both lead generation and lead nurturing. We also provide consulting services to advise you on the best customer acquisition channels for your particular company. Feel free to contact us to discuss a partnership.

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Last updated: March 6, 2024

SEO focuses on the top of the customer acquisition funnel—lead generation—but has an important impacts on branding and lead nurturing as well. The role of SEO in lead generation is clear—prospects discover your business or product through Google, visit your website, and eventually convert into a lead. Just as important, however, is how SEO impacts branding: capturing the top search results for many keywords within a particular topic signals that your business is an industry leader—an implication that is then backed up by the thought leadership content that secured those results in the first place.

In this article, we’ll discuss how to optimize your SEO campaign for both lead generation and branding, thereby ensuring your company has a reliable, low CAC source of new customers.

SEO and Lead Generation

The foundation of SEO is a concept called search intent. Search intent refers to the implicit reason users type in a particular keyword. When viewed through a customer acquisition lens, search intent can be placed on a spectrum, with one end representing intent to learn and explore, and the other representing intent to buy:

At the lead generation stage, your SEO campaign will focus on keywords on the transactional end of the spectrum. Examples of these keywords are:

Grasping search intent improves your visitor engagement since readers are more likely to stick with content that effectively meets their needs. By that same extent, other experts in the field are likely to take notice of your expertise, resulting in more backlinks that also improve your domain authority. Both lead to improved search rankings.

These transactional keywords should be selected according to the Hub & Spoke strategy, which focuses your website’s content on 3-5 core hub keywords, with each longer-tail transactional keyword containing the hub keyword in its entirety. By doing so, you will signal to Google that your website is a niche expert, thereby achieving higher rankings than otherwise possible.

Next, you must create and publish content targeting each of those keywords. Our research has found that the minimum publishing schedule for SEO is 2 pages per week. This is for three reasons. First, each piece of content represents a new opportunity for a prospective customer to reach your website. The second is that Google’s algorithm highly values consistent publishing of high quality content. Third, SEO provides highly stratified rewards, with only a single page achieving the #1 position—and with it, 39.6% of the total clickthroughs available.

Finally, you should regularly revisit and update your most valuable pages using the Corpus of Content model after your first 6-9 months of publishing new content. Our research has shown that Google rewards frequently updated content with higher rankings, and because marketing resources are limited, you will be better served by improving rankings for your 50-200 most valuable keywords rather than spreading your team thin by targeting too many keywords.

Once you’ve achieved high rankings for valuable, transactional keywords, you’ll see an increase in visitors that are ready to buy, or who convert quickly into leads. Many visitors, however, still won’t be at this stage. This is where the branding side of SEO comes in.

SEO and Branding

Whereas lead generation SEO focuses on the most highly transactional keywords, branding SEO will target the more research-oriented keywords, providing searchers with helpful information that both: 

1. Give an authoritative answer to their search intent, establishing your company as a valuable resource and establishing your brand as an industry leader, and
2. Encourage them to move further down the funnel through CTAs and links to more content that will help nurture their interest.

As with lead generation, this is best understood through search intent.The table below shows examples of keywords on the more research oriented side of the spectrum:

While still important for lead generation, a thought leadership approach is crucial for branding. Prospects interested in the more general, research-oriented content have less interest in making a purchase. As a result, sales pitches encouraging them to buy your product will lose their trust, and cause them to leave in search of less obviously partial sources. Instead, meeting their needs directly with highly informational material builds trust and establishes your website as a valuable resource, leading to later sales when they’re ready to buy. For example, a company that makes fleet management software might publish a guide to reducing costs, bringing in searchers who type in clarify and solve keywords.

Using SEO for branding has another benefit when it comes to customer acquisition. Because the lead nurturing stage of the customer acquisition funnel relies on supplemental marketing channels, you can increase the budget efficiency of your customer acquisition program by repurposing this SEO content across email campaigns, organic social media, and any other channels your company uses. This allows your team to quickly create new material to reach a wide range of prospects.

Implementing SEO into Your Customer Acquisition Funnel

SEO is not easy to implement. The process of evaluating search intent, developing a keyword strategy, and adjusting based on leading indicators is difficult even for experienced teams. Furthermore, keeping up with a regular publishing schedule is expensive and time consuming, often beyond the means of in-house teams who also have additional responsibilities.

Often, this leads companies to discuss a partnership with experienced agencies. Our full-service SEO agency specializes in customer acquisition, providing your company with ghost-written thought leadership that generates and nurtures leads. Contact us  if you’d like to learn more about our services.

