052 | How HealthTech CMOs can Diagnose SEO | Chris Turner of Golden Spiral | Studio CMO

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About Our Guest

For the last four years, A. Chris Turner has guided our clients and our agency to organic and paid victories online as our Senior Director, Digital Strategy & Performance Analytics. He is a true SEO helping make websites work for companies for the last 15 years. Chris is a veteran of the United States Air Force and a lifelong entrepreneur who knows the value of a dollar and how to stretch it.

Show Notes

Do you need an objective set of eyes on your SEO work? Do you have questions or concerns you’d like to bounce off someone? Click here to schedule your no-obligation meeting with John Farkas and Chris Turner.

Mentioned on This Episode:

McKinsey’s B2B Marketing Report

Three Key Elements to Set Reasonable Expectations for SEO

SEO is Organic

People interact with this information in their own ways. If people don’t do searches, there is no SEO. SEO is based on people, human interaction, and human need.

SEO is Not Magic; It is a Scientific Activity

It may be mysterious, but you can instigate certain activities to change your results.

SEO is Common Sensical

On a basic level, if it doesn’t make sense, don’t do it.

Questions to Ask About Your SEO Efforts

• What is the context of your SEO efforts? What company needs are you trying to meet and how well are you meeting them?
• Is your SEO aligned with your company goals?
• How do you operate from a digital marketing perspective? How do you use content?
• How old is your keyword audit? Do you have a contextual understanding of your keywords? What suggestions for future content does your audit make?
• Does everyone involved in marketing and sales have a clear and harmonious understanding of who your customer is?

Is your SEO relevant, timely, and credible? — A. Chris Turner

Three Mistakes Marketing Leaders Make Around SEO

1. Going fast and dirty.
2. Set it and forget it.
3. Not understanding how SEO ROI works.

A Recent Example from Search Engine Journal

It is easier for business owners and decision-makers to invest in paid marketing because it offers clear returns on the investment (ROI); for X dollars you received Y visits/calls/forms. Nevertheless, with proper tracking and systems in place, organic optimization can offer clear ROI along with conversion optimization when SEO is done with the intent of matching the right consumers, with the right pages of your website for the right results.

For example, a B2B computer repair company in Manhattan has an average sale of $10,000. They close leads at a rate of 30 percent and have a conversation rate of 5 percent.
In your ROI model, you project 500 clicks for them a month. To calculate potential revenue, you would multiply 500 (clicks) x 5% (conversion rate) x 30% (close rate) x $10,000 (average sale) = $75,000 per month.

To gain a greater understanding of SEO for your company, download A. Chris Turner’s eBook:

Additional Reading about SEO

• Golden Spiral’s Insights into Google Algorithm Changes
• 12 Reasons Why SEO is Important for Businesses
• Google’s Resource for SEO
• Google’s Reference for Hiring an SEO

 

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Transcript

John Farkas (00:00):

Search engine optimization for many of us that acronym represents some form of a question mark, because in our world today, and as we look at marketing so much is so much more in our control than it’s ever been before. There’s many things that we’re doing in the context of marketing that we can watch, we can monitor, we can analyze, and we can keep our fingers on the dial really well. And then when we get the search, we are all of a sudden in a dependent ecosystem, we are not, as in control. Google has a whole lot more to do with the equation more to do with the equation than maybe we’re comfortable with. Many of us see search as a black box. It’s a hard thing to get objectified. It’s a hard thing to own. It’s a hard thing to control. The reality is there’s some art in it and there’s some science and we’re going to dive into the anatomy of the black box today here on Studio CMO.

Mark Whitlock (01:22):

Welcome to Studio CMO. You’re listening to the podcast produced by Golden Spiral, where we help HealthTech companies understand their market positioning and build demand generation programs that help them win in the marketplace. And a big part of that, John Farkas, is search, which is what we’re gonna be talking about today. John Farkas is the CEO and Chief Storyteller of Golden Spiral. John, glad to have you with us from your retreat center.

John Farkas (01:46):

Super good to be here and I’m increasingly looking forward to being able to be back in the office with all my friends and coworkers. That’s going to be a good time when we’re able to do that.

Mark Whitlock (02:00):

That’ll be a fun day. That’s for sure. Anna Grimes, my fellow co-host is with us and Anna you’ve seen search up close and personal as an account director for Golden Spiral… this week!

