Revenue Journal®

It's finally becoming clear to everyone that marketing is not about relationships. Customers don't want relationships with sellers. Instead, they want to be able to find a product or service, get their questions answered, and make a purchase - without being forced into a "relationship." No one wants the local car dealer showing up for dinner. It was sellers who wanted a relationship, as if they could somehow magically make a customer loyal for life.

"Marriages" don't happen in the world of commerce. In real marriages - the romantic, lifetime kind - the partners stick it out through thick and thin. Commercial "relationships" are really one-night stands. One partner provides the goods, and the other partner pays the money. If the provider of the money isn't satisfied with the goods, he'll go find another partner.

If not relationships, what is marketing about?

Marketing is about giving customers what they want. That's it. Company owners who know what customers want will sell more. Company owners who don't know what customers really want will have great difficulty attracting customers. They will sell less. "That's obvious," you may be thinking. But here's the problem. All of us who own companies tend to assume we know what customers care about. We are often wrong. I have asked hundreds of CEOs to tell me the top ten things that matter to their customers. Then I have interviewed their customers. The customer's list is always different from the CEO's list.

Sure, some of the same items are on the list. But they are never, ever in the same order. The CEO's #1 item might be #9 on the customer's list...or not on the list at all. And, the absolute, must-have, won't-buy-without-it feature that sits at the top of the customer's list may not be on the CEO's list. And if it is on the CEO's list, it's just another item. It's not perceived as the relevant item.

Why is it more important than ever to know what is relevant to customers?
Because search marketing is where current market battles are being fought.

Marketing has always been like this - new marketing vehicles come of age, and get hot. Everyone flocks to them, hoping that this new vehicle will be the one that finally makes marketing a no-brainer. The vehicle becomes more saturated, experts (good and bad) emerge, competition for eyeballs and brains intensifies, and then the vehicle slowly settles back into its long-term place in the mix.

This has clearly happened with direct mail, advertising, PR, websites, and email. Now it's happening with search engines, both for organic (non-paid) and paid results. Search engine marketing has more potential than previous marketing vehicles because it actually has the ability to reach your buyer at the precise moment when the buyer is interested in your product. However, just as with any other marketing vehicle, you can waste money on it if you don't understand how it really works.

Here's some advice that will help you avoid wasting money - and get the best results - from your search marketing.

1) Be specific. If you are a local company, selling to local customers, your search strategy should include geographical descriptors (towns, counties, states, large nearby cities, etc.). It's not just "tennis racquets," (or, the popular misspelling, "tennis rackets"); it's "tennis racquets Atlanta."

If you sell a certain type of product within an industry, don't waste your time trying to "own" the industry term ("tennis"); there are so many other reasons people would type "tennis" that have nothing to do with buying a racquet, such as finding out who's playing at Wimbledon. But do make sure you know how people search for your specific type of product ("Liquidmetal tennis racquets").

You can use the more general words in your website metatags (code at the beginning of a page that is not displayed when the page is displayed in a browser). But for your paid ads and associated landing pages, be very specific.

2) Don't just depend on keyword tools to find out how people search for your type of product. ASK CUSTOMERS what their search terms would be! Yes, there are excellent keyword tools available, such as Wordtracker and the tools available through Google and Overture. But if you rely on them exclusively, you may miss important opportunities. For example, customers may be considering a use for your product that you are not even aware of.

There are other reasons to talk to customers. You are likely to think of your product in terms of the name of the product, whereas the customer is looking for a solution to a problem. Or, you may use an "insider" term for your industry ("computer-aided design"), whereas the customer will type in a phrase that describes the work he wants to do ("software for designing a gear").

Ask your customers to tell you what they would type into a search engine if they were looking for your kind of product again. Ask prospects the search words they used to find you. If everyone in your company asks this question every time they talk to a customer for the first time, you'll be able to keep track of the most important search terms, even as they change over time. You won't be blind-sided.