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Last updated: March 6, 2024

Creating the ideal landing page for a B2B SaaS product is no simple task; it requires a strong visual presentation, the promise of alleviating pain points, and a strategic provisioning of information down the page.

In this article, we’ll be breaking down how truly excellent B2B SaaS landing pages are made. The examples that will guide us are landing pages from Hubspot, Dropbox, and Asana:

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Without further ado, we’ll begin our breakdown with the first thing a visitor sees: the headline.

A Short, Concise Headline

The headline is the first thing visitors see, and should convey exactly what your product is and the problem it solves. Attention is at a premium, so any confusion at this early stage will cause the visitor to leave your site. Let’s take a look at Asana’s headline:

Keeping it short (i.e. “Manage projects with one tool”) communicates exactly what Asana does—consolidate all of their users’ various project management tools onto one platform. All-in-all, this is an excellent landing page headline.

Now let’s look at Dropbox’s landing page. You’ll notice their headline is similarly pithy. Our only criticisms of the page would be that it comes across much busier than Asana’s, and the headline “Manage projects from start to finish” is more vague than Asana’s. 

By contrast, let’s turn to Hubspot’s landing page for their marketing automation software. You’ll see that their “headline” (if you can even call it that) does little to communicate how their software works:

Hubspot’s visitors know that the product is marketing software, but they likely already knew that when they reached this page. What kind of marketing software–Intuitive? End-to-end? The Highest Reviewed? To learn more, visitors have to click to expand the product description and features boxes. Many will not.

People engage with landing pages for 37 seconds on average before making the decision to keep reading or moving on. That means that you have half a minute to grab their attention and prove that your product is worthy of their time. A clear and concise headline makes the most of the first few seconds of their attention.

Social Proof Elements

Social proof elements demonstrate that you’ve not only solved the visitor’s problem before, but you’ve done it for other companies similar to theirs. Some examples of social proof:

• Client Logos
• Press Logos
• Award Icons
• Accreditations

Generally, the higher profile the organizations you’re featuring are, the better. However, in validating your company, you are also creating a brand impression that may not be advantageous. For example, our marketing agency has worked with a number of Fortune 500 clients and we used to feature all their logos on our home page. Prospects started giving us feedback that they thought our agency only worked with enterprises and therefore didn’t reach out to discuss a campaign. In reality, our typical client is smaller than an enterprise, and we’ve since added more social proof that features midsize companies.

Below are two of Hubspot’s social proof elements, which we think they did a good job with: their client logos box, which is just below their headline…

And their awards and client testimonials.

By contrast, Asana’s logo box is less effective because it’s placed two-thirds of the way down the page instead of just above the fold. This is also the only trust element on Asana’s landing page:

A logo box placed low on the page will result in a considerable number of visitors leaving the page before scrolling down far enough to see it.

When creating social proof elements, it’s important to keep in mind the landing page’s target audience. The Dropbox landing page we’ve been examining is targeted at a specific industry: construction. As a result, they’ve chosen a suite of clients from that industry.

While not above the fold, Dropbox has placed their social proof high up on the page, just below the first product features list. This placement ensures that interested visitors actually see the testimonials.

Product Features and Highlights

The meat of B2B SaaS landing pages are the explanations of your product’s features. Once you’ve earned a visitor’s trust enough to keep them reading, your page must quickly explain what makes your software stand out. This section must accomplish the following:

• Address Visitor Pain Points: Visitors arrive on B2B SaaS landing pages because they have immediate problems and hope your product offers solutions. An effective landing page will concisely address all the pain points your software addresses.
• Be Visually Interesting: Few enjoy wading through large blocks of text. Effective B2B SaaS pages include tables, graphs, interactive elements, and videos wherever applicable to illustrate the product for the largest possible audience. Giving visitors several ways of understanding your product increases the likelihood of conversion.
• Demonstrate Value: The entire time visitors are on your page, they’ll be asking themselves “Is it worth the price and time investment?” Your product must demonstrate why the answer is “yes.”
• Include Clear Pricing Information: Displaying pricing information is considered a best practice nowadays as it satisfies visitors and filters out prospects who can’t afford the product and could waste your sales team’s time.
• Interactivity: If your software lends itself to a brief demonstration, include abbreviated demos that visitors can interact with. This firsthand interactivity will improve conversions (and interaction can itself be a tracked microconversion).