Anna Grimes (02:10):

I sure have. Lots of reporting going on.

Mark Whitlock (02:14):

Honored to have an all in the family episode with Chris Turner, uh, on board with us today. Anna, uh, give us the skinny on who Chris is.

Anna Grimes (02:22):

Of course! We are, as the Grand old Opry’s Minnie Pearl used to say, delighted to have A. Chris Turner as our guest. Chris is our senior director digital strategy and performance analytics. And for the last four years, he’s guided our clients and our agency to online organic and paid victories. He is a true SEO, helping make websites work for companies for the last 15 years. And he’s perfected the art of meeting the client precisely where they are in terms of their understanding of how SEO works. Chris, a veteran of the United States Air Force and a lifelong entrepreneur who knows the value of a dollar and how to stretch it. Welcome Chris.

1. Chris Turner (03:08):

Wow. Welcome podcasters to that amazing intro for me that I have, I will have to have that placed on a mantle somewhere for me. Anna that’s amazing.

Anna Grimes (03:21):

I will put it in Slack and I didn’t add the whole thing about how, um, your Philadelphia accent comes out. When you say “urangth” and “woter,”

1. Chris Turner (03:28):

water, it’s water. Say.

Mark Whitlock (03:30):

Hey John, if you search for A. Chris Turner, you might be amazed at what you find, and that gets to our black box. And John you’ve been seeing this with all of our prospects and all of our clients that SEO is more essential now than ever. Why is that?

John Farkas (03:51):

Well, it’s really interesting, Mark. McKinsey just released a pretty significant report looking at the B2B market post COVID. What COVID did across the board was help accelerate transformations that were starting an in-process and for whatever reason, we’re lagging or taking some time to see things happen. Well, what happened in the context of our B2B marketplace is that now we are seeing a widespread adoption. In fact, more than three quarters of buyers and sellers say they now prefer digital self-serve and remote over face-to-face human interactions, which is a little bit scary and a reality we have to confront now in the context of marketing.

John Farkas (04:38):

It’s easier to jump online and find what you need rather than wait for a meeting to get scheduled or try and somehow organize a phone call or any of the number ways that we had been accustomed to doing it. If you can get the answer now, that’s what we want. And so more than ever before, it’s important to really plan for and optimize the journeys that your customers take to your front door. Most solution inquiries in today’s world, start with a Google search. That’s just the reality, right? And what people find and how they experience your brand, starting in that part of the equation is essential to look at. And so search is that front is that front door. It’s that frontier that you have to have some mastery over to make sure that your buyers find you. And so that’s what we’re going to talk about today.

John Farkas (05:39):

It is a black box. There’s a lot of out about it that seems and feels mysterious. We’re going to dive into it. We’re going to crawl inside the black box together today. So let’s look at that. Part of this is understanding that search is a marketing channel, right? And you have to treat it that way. It’s not just a thing that you kind of put some intention towards once in awhile, it needs to be on the front line of your marketing activity and strategy. So Chris, making sure that everybody’s on the same page here lead us into just the foundational understanding of what SEO is. You know, how do we need to be thinking about search?

1. Chris Turner (06:22):

That’s always a great area to start off on. So the first thing I want to do is set the context here and give three key elements of understanding what SEO is so that you convince, set realistic expectation about what SEO can actually do for you. So the first thing that SEO itself is, is organic. That’s why people have always had a challenge with understanding how SEO works is because it relies on people. If people don’t do searches, there is no SEO. If search does not exist because there was a time where there was no such verb as Google. So, the first thing everyone has to understand is that it’s organic. It’s based on people and human interaction and human need because the physical activity of search is finding something. 

1. Chris Turner (07:19):

So remember that even with the paid search side, remember it’s still organic because the paid search is you paying for being able to be found. The second thing is that it’s a scientific activity. It’s not magic. Okay. As much as I love being called a magician and Gandalf, I am not a magician. I am not Gandalf. I am a, I am a technophile who enjoys diving deep into the way, uh, and the inner workings of these platforms. The last thing is honestly, and this, this may come back to bite me at some point. Uh, but ultimately it’s common sensical. If it doesn’t make sense, it’s probably not a good choice, but that’s part of the questions throughout all of this that you have to ask yourself, does this make sense? Is what I’m hearing making sense? If it’s not, then you have to unpack it. A good SEO will always want you to challenge them because they should always have the right answer with facts, figures, and data.

