Internet Marketing - Matt Bailey [75]
Download as many terms as you think necessary to a spreadsheet. The number of terms will vary according to your market or concept. Start dividing the keywords in multiple ways to get a better understanding of the types of search behavior exhibited by your target audience.
Dividing the prefix and suffix words will enable you to find consistent behavior among your target searchers and realize how search phrases are constructed for specific subjects. In addition, dividing keyword phrases like this will help you write better titles and descriptions, because the prefix and suffix words can be strung together with your primary keyword to provide a comprehensive sentence that will reach across multiple search terms. This will also enable you to reach far into the “long tail” of search terms.
Divide your keywords into a typical decision cycle. Which keywords are general and typically searched first based on need? Which keywords are exploratory and research-based? Which keywords are focused on the decision point? These will help you direct specific searchers to specific points of your site that answer questions for searchers in those parts of the decision cycle.
Chapter 7
Week 4: Leverage Principles of Sales and Marketing
The Internet has become an integral part of our lives, transforming our daily routines in just a few short years. This change brings new ways of doing business, evaluating messages, reaching prospects, and making sales. In fact, it is typical to hear that the Internet has “changed everything.” Because so many believe that the Internet has changed everything, they tend to throw out years of business knowledge that simply needs to be applied to the new medium. Human behavior hasn’t changed; it has only been modified to accommodate a new medium, and we as marketers need to adapt the traditional principles of sound sales and marketing techniques to our online marketing.
Chapter Contents
Monday: Know Your Market
Tuesday: Create the Need
Wednesday: Anticipate the Objection
Thursday: Ask for the Sale
Friday: Don’t Muddy the Water
Monday: Know Your Market
The foundation of all sales is to know and understand the needs of your market. By understanding their needs and motivations, you can better understand how to approach those needs in a more effective way. Simply starting a sales pitch without understanding who your customer is or what they need will result in your alienation. Customers want to like and trust the one who is selling to them, but if there is no genuine interest or understanding, the customer is turned off.
Research Is the Key
This day of learning sales principles focuses on knowing your customer. In doing this, you must take the time to research what they want, not what you want. You already know what you want as a business, but you have to take the time to understand what the customer wants. I have been in so many meetings where the company has had an amazing product—one that should be simply dominating the market. However, the main restraint was the approach to the consumer and the lack of knowledge about what they want and need.
True customer research is invaluable. With the availability of online surveys, customer research, and mountains of data, companies should have no problem finding the best message and approach to their customers. However, this takes time, work, and most of all humility. Those companies that have learned the most from customer research also tend to be the ones that are able to admit their mistakes, realize the customer is the one who makes the final decision, and are willing to change their approach.
Many times, it is the resistance to changing branding techniques online that prevents success. Other times, it is simply following the accepted business practice that has been established over the years. When utilizing keyword research, a company is faced with a stark choice—use the data to adjust your marketing or resist and reduce your visibility.
A personal experience shaped the importance of keyword research