Asana’s page does a great job of addressing pain points:

Hubspot’s page is stronger at incorporating visual interest and explaining their value proposition:

The product features are the main reason your visitors are on this page, so it’s critical to understand their search intent and design content around it. Doing so is the difference between a page that drives conversions and one with a low engagement rate.

Mid-Page Calls-to-Action

Calls to action (CTAs) are critical elements of every landing page, but a common mistake is including only a single CTA at the bottom of the page. Mid-page CTAs present an opportunity for your most interested visitors to convert immediately, without needing to scroll further. These will often take a softer approach, such as with Hubspot’s offer of free tools or a demo:

Another soft approach is to pair the CTA with a product feature element, such as an explanation of the value proposition. Asana takes this approach on their page:

The section also includes a strong graphic element using a screenshot from their product, offering the reader yet another insight into how it works. It also demonstrates the ideal placement for a mid-page CTA: directly following the feature section. Many visitors will not feel the need to read on further, so giving them an opportunity to reach out as quickly as possible improves conversion rates.

Dropbox’s CTAs are softer still, and are links to registration walled reports and webinars: This approach helps Dropbox build out a larger leads list which can then be nurtured through email marketing. It also provides visitors with a clear avenue for learning more about the product.

Paths for Further Research

Many visitors who land on your page will not yet be ready to make a purchase, and want more information before making a decision. Including a section that links to other relevant pages articles keeps them interested and on your website. This section must:

• Maintain a Strong Visual Experience: Because they often get deep into technical writing, your LP should be visually appealing to your visitors. Even your link section should fit this mold, properly spaced and using dynamic images that move the eye along the page.
• Allow for Deeper and More Specific Research: Each link must allow visitors to guide themselves to the pages that are most relevant to their interests.

For example, Dropbox allows visitors to narrow in on the exact feature they’re interested in:

Hubspot takes a similar approach:

Hubspot’s page also includes a carousel with links to related products, should a visitor have found that they’re uninterested in the marketing hub:

While Asana’s focuses on industry and customer roles:

This narrows down the intent of the visitor and allows them to really hone in on the specific problems associated with those industries, making conversion more likely. As a bonus, this provides simple linking opportunities for SEO. It’s for this reason that we recommend using landing pages as the Hubs of a Hub and Spoke strategy.

A Final Call-to-Action

The final CTA is your last opportunity to sell to page visitors. It should consist of simple instructions or actionable next steps that visitors can take to get in touch with your sales team, or make an immediate purchase. Asana’s is as simple as it gets:

As is Hubspot’s:

The final CTA has the luxury of being able to take a stronger, sales oriented approach than mid-page CTAs. Your visitors will have skimmed (or even read) all the way through the rest of the page; a clear indication of interest. This is what allows Dropbox to combine their CTA with a pricing comparison:

This helps filter out visitors for whom the product would be out of budget, thereby saving sales resources for those who may actually purchase.

Outsourcing B2B SaaS Landing Page Design & Optimization

A finished, effective B2B SaaS landing page will include all of the above elements, and execute them well. While companies like Hubspot, Asana, and Dropbox already have the resources to hire the in-house talent that makes pages like these possible, many companies find that they do not have the writers, graphic artists, or web designers necessary to create such pages.

A common solution is to outsource landing page creation over to an experienced party. Our agency has over 12 years of experience creating conversion-driving landing pages for B2B SaaS companies. Contact us if you’d like to learn more.

Source

In this report, we share our findings on patient conversion rates across medical practice types, sourced from anonymized client data from between 2017 and 2024. We look at two types of patient conversion rates in this report:

• Visitor to Prospective Patient Conversion Rate, meaning the number of website visitors that reach out to the medical office to book an appointment or learn more about a practice
• Prospect to Patient Conversion Rate, meaning the number of prospective patients who ultimately go on to become an actual patient of the practice

The below table presents our findings on patient conversion rates across practice types.

Average Patient Conversion Rate by Medical Practice Type, 2024

Patient Conversion Rates by Marketing Channel

We also analyzed patient conversion rates across the 7 most common marketing channels used by medical practices we worked with. As with the table above, we present both prospect to patient conversion rates, and audience to prospective patient conversion rates. Our results are presented below:

Average Patient Conversion Rates by Marketing Channel, 2024

Further Reading and Requesting a PDF Copy of This Report

For further reading on conversion rate statistics and improving conversion rates, see:

• Conversion Rate Optimization (CRO) Best Practices
• Average SEO Conversion Rate By Page Type
• SEO Conversion Tracking 101
• The Customer Acquisition Funnel, Explained

If you would like to request a PDF copy of this report, reach out here. 

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