John Farkas (08:20):

What are the factors that we have to make sure in place to ensure that we’re mounting an effective SEO effort?

1. Chris Turner (08:28):

It’s really understanding and evaluating the program that either you’re planning on building or the one you’re already running to understand where your focus is, is it on ranking? Is it traffic? Is it conversions because all of those things yeah. Are aligned to the buyer’s journey, you know, awareness, consideration, and decision, but ultimately what you have to also remember in that is that it’s bigger than just the numbers, the data, Oh, we, we were showing up on the second page in position 12, you know, or I’m getting a hundred thousand visitors to my website for these three keywords. Great. Are they converting? Are those effective conversions? It, there has to be context and purpose to it. It’s really looking at an opportunity to optimize your web presence, not just the website, but your entire web presence to meet the marketplace where your target market is, what they’re looking for, how they’re looking for it and how your business can answer those questions. So anytime any CMO or marketing director is evaluating an SEO program or a plan for an SEO program, it’s beyond just talking about ranking. It’s beyond just talking about traffic. It’s beyond talking about conversions is talking about the way that the program can integrate your business in that search market.

John Farkas (09:53):

So it’s important that the people you’re entrusting with your SEO effort really understand your business objectives. And we’ve seen this a number of times where we’ll see situations where people are really just focused on, okay, we want to drive traffic. We want to see those numbers. And there’s some, sometimes there that’s just a vanity play, right? Because we see there’s a whole lot of people coming to our site, and that feels really good. At the end of the day, I would rather have a hundred people come to my website and 12 of them have them convert than have a hundred thousand come to my website and five convert because the conversions are in most cases that we’re talking about are the part that makes the money and, and, and, you know, unless we’re playing, unless we’re getting paid for traffic, unless we’re a YouTube influencer, people are not paying us for traffic. We’re getting paid by converting customers, people that are actually well-targeted interests that come in and do the things that we need to do to, to capture their interest in our conversation and move towards the purchase.

1. Chris Turner (11:06):

That’s exactly it. And that’s often the times that a CMO or a president or a CEO of a company has been burned by SEO is because the opportunity to do this type of marketing presented itself, and they latched onto it because it was the hot thing to do, or was the new thing, or they were convinced to do it without any probable cause. That’s a use of police term there, but,

John Farkas (11:32):

And that’s where the malpractice comes in, right? Because you’ll, you’ll get these groups or agencies, or even people that’ll promise traffic, and they can promise traffic because traffic is relatively easy to get. If you don’t care about qualified traffic, you can do a lot of things to drive eyeballs to your website, the art and the science come in, in attracting the right eyeballs. So talk to us a little bit about that, Chris, how do we need to approach that?

1. Chris Turner (12:01):

That’s a great way of kind of illustrating that it’s understanding the context of the traffic. It’s understanding the context of why you’re pursuing that traffic, and then making sure that your optimizations align you with the traffic that you’re targeting. I can align anybody to a number of keywords, but it has to be aligned to my business goals. And oftentimes this may start by having conversations with your sales team. So again, I’m always a harper, uh, for sales and marketing, working extremely close together because sales is focused on establishing and then maintaining a relationship and marketing is built on starting and establishing the relationship from a external point of view. So you have the external and then the internal that’s the transition from marketing to sales. So the biggest thing that really starts the conversation is looking at an SEO program or an SEO agency, or a team member, or a team in total, and knowing what questions you need to ask, but also what questions are they asking you?

1. Chris Turner (13:04):

Oftentimes a good SEO will start off not by asking what your goal is with search, but really asking what’s your business goals. What are you trying to accomplish that you feel you aren’t accomplishing? What are you looking for from your search marketing? What other programs are you running? Do you have content marketing? Are you running an outreach program? Do you more or less network and really partner with your clients and then build some digital trust. It’s really understanding how you’re operating from a marketing and digital perspective before they start making recommendations. Um, a lot of SEOs nowadays are really smart. I love my industry because I feel like we’re all out here trying to educate people because it got a bad rap at one point, but then all of a sudden, now Google loves us and they have their own set of SEO parameters and guidances.

