← Voices of Search // A Search Engine Optimization (SEO) & Content Marketing Podcast
Voices of Search // A Search Engine Optimization (SEO) & Content Marketing Podcast
The Future Of Revenue Intelligence Platforms In SEO
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- [00:00]
Podcast Announcer
The Voices of Search Podcast is a proud member of the I Hear Everything Podcast Network. Looking to launch or scale your podcast, I Hear Everything delivers podcast production, growth and monetization solutions that transform your words into profit. Ready to give your brand a voice? Then visit iheareverything.com welcome to the Voices of Search Podcast. A member of the I Hear Everything Podcast network, ready to expedite your company's organic growth efforts. Sit back, relax, and get ready for your daily dose of search engine optimization wisdom. Here's today's host of the Voices of Search podcast, Jordan Cooney.
- [00:43]
Jordan Cooney
Hello marketers and SEOs. My name is Jordan Cooney from Pre Visible. Joining me today is Val Riley, who is the VP of Marketing at Insight Lean Unbounce a set of platforms that support customer relationships, landing page optimization, and CRM efforts. Yesterday we discussed leveraging CRM data for comprehensive SEO efforts. Today we're going to dive into the future of revenue intelligence platforms in SEO. Okay, here's my conversation with Val Riley, VP of Marketing and Insightly and Unbounce. Val, welcome to Voice to Search podcast.
- [01:18]
Val Riley
I'm so happy to be back. Thank you.
- [01:20]
Jordan Cooney
Awesome, Val. I'm excited, too. Yesterday's conversation was super insightful. It was super useful in the context that, you know, many of us SEOs are not thinking about what exists in our CRM data. We're not digging into the conversations that are happening with the close one deals and taking that information and leveraging it into a content strategy. A web strategy and experience that will continue to scale our businesses is a super, super insightful direction for many of us as SEOs. So if you didn't get a chance to listen to that episode, please go back to yesterday's episode and dive in. Val's insights are phenomenal. Today we're going into the future of revenue intelligence and how this connects with the SEO world. Before we really dive deep into this topic, Val, can you tell me what does revenue intelligence mean for our listeners that aren't familiar with what this concept is? Give us a kind of a broad definition and view as to what that is.
- [02:21]
Val Riley
Yeah, so you know, if you Google the term, you're going to come up with a lot of different things. And so I will tell you, it's a little bit in the eye of the beholder. You know, for instance, in the CRM category, CRM is CRM. Everybody knows that. So sometimes revenue intelligence platforms are defined as platforms that help you secure deep data and insights into your customers or prospects. Sometimes they've got a mix of, like, technology for things like call recording or AI insights into sales conversations. So I would say it's still kind of being defined a little bit, but across the board, the idea is using AI to power go to market teams in more efficient ways.
- [03:14]
Jordan Cooney
Yeah. And as we think about powering go to market teams and using these insights, what's the best way for an SEO to connect with this? Who are they asking? Where are they digging? I think for a lot of SEOs, this isn't like the first place to explore. I mean, as SEOs, we're so used to, like, well, we'll just go into Google search console, and this is like the knowledge center of what Google tells us about our website. Right. It's such a, such an easy way of getting that data. But I bet you revenue intelligence data is far more sophisticated. Ask into a specific audience within your business.
- [03:52]
Val Riley
Yeah, absolutely. Just getting back to being in that SEO chair, it's such a challenging spot to be in as a marketer these days. Initially we were saying, okay, we need organic search to drive leads. And then we were told, okay, we need organic search search to drive leads that are going to convert to ops. And then it's like, well, the organic search needs to drive leads that convert to ops, but those ops need to close, you know, and then it was, well, those ops need to, you know, close and renew. And now it's like the ask is, well, we need ops that close, renew, and then, you know, become brand advocates and brand champions. And like, I feel like the weight on the shoulders of the SEO specialist and the content marketer is just, it's getting pretty, pretty heavy. And so I, I think what we're saying here is that there's a little bit of help on the way in terms of what we can derive as SEOs from these revenue intelligence platforms. So like you said yesterday, we talked a little bit about, about what's in the CRM, right. But the revenue intelligence platforms kind of take that to another level. So we talked about, like, okay, well, you can get some SEO strategy, keyword strategy, from the ops that you're opening, but what's going to happen with these revenue intelligence platforms? And what is happening today is the AI will help us look beyond those ops, right? Who are the most profitable customers, where's the LTV to CAC ratio, you know, doing best in your organization? And then let's examine those customers and then work back to what worked well to bring those customers into your funnel. So using AI to kind of power some of that intelligence that we talked about where rather than having to dig individually for it. AI is helping serve that up to you a little bit more.
- [05:51]
Jordan Cooney
That's super interesting. And I think that this AI piece is critical, especially for SEOs who want to use this to scale. Once we get our hands on this kind of data, maybe give us a sneak peek behind the curtain in terms of how do we use this? What's the utility of this? And then I want to come back to the AI conversation, if you don't mind, But I want to make sure that our listeners really understand the value of this data and how it gets utilized, maybe in their SEO efforts.
