Here is a little exercise for you.
Get a pen and paper and write down all of the terms you think your customer is using to find your products or services.
Here are 5 examples
(your's maynot be these examples as your company will be different).
How can I manage my forecast
How can I get a more accurate forecast
My ERP landscape is a mess, what should I do?
We cannot get enough product to market. what should I do?
How can I manage my demand forecast
(As you can see I'm working with some ERP and Supply Chain vendors, transforming their sales teams to social) Your company products and services and industry searches maybe different.
When you have a list of 10, go into Google and search on those terms. What do you find?
Here is an example.
I recently put into google "how do I get C-level meetings with social selling" into Google and you will see that my article is the top of page one.
What do you see with your examples?
I recently did this for a supply chain company I'm working with and they are not on page one for any of the search terms. Yikes! Think of the money they are leaving on the table?
We are working with a supply chain software company and put in the search term into Google
"Who are the top 10 supply chain software companies to work with"
Now they would see themselves as a top 10 software company, but they didn't appear on page one of google for that search.
So what as a buyer can I assume from this?
Do it for your company, what do you get? What are your buyers assuming?
The answer to this is not an expensive SEO company, (I didn't use one in that example above) the answer to this, is a clear path to make sure you are writing the right content, using the right keys words. Understand your long tail searches.
(It's worth noting that this point that using SEO agencies won't help you, all they do is try and game the system. Once Google change the algorithm you are off page one and back to trying to game the system. But being honest, as I have been in the example above, means that this has been on page one of google since I wrote the article and it is still there today. And that has never cost me a single $.)
Content should inform, insight, educate your audience, don't forget to get a SEO benefit, while you are there.
And just like my example above, you will start appearing on page one of google.
If you do this, you will get on more short lists.
Related: Why Having a Social Strategy Can Revolutionize How You Do Business