1. Chris Turner (13:58):

So the first thing you have to do is ask the right questions, but also look to be asked the right questions. So it’s a two-way street there. They should be looking at ARR expected results, other marketing activity. And then they’re obviously going to want to do some keyword research. So there’s often an audit that will proceed any marketing activity from an SEO perspective. The reason that you’re doing that keyword audit is that’s the connecting tissue between your website and search, because that’s the key indicator of commonality. If you’re a developer out there, or you have a history in development, that’s the primary key, you know, that’s the key of the table that I’m using to make sure that everything is where it’s supposed to be. So oftentimes an SEO as they’re having those conversations and talking about the keyword audit, they’re going to mention things like RankBrain, which is an algorithmic update that happened with Google that allows it to understand context.

1. Chris Turner (14:54):

So when you type in the term SEO, it understands, Oh, he means search engine optimization. So the idea there is that it can translate the intentionality of a search into the contextual understanding of this content aligns with what the search is looking for. Beyond that the keyword audit that they should do for you is also to help identify what recommendations should come next. Because if I do that keyword audit, and I know your business is focused on a specific topic or target, and you’re nowhere to be found, then I have to identify the ways that I can get you there. That doesn’t always mean that the SEO has all the answers. It doesn’t mean that, you know, you need to do a whole new content strategy. It may just mean that you’re filling the gaps. How do you feel those gaps? It can be with paid search. If you need immediate results, it can also be with a content strategy that looks to do outreach, to build back links, that help to foster credibility and trust with the marketplace and Google, because you’re building up signals pointing at your answer as the answer, your content, your resources, your testimonials, everything under the sun can be pointed at as an answer to a question

John Farkas (16:07):

Really is the essence of understanding the black box, because at the end of the day, Google’s primary objective is to give the people what they want. That’s how they live and breathe and continue to exist is by giving people the answers to the questions that they are looking for. And so this goes back to one of the most primal understandings. We, as an organization, continue to espouse on. That’s a clear understanding of your buyer. Part of what has to happen in the context of this. As you’re looking at your product development, as you’re looking at your sales team, as you’re looking at the folks who are leading your search effort, bringing them into a really clear harmonious understanding of who your buyer is and what their real world needs are, and then doing the mining that you need to do to figure out the keywords, what are the things that they are actually searching for in an effort to answer their question, you cannot start with your agenda because the second you do in the second year, agenda is different than what people are looking for. You will not be successful. And that’s where a lot of people go astray. They’ll jump in and say, I want to, you know, we want to rank for X and Y and Z. Well, maybe people are looking for a, B and C. And so your job is to build the bridge between a B and C and X, Y, and Z. And if you don’t do that, you’re not going to be successful.

1. Chris Turner (17:41):

The only thing I’d say, kind of opening up a little bit of a debate is that it’s beyond just the keywords. A lot of that’s where people start their conversation around SEO, the next phase, or the next evolution of that. And we won’t go too deep into this is really conversion optimization. SEO is a data-driven marketing activity. If you gave me money, I could easily spend it. And I could just put some ads out there. I can do a podcast. I can get some influencers and drive traffic. Again. We talked about driving traffic, but is it meaningful traffic? Is that what your goal is, is just to be visible or is it to really connect with an audience and connect with potential clients and have conversations? That’s where you start getting into any type of nurturing. And again, even SEO has an impact there because ultimately as they’re doing that research and you’re helping to nurture them, you’re nurturing them with unique content, specific viewpoints and giving them the tools to be more successful before they even become a client of yours. So oftentimes that’s what people are looking for. They’re looking to build and establish trust before they’ve ever talked to you. And the only way you can do that is to show that you’re a trusted resource. That’s where content marketing comes in. That’s where content and blogs and white papers. And then that’s where SEO can help. Because now we can elevate those pieces of content to the digital marketplace and do outreach to rate new backlinks and really leverage those pieces to drive ROI for SEO.

John Farkas (19:12):

You’re trying to build an ecosystem of understanding. So you’re trying to demonstrate to the market that you understand the world they live in and that you live there with them. And so if what you’re asserting, and what you’re saying is only selling your solution, then you are limiting the bandwidth of your conversation with the market to a very narrow strand that often isn’t wide enough to get the kind of attention in the context of search that you need to start the conversation. And so your ability to broaden out… to understand what are those issues that your buyers are facing that are in any way related to your solution, and how do you bring that into your digital sphere and begin to engage with those touch points with those tools, with those assertions in ways that begin those conversations that bring them in, that add to your authority. Because once Google understands that, gosh, this segment of people keep turning to these folks, they keep tuning into their frequency. That’s where you start to get promoted. That’s where you start building the, the kind of authority that gets you noticed.