- [06:25]
Val Riley
So you're in your revenue intelligence platform. Right. And you've identified, hey, these are the most profitable customers. Now we're working back from those most profitable customers. What search terms did we use to attract those customers? What terms did they use along their buyer journey that got them into an opportunity with your sales team? Right. And then we're taking, taking their words, their search terms, and we're applying that to our keyword strategy. We're applying that to, okay, how are we blogging about this? Are we making SEO performance pages based on this content, on this keyword? Are we taking this keyword and just building a whole page around it that. Just for SEO purposes? So it's a way to. Your keyword strategy can sometimes feel a little redundant. It can feel a little prescribed when you take the natural language that your most profitable customers are using as they go on a journey to find you. That's very rich keyword data that really powers your keyword strategy in a whole different way.
- [07:40]
Jordan Cooney
And when we go into the utility of AI for that, where does AI come into the mix in terms of helping the SEO scale here and. Or even better yet, be precise. Right. Because I think that's what's a really interesting piece here, is that oftentimes it's not about. More. You said it in our last episode. It's about being really targeted, very intentional. And so I'm curious to see how your experiences, maybe some examples have helped you, your companies, be very intentional in using this revenue intelligence data, driven into this keyword strategy, and then ultimately drive impact back into the business.
- [08:16]
Val Riley
Yeah. So, you know, really, it's about figuring out the best places for you to fish. You know, essentially like your keyword strategy that, that you have from the perspective of yourself, of your company, it's pretty prescribed. Like, you know, you know, hey, this is the category we compete in. These are the keywords that that category uses. But when you dig deep into what your Customers or prospects are saying about how they describe you, how they describe your offer, they describe the journey that they got to you. That's the data that makes your keyword strategy a little bit more unique to you. And then you take that data and really bring it across your whole content plan, your whole content calendar. You say, okay, how are we working? These really valuable keywords that are coming from our most profitable customers, that are coming from the deals, that getting more deals of the type that we actually want. It can really be a powerful tool, you know, however you decide to use it. Blogs, pages, focus, interviews, podcast episodes, like whatever content you want to build around that terminology or those keywords is just going to drive a lot of traffic. That is the type of traffic that, you know, sales loves because it's the type of traffic that converts. And what I see happening in the future is people have these machine learning models built into some of these revenue intelligence platforms that at that point not only are going to say, hey, this is what your most profitable customers are saying about your platform, but they're going to be able to predict the contents, content topics, those keywords, long tail and short keywords that'll actually drive revenue. So that's really where I think it gets super exciting, where machine learning is looking at the terminology that you're feeding it and then looking at the market in a way that humans, you know, probably can do, but takes a lot of brain power and takes a lot of time and they'll say, hey, six months from now, people who are buying XYZ platform are probably going to be searching on ABC terminology. Well now, now you have, you can be proactive and not reactive with your content strategy. You can think, oh, we got to start building content around these keywords because the models are saying this is where the market is going.
- [10:49]
Jordan Cooney
Yeah. One of the interesting things you highlighted earlier is this cross sell and upsell ability through, through your revenue analytics data that you can understand. One of the interesting things that I noticed from a lot of SEOs and content marketers is that we have this strong tendency to like be top of funnel, right? It's very shiny object, right. It's like, oh, look at this new term or this new, hey, this competitor created this amazing piece of content. We need to do the same thing, right? Like, it's very, very like easy to be distracted by that. But in these cross sell and upsell opportunities, there's so much wealth that that can be generated for a business. There's so much gain that can be fostered through, through what your Are your existing customers or customers who are just trying to, trying to elevate their ability to use your product and technology? How are you encouraging your content teams, your SEO teams, your PMs or other individuals that contribute to your content efforts or your web experience? To be mindful of that, to be insightful about, hey, the cross sell upsell opportunities is just as important about our messaging as these top of funnel shiny topics that we all want to chase after.
- [12:02]
Val Riley
Yeah, it's, that's a great point. You know, even within the insightly CRM brand and in the Unbounce brand, we derive a great deal of our revenue from Upsell Cross Sell. And you know, everyone's always looking at new logo acquisition, which is by far the most expensive thing we all do. Right? But like, that's what everybody wants to hear, like, how are you growing new logos? But expansion within your customer base is really like, that's the, that's the power to drive a business forward. And so it's essentially the same type of activity. It's just instead of doing it with your new business reps, you're doing it with your Upsell Cross sell reps, or if you don't have those, you're doing it with your CSMs. You're looking at notes, you're looking at what they're purchasing and when and learning from those, from those aspects and then translating that into your content strategy that is aimed at your existing customer base. So a lot of times a content strategy that's aimed at your customer base, sometimes that takes the form of a newsletter. A customer newsletter. You know, how are we leveraging the customer newsletter with the insights we're getting from Upsell Cross Sell one opportunities and using that to power the terminology, the messaging we're putting in the customer newsletter that by the way, you know, might get a 20, 25% open rate. You know, like, that's amazing. Really. The inbox is like the last bastion where like you're the person, the receiver is actually in control. And the fact that they let your newsletter come into their inbox once a month, you know, you have to treasure that opportunity and you have to be leveraging that opportunity as a content team. So looking at, okay, what is the path to upsell cross sell within our organization? What do the needs typically look like and how can we accelerate that and build content around those keywords that tend to drive our customers to do an expansion with us?
