There are very few businesses that don’t have a sales function. The generation of leads is an absolute must for a healthy sales pipeline, and they must be of sufficient quality and quantity to meet the financial goals of the business plan and to deliver its projected sales forecasts. That is why a search engine optimisation (SEO) marketing strategy is always worth considering… The purpose of marketing is to create sales opportunities for a company’s products and services. One way to acquire leads is through search engine optimisation. Many people are suspicious of SEO, and this is most probably because it began as a ‘dark art’ about a decade ago. These days, nothing could be further from the truth. Its aim is to wave a friendly flag of welcome to Google’s army of digital robots, which ceaselessly crawl every page of every website around the world, in order to feed information into their huge data repository. This information is used to solve a hugely complicated algorithm which is recomputed on an ongoing basis, the essence of which continually delivers the best possible results for their customers. An integrated approach Of course, all companies are different and each will, therefore, require its own bespoke marketing strategy, based on a clear understanding of the target market they are selling to and the features and benefits that make them stand out from the crowd. A strategic marketing plan will ultimately depend on a wide range of factors and will be informed by what competitors are doing too. A customer acquisition strategy will almost always take the form of an integrated approach that includes both digital and non-digital media. Digital marketing is not rocket science