1. Chris Turner (20:25):

Part of that evaluation of an SEO to make sure you’re going in the right direction with the program, the agency, or an individual. If you’re looking for a consultant is to make sure that they understand that Google is a business too. And the only reason that Google is really going to value your content is because users value it. And because the users value it, they know that they can trust content to help them get more activity, get more traffic and get more ad revenue because more people are going to be clicking around in that sphere that you’re creating for your business and your solutions because it’s relevant, it’s timely and it’s credible.

Anna Grimes (21:04):

So Chris, you and I have seen a lot of situations where the marketing team says, well, we just need to get leads going. And you and I both know that you can’t cut to the chase like that, that we need to do some other things before we get to that. So what are some of those misconceptions about what SEO can and cannot do? And what are some of the mistakes that people make that can be easily addressed or they should be addressing?

1. Chris Turner (21:33):

That’s a great question. So oftentimes when we face those types of challenges, you’re already in dire straits, and you’re looking for someone to come rescue you. Do not turn to SEO to rescue you. Okay, quick fix. It is not a quick fix because even if we invested in paid search or remarketing or any other type of activity, it’s likely that there’s a fundamental issue with the way that you’re approaching your marketing. So I’m sorry to put this. I got a challenge. You out there, CMOs, are you doing the right thing for your marketing program? Are you focused on the way that you should be marketing? Are you willing to give it time to be successful? If you’re not, then I, I have to say that we’d have to lean in a different direction than SEO, but SEO should still be a part of it. Um, so really the, the, the missteps that I’ve seen through my 15 plus years in the industry is really threefold. There’s, there’s really three ways that people make mistakes here. One is, is going fast and dirty. I just need leads. I just need more volume. I need more traffic. I need more visibility. I need, I need give it to me.

1. Chris Turner (22:45):

There’s always the question of who, what, where, when, why, who are you going after? Why are you going after them? How are you going after them? There’s all of those questions that need to be answered and truly, and honestly face the music and face your fear. You are afraid that there may be someone else capturing the marketplace and you’re behind the eight ball. So a marketing program is only as strong as the components that compose it. So SEO alone is good, but it’s not the best thing you can do for your program. It would be being involved in, paid with SEO, supporting that with a content marketing program, doing social media and doing outreach to engage the marketplace directly. The other part of the mistakes that I’ve seen people make is thinking that you can just do one or two things. Set it, forget it, walk away.

1. Chris Turner (23:40):

We’re done here. Okay. I wrote a white paper, it got a hundred views, 20 downloads. I got three leads off of it. I’m good. Okay. What about the rest of your pipeline? Are you trying to fill your funnel or is your funnel just three people deep? You know, is that good? Right? Maybe, maybe for your organization and your ARR is extremely high. So all you need is one lead to justify marketing for the whole year. That’s a great place to be in, but for the majority of organizations that have a robust marketing program, it takes a little bit more than that. And then the last thing is understanding ROI around SEO. Um, one, one source that I always lean on that has a great kind of fleet of individuals and a number of conferences. Uh, search engine journal actually did a good way, uh, do a good walkthrough of, uh, proving the real value of SEL.

1. Chris Turner (24:36):

And I’m sure after the podcast, we’ll, we’ll share some resources, but the, in their, in their example, they said, you know, you’re a B2B company repair location in, in Manhattan. You can make this anything really, but let’s say you’re a B2B organization. And your average sale is $10,000. We’re not looking at our, uh, ARR or long-term. We’re just saying when I closed the deal, it’s $10,000. When they close deals, they’re closing them at a rate of about 30%. It’s amazing here. We’re talking about marketing, but we’re talking about closing deals. Why are we doing that? Because marketing and sales are relationship it’s, um, it’s a, it’s a marriage. And if your marriage is on the rocks, fix it before we start doing a marketing program. But anyway, so you, you close deals, you close the leads at about 30%, and then you have a conversion rate of 5%.

