Customers acquired through organic search provide bigger benefits to brands' bottom lines over time.

Think customers are created equal? A new report from Custora tells marketers to think again. While prospects reached via email might lead to high conversion rates for B2C ecommerce brands, customers acquired through organic search prove to be more valuable over time. To fill the sales pipeline with these MVPs, marketers must focus on creating content for SEO to ensure internet users find their domains in search.

Custora asserts the Customer Lifetime Value (the profit a brand can expect to make through the relationship with a customer) is greatest for prospects from organic search. In fact, it’s 54 percent higher than the average CLV for all buyers. The CLV of consumers acquired through email is 12 percent above average, but still 42 percent lower than traditional search results.

Perhaps more surprising is that customers in rural areas have a higher CLV. The report explains this is because shoppers in these areas have fewer brick-and-mortar options than consumers in urban communities. Marketers can use audience targeting to reach prospects in less-populated areas, optimizing their SEO content for local queries to capture high-value leads.

In order to stay at the top of search engine results pages, marketers should pay close attention to Google updates, especially ones that affect local search. The search engine recently rolled out an entirely revamped display, featuring nearby listings in a sliding bar at the top of the screen.

Customers acquired through organic search have lifetime value that’s 54 percent higher than average buyers.

The new carousel interface looks different and changes how users engage with content in SERPs, according to a recent Brafton article. Studies show about half of people click the images in the ‘carousel,’ but the web traffic takes on a new pattern. Rather than choosing the first listings, consumers are clicking listings in the third and eighth positions that have a higher number of reviews.

As local SEO evolves, brands must adapt their content to maintain strong visibility and acquire the most valuable customers.

Lauren Kaye is a Marketing Editor at Brafton Inc. She studied creative and technical writing at Virginia Tech before pursuing the digital frontier and finding content marketing was the best place to put her passions to work. Lauren also writes creative short fiction, hikes in New England and appreciates a good book recommendation.