- [14:09]
Jordan Cooney
So Val, this might be a bit of a spontaneous question, but I think it's really important to ask it because Oftentimes, when you get into this zone of using your revenue data and your insights around how customers are making purchases and really looking at the financial derivatives of how your business is scaling, and then you turn that into like a content plan or you turn that into like a web experience. There is this, I think, this mindset that is that you could lose the creativity behind what you are creating. How do you keep the spirit of creativity inside? Or another way of asking it, value for the reader, value for the user as you unfold the strategy like this one?
- [14:52]
Val Riley
Yeah, that's a great question. I feel like if a marketing team isn't allotting some time and space for all its members, but particularly SEOs and content creators, I feel like we're doing those teams a disservice because the best thing to do is kind of take some of these key like. So we, we found some keyword gold, right? What we think is keyword gold within our CRM or our revenue intelligence platform. Let's take that to a brainstorming session. Let's talk about it as a team. Let's get some ideas flowing on how we can create content that's super searchable and SEO friendly, but really engaging to a human reader and makes those keywords come alive. It's a really good point, Jordan. It can't just be take the data out of here and plug it into here. We have to use what's amazing about ourselves, our creativity, our humor, then inject that into those keywords and then come out with content that people actually want to consume and that it's also friendly to the robots that the robots are going to crawl it to. But that's a really good point.
- [16:02]
Jordan Cooney
As we head towards closing this episode, I want to really give our SEO listeners and our content marketing listeners a path towards utilizing this data. Right. If we keep the creativity in it, if we can keep the genuine nature of our content and our web experiences, how do we get started in this? I get the sense that this is a very intimidating space for a lot of SEOs and content marketers to tap data into. From my experiences, this is often something that may be managed through a sales ops team or a finance team within an organization, and those are parts of the organization that are sometimes kind of siloed away from the SEOs. Let's just put it that way. How do you get started? How do you start this journey to using your revenue insight data to help form your keyword content and web experience strategy?
- [16:56]
Val Riley
Yeah, I think we just have to come at it with curiosity. I think that's the best thing is as an SEO, saying, hey, I need access to these platforms and this is the reason why I'm curious. I want to see what's in here and how it can help us drive measurable business impact. Right? So start with curiosity. Start with a small. You know, I'm going to take a look at maybe 6 to 10 of our most profitable customers and I'm just going to look at their journey either in our revenue optimization, our revenue intelligence platform. I'm going to absorb all I can about these 6 to 10 most profitable customers, and then I'm going to take that data and I'm going to think about ways it can inform my SEO strategy. We just have to get to the point where we're not with as SEOs, where we're not looking at vanity metrics, we're not looking at things like ranking, we're looking at what is actually driving repeatable revenue. And what's driving repeatable revenue is in these platforms, it's in your CRM, it's in your revenue intelligence platform, it's in the notes, it's in the stories that those customers are trying to tell you within those platforms. So you gotta go get it. Start with curiosity, start with a small number and see what you can glean from there. And then I guarantee you're gonna find some nuggets that you weren't aware of that you're going to be able to build off of and really see results quickly.
- [18:37]
Jordan Cooney
And that's a great place to wrap up this episode of the Voices of Search podcast. A huge thank you to Val Riley, VP of Marketing at Insightly and Unbounce, for joining us. If you'd like to get in touch with Val, you can find a link to our LinkedIn profile in our show Notes or visit our company websites unbalanced.com and insightly.com okay, thanks to Jordan Cooney.
- [18:58]
Ben Shapiro
The founder of Pre Visible. If you'd like to get in touch with Jordan, you can find a link to his LinkedIn profile profile in our Show Notes. You can contact him on Twitter. His handle is J.T. cooney. That's J T K O E N E. Or you can visit his company's website, which is Pre Visible IO that's P R E V I S I B L E I O. Just one more link in our Show Notes I'd like to tell you about. If you didn't have a chance to take notes while you were listening to this podcast, head over to voicesofsearch.com, where we have summaries of all of our episodes and contact information for our guests. You can also subscribe to our weekly newsletter, and you can even send us your topic suggestions or your marketing questions, which we'll answer live on our show. Of course, you can always reach out on social media. Our handle is voicesofsearch on LinkedIn, Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, or you can contact me directly. My handle is Benjshab B E N J S H A P. And if you haven't subscribed yet and you want a daily stream of SEO and content marketing insights in your podcast feed, we're going to publish an episode every day during the work week. So hit that subscribe button in your podcast app and we'll be back in your feed tomorrow morning. All right, that's it for today. But until next time, remember, the answers are always in the data.