1. Chris Turner (25:29):

So really when I say you’re closing the leads, they become SQLs, they’re sales qualified, and then the conversion happens about 5% of the time. So with that model, you may say, okay, based on what we’re seeing here, we need to get about 500 clicks a month. If you look at that and you say, okay, we get 500 clicks. Those 500 clicks convert at about 5%. I close 30% of those. If my average sale is $10,000 and I closed 30% of those that will equal anywhere close to $75,000 a month. So how, how valuable is SEO to me, if I can really get there, whether I have to invest in doing content marketing, or if I know the SEO hall, because it is a long-term investment will take somewhere between 35 and 60 days to really start to hit the ground. Then maybe I invest in some paid search. Maybe I do some paid media and use LinkedIn or other resources to drive the awareness and the traffic. But ultimately if I know how much my average sale is, I know how much I’m closing my closing rate. I also know whether or not my digital platforms are helping to convert new leads. Then I have all the material and all the data I need to make informed choices about whether or not my SEL program can be successful and whether it’s currently being success.

Mark Whitlock (26:55):

So let’s take this down to brass tacks for our niche, for who we’re talking to. We talked about health tech, how does SEO help this? How does SEO help health tech marketing executives with their sales cycle and with actually solving the needs of their customers? Yeah. Good question. Cause X, this is all about expectations, right? I mean, the reality is in almost all the folks we’re talking to, we’re talking about long sales cycles. They’re long. They take time. They, they are involved conversations. SEO is not a cure for that. It doesn’t take a two year sales cycle and turn it into two weeks, maybe in once in a while, that might happen in a dream scenario. What it can do though, because when we’re kind of looping back to where we started, we are in an environment where people are very interested in getting more and more and more of the information.

John Farkas (27:53):

They need to make a decision themselves in a scenario where they’re under control and can ingest things at their pace, the way they want it. SEO can help them find what they need. And that’s our job here that first that we understand what it is they need in that as they are looking for a solution, but they’re not looking for you by the way, they’re looking to solve their problem. So we can make, we make sure that we understand the problems that they are looking to solve, and that we have stuff online in multiple different places, multiple different ways that address those problems so that you help them. You feed them an understanding of how to address the problem. That’s how you start to shorten a sales cycle, because, you know, we, we use this illustration all the time. You don’t want to come into a sales conversation where you have to dig the hole and then fill it.

John Farkas (28:54):

Ideally the sales conversation is only for filling the hole. All we’re doing is hand, Hey, and, and, and ideally they’re coming to the sales conversation and the whole hole is three quarters of the way full. All that we’re doing is putting the last few shovels of dirt in the hole, right? That’s all we’re doing in that. So our job is to understand the anatomy of what those problems are and put a whole bunch of seed out there, online in the right fertile ground, to make sure that when they’re searching, that they find the right thing that they’re looking for, because that brings them into the conversation. You’re doing the work of helping them frame their and understand how to address the problem. So then you establish authority, wind trust, and you’re already a good way of part of the way there, by the time they make that phone call.

1. Chris Turner (29:54):

Yeah. And all I would do to add to that conversation is what COVID and the pandemic really have done is help everyone understand the way technology can help them solve their problems. The honor of the days where the milkman delivers the milk to your front door, uh, his name is Amazon now, but in the same way that we’re joking about delivery services, SEO operates in that same vein. It helps deliver the material you’re offering to your market in the places that they’re going. It’s inbound marketing, because the only way you can optimize for search is to be prepared for a search to happen. And so it’s understanding the way to approach that. And yes, it can’t adjust or reduce the sales cycle, but what it can help is make sure that the sales cycle turns in your favor and that it’s coming towards you because what’s happening during that time is people are researching. They’re doing their due diligence as any smart business owner will do. And so should you, you should be doing your due diligence to be where they are going. So that doesn’t only mean optimizing your website. That means building resources, sharing those resources and engaging the marketplace, where they are meet people where they are. And that’s what we’re talking about here is meeting people in search.

John Farkas (31:19):

There’s a black box, if there is. And I think we can take the cover right off just by, by letting people know that that’s the essence of search optimization, making sure that we understand what are people looking for? What are the problems they’re trying to solve? What are the questions they’re asking? What are the exact phrases they’re using to enter into a search box when they have a problem that they’re trying to figure out how to address? And the reality is you can get the tools you need to get those questions answers so that you make sure that you find that you put yourself, that you create meaningful resources that engage important and significant ways. You can create those resources and put them in places where people are going to find them. That’s the essence of what we’re talking about here. There’s plenty of monitoring things.

