Monday, August 1, 2011

SEO vs. Cold Calling to Generate Leads

By Socrates De Souza


Internet users are growing by the day. These users seek out information on the www and make informed purchasing decisions. They resist being called by telemarketers and website owners employing smart SEO practices can easily bring potential customers on to their website. Today, it is a fact that SEO is a more acceptable, non-intrusive and "decent" practice as compare to cold calling, which possesses tremendous nuisance value.

When cold calling started off, the focus was on the seller, not the buyer. The tables have turned today and the buyer is in focus. Online retailers woo buyers by creating customer relation services on sites like Facebook and Twitter, optimizing code to ensure their site reaches out to a targeted audience, writing articles and making videos that will help attract buyers, and performing more such wooing tactics to lure buyers. Ever seen cold callers performing any such activity? Nah, it's just not possible!

Cold calling, like it or not, is losing its relevance at a fast pace. At the most, it can impact only after the web has finished over 70% of the job of informing and wooing the customer. No matter how compelling a cold caller may be, there's no way he can generate leads the way SEO can. Here is why SEO scores over cold calling:

1. If you place keyword rich content in Meta tags, Meta descriptions, title tags, image texts, and body text can help websites reach the top of the search engines. The end result is increasing your brand recall value. How many times did cold calling ever do this in a positive manner?

2. The advancement of SEO today can catapult a website into the top search engine rankings and achieve the same value as 1.

3. Articles and videos help you bring products to customers after search engine use. Both options are considered a part of SEO practices and are utilized to attract potential customers to a product or service. Cold calling is an entirely different approach that makes a person or company look pushy.

4. The problem with cold calling is you're pushing customers into a sale. Proper SEO strategies keep this from happening. This approach is geared to invite a potential customer to your site. When they feel like you are informing them before making a purchase it will be appreciated by everyone.

5. SEO is targeted marketing. Cold calling is unfocused marketing.

6. Another side of SEO is opt-in marketing. This approach asks prospects to register themselves so the site can keep in contact with them. This is a proven working model, but with cold calling you wouldn't ever be able to do this exercise.

7. Cold calling can go against the law as well. Calling after work hours, calling people who have opted out, etc., have the potential to land companies in a soup. No such dangers with well-performed SEO!

So you can see how SEO has taken over the reigns for attracting customers to a business. Plus, you get to enjoy free targeted traffic and enhance your brand value. It's also extremely cost effective and even more when it's settled into the World Wide Web.




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