Welcome to Episode Six of What's Working Now. Today we're talking about thought leadership and ranking content and search engines. We all know on some level that ranking content is not enough to land new customers. The search engine results are packed with competitors' content. To get prospects’ attention, you must stand out and give them a reason to dive in further. 

To do this, your content needs to demonstrate thought leadership and a compelling point of view. Today, I have Julian Alvarado joining us who is the senior manager of content marketing at Sigma, a data analytics software. 

(13:20 ) Educate for differentiation, and mold it with your company’s unique perspective.

We follow the Challenger Sales model, which basically is that you’re teaching for differentiation. You're using your knowledge of their business and molding it within your unique perspective to teach customers something new — and then, obviously, show them how you can help them solve their problems with your product.

(17:37 ) Use mid-volume keywords to develop better content than your competitors. 

You really need to find that Goldilocks zone. [The volume] can't be too high or you'll never rank. It can't be so low either — you need to find a term that has a good chance that you can develop content better than the other guy and it has to be relevant to your audience and value. 

(21:00 ) Know your audience when choosing SEO terms since terminology has different connotations for different disciplines. 

There's a bit of friction that exists between your SEOs and your content teams. And that's where the art and science of knowing your audience and knowing your customer comes into play. For example, the term “Big Data” is a term that we would all assume would be relevant to our industry. And in the analytics world, everyone's heard of it. You go in, you have every keyword and every one that's related to it has super high search volume. 

But, when you're using that term in relation to business intelligence and analytics, it's a no-no. Because of the connotations that it has with a failed period of analytics. So, basically, our team had to go back and work with our SEO to find other terms that would be accurate and relevant. Which is important, because we don't want to tarnish our credibility with our audience. So that's where the art and the science come into play.

(22:01 ) Demonstrate thought leadership with unique views and ideas.

Are you a thought leader if everyone agrees with you? To that point, I would say it's about discovering a unique point of view. How are you challenging the status quo? And that's not necessarily to say being controversial for the sake of it. But, it's just actually thinking about things. 

(24:25 ) Always be on the lookout for new and compelling ways to tell stories.

At its core, all marketing is storytelling. Human beings have been doing this since the dawn of time. If you tell a story, they will come.

For more on Sigma, visit the company's website at https://www.sigmacomputing.com/.

Check out https://ideallymarketing.com/saaspodcast/ for show notes and additional episodes.