John Farkas (32:16):

There’s plenty of data analysis that accompanies that there’s lots of going on and that’s where professionals like Chris make things happen. But the essence of it is making sure you’re having the right conversations the right way with the right people. And that starts with knowing your market. And so making sure that your SEO efforts are on leading edge, that they are as well-informed as anybody else around and in your organization about what those essential issues are. Because if they’re barking up the wrong tree, if they’re equipped with the wrong information, if they only have part of the equation, they are inherently limited in their ability to be effective. You have to bring them along in the knowledge of the conversations that need to have, and, and they need to be informing you because at the end of the day, that crosstalk that back and forth, because they’re going to have insight about what people are actually asking. They’re going to be able to know what I mean. In some ways, they’re the front line of listening. And so that synergistic back and forth collaborative, combined understanding is what’s going to really sharpen your organization and help increase the velocity of your sales conversation.

Mark Whitlock (33:35):

So we’ve demystified the SEO black box, or at least we’ve started to if you want. Yes, indeed. If you want to more greatly demystify the black box, we have some resources for you. Chris has provided a list of some helpful links for you. We got those ourshow notes at studiocmo.com/052. And one of the best things that you can do is to download Chris’ guide to SEO. We’ve got a link there. You can download the PDF or read it online at our site. There’s no cost involved in that. We’d just appreciate your email address. And also we’re going to make an offer to you. This is something we’ve offered on a number of podcasts, and we meet it with, with genuineness. We know you’re facing some challenges here. We know you’ve got questions. And so we would love to have the opportunity just to be an objective voice, to hear about what you’re doing and to ask some questions to help you demystify it for your company. We have a no obligation conversation. You can click on the link the show notes at studiocmo.com/052. It’ll give you an appointment setup tool where you can book time on John’s calendar. John will invite Chris along and you guys can sit down. Are we trying to shorten our own sales cycle? Yes we are. Maybe, but here’s the thing we really care about you. And we want to see you succeed in what you’re doing. And if that conversation would help, please take the chance. Click on that link, set up an appointment with John.

John Farkas (35:11):

We’re all in this together. There’s a lot to learn. There’s a lot of opportunity out there and anything we can do to help. We really do. And we’re viewing this as our contribution. You know, there’s, there’s so much important work that needs to be done in the context of healthcare right, right? If we can help advance your cause and you’re working to help make things happen that are going to help people. We want to be a part of that solution in any way we can. And please take us up on that. We’d love to be able to help. Chris is truly an outstanding resource. I’ll just kind of be there to say, yeah, what he said, but that’s really a sincere offer. Please. Don’t hesitate to make that happen.

1. Chris Turner (35:50):

Yeah. If I could just add my final 2 cents in here, what I would say is it’s a culture of caring that keeps me coming back to work every day. Uh, the culture of focused on really saying we know that you can impact the world with the product, the solution, the platform you’re offering makes it more meaningful for us as we do our marketing, because we’re helping connect people in the right ways. You know, all the core web vitals and the RankBrains aside and all the site maps in the world, your organization is looking to change the world. And along the way, you might make a profit or two, but ultimately it’s all about us. It’s it, we’re all in this together. We’re all trying to be successful and make sure that it’s a win, win, win for everyone.

Mark Whitlock (36:40):

And those wins begin, as John mentioned earlier in our time together, with a deep and sincere understanding of who the customer is, that’s at the core of everything we do at Golden Spiral. And you’ve heard it. If you’ve listened to more than one podcast episode, you’ve heard it at the end, as we believe in this, that we must truly understand our buyers problems.

Anna Grimes (37:00):

lead with an empathetic understanding,

John Farkas (37:04):

and then do whatever it takes to make your buyer the hero.

Mark Whitlock (37:07):

We’ll see you next time on Studio CMO.

Mark Whitlock (37:24):

Studio CMO is produced by Golden Spiral: market positioning and demand generation for HealthTech. We are an agency dedicated to helping you realize your market potential. Our music is from Bigger Story Music, a BMG music library. Whatever story you’re trying to tell, Bigger Story has the perfect music to make it better. Really. Check them out at biggerstorymusic.com.