Search Engine Marketing For Business Brokers Explained

Business brokers face steep competition online, which is why you must maintain a search marketing strategy. While the need for an intermediary isn’t gone, a growing amount of buyers and sellers are finding each other online, and they often attempt to facilitate sales on their own. Business brokers need to interject themselves into the conversation by being where their customers are – and that’s on Google, Yahoo, and Bing. Search engine marketing for business brokers is not optional at this point. Find out how you can optimize your website, landing pages, and paid search campaigns.

How to Gain More Leads Using SEM for Business Brokers

Search engine marketing can be overwhelming, so we’ll break it down by its two main components to make things easy. Your brokerage firm would do well to consider both search engine optimization (SEO) and pay-per-click (PPC) advertising. Ultimately, SEO is your unpaid search-related marketing efforts, and PPC is your paid search-related marketing efforts.

When paired together, these tools are widely successful in driving more website traffic from current and aspiring business owners.

Business Brokerage SEO Tips

SEO is a driving force behind your online presence. Brokerage teams rely on a variety of technical and content-related processes to increase their search rankings. After working with many different business brokers, here are the items we recommend focusing on:

1. Include relevant keywords on listings pages.
Many business brokers host listings on their websites, and when set up correctly, these pages can be a mine for generating traffic. Try to think of what a prospective buyer would be searching for to find your listing. For example, if you are selling a salon, you may want to make “salon for sale in [city, state]” your keyword, including it and several variations within the content. (Bonus points if you can work it into the webpage’s meta title and meta description!)

2. Buyer-related content is just as important as seller-related content.
It’s often assumed that listings pages are enough for targeting new business owners, but that’s not the case. It’s equally important to focus on buyer and seller keywords as this allows you to interlink within the website more, which is a crucial SEO factor. Plus, more buyer-related content drives more buyers to your business brokerage website through other search queries.

3. Optimize for local search.
Think of all the “near me” searches you perform on Google. Business buyers and sellers are also making those to find you, which is why you need to optimize your website to appear in local search listings. To do so, make sure you have your correct business name, address, phone number, hours, and website within your listing.

Business Brokerage PPC Tips

What’s listed above will drive traffic to your website organically or without any monetary assistance. But, business brokers who want to get their website in front of even more eyes should consider creating sponsored ads for search engine result pages and other websites.

1. Run search and display campaigns.
Search ads are preferred as they connect businesses with users actively looking for their products or services. In contrast, display ads are shown across different websites, which is a far less targeted approach. As a business broker, you may feel that search ads are your best bet, but we encourage you to spread your budget across both sets of campaigns to increase reach and brand awareness. Buying and selling a business is a gradual process, and display campaigns will help your firm stay at the top of customers’ minds no matter how close they are to taking the leap.

2. Buy competitor names as keywords.
This may seem counterintuitive, but you can see a strong return on this by converting users looking at your competitors’ brokerage services. You’ll need to monitor these keywords pretty diligently. If they have low conversion rates, you’ll want to exclude them as negative keywords. Also, keep in mind that you cannot use your competitors’ names in your ad copy.

Of all digital marketing tactics, search engine marketing is often the most challenging as it is so extensive. If you’re in need of SEO, PPC, website design, social media, or other marketing services for your business brokerage office, rely on Front Porch Solutions to increase your brand awareness and website traffic. Contact us today to discuss our digital marketing services!