Another wise way to get valid search term input is to show prospects a list of search phrases and discuss the list with them. You will be surprised. Andy Mindlin, president of RealWorld Marketing, does this for his clients. He recently used this technique as part of his effort to move a client from #69 in unpaid search results to the #1 position.

When Andy shows the search term list to customers, they often say, "Yeah, sure, a lot of these words make sense. But THIS word - THIS is the one I'd type in. Because if your product doesn't have THIS capability, I'm not even interested." These are the all-important "gating terms." You must know what they are. People have learned how to narrow their searches so that they only get the results they want, and avoid sifting through all those related-but-not-applicable results.

If I were buying a new laptop computer, for example, I'd use the word "pointing stick" in my search phrase, because I won't buy a laptop that doesn't have a pointing stick. The laptop has to pass that test before I consider all other features. "Pointing stick" is the go/no-go issue in my laptop buying process, the gating term.

3) Avoid search engine vendors who promise to place you in hundreds of search engines. The true search experts will tell you this is a waste of time, and they're right. According to PlanetOcean, the top search engines represent more than 95% of all search traffic. "The top search engines today are
like the top TV networks were in the 70's; that's where all the search power is concentrated," says Anne Holland, CEO of MarketingSherpa, which offers a Search Marketing Metrics Guide.

The two top search engines are Google (of course), which supplies results for itself plus AOL, Earthlink, AT&T and others; and Yahoo!, which feeds results into its own portal, plus Goo, Espotting, MSN, About, HotBot, Overture, and others. Other search engines include Ask Jeeves, AllTheWeb, and Teoma. MSN has a new engine in beta that was recently reviewed by Walter Mossberg of The Wall Street Journal, who said it "shows signs of becoming a very serious challenger" to Google. We'll see. As Walt also mentions, Google isn't standing still.

4) Assume search marketing will be an intense, resource-sapping endeavor. Whether you use an outside expert, or manage your search engine activities in-house, expect it to cost you.

Search marketing isn't rocket science, but it requires diligence, research, analysis, and constant testing. Search marketing is a fast-moving area, driven by keyword bidding and easy access to competitive data. For example, you can see the keywords your competitors use in their metatags, just by clicking on "view source" in your browser when you're visiting their site. (But don't assume your competitors know what they're doing. There are a lot of companies just flailing away at search marketing right now.) Also, don't assume that what you're looking at is the real code. They may be using a technique called "cloaking," where the real code is hidden.

Someone needs to be responsible for optimizing your website for search engine rankings, managing and continually improving your pay-per-click (PPC) ads, and creating custom landing pages for the people who respond to your paid ads. Lead-to-sales tracking should be built into your program and managed properly as your search marketing program expands.

As a side note, the paid ad programs offered by Google and Overture are a great testing ground for new products and marketing messages. In a matter of hours or days you can see which search terms and copy are pulling the best. However, be aware that there is such a thing as "click fraud," where a competitor (or someone hired by a competitor) clicks repeatedly on your ad. We'll talk about click fraud in upcoming posts.

Google's pay-per-click program is very automated; it's easy to get started. You just establish an account and begin creating ads. Overture's process is more complicated. They charge a startup fee and require the acceptance of a 17-page agreement. The sales rep creates a custom proposal, which includes recommended search terms and pay-per-click cost estimates.

5) Face the fact that landing pages are where the rubber meets the road; the more relevant the landing page, the higher the conversion rate. As Brad Fallon, founder of SEO Research says, "Prospects who arrive on your website looking for a particular product, service, or topic are more likely to stay and become a lead if they perceive that the site specializes in that product, service, or topic." Brad advises that you create many targeted landing pages.

6) In your pay-per-click ads, match the ad headlines andBODy copy to the keyword, and use the keyword again in the headline of your landing page. Your prospect will be continually encouraged as he follows the pathway you have laid out for him. He will always feel he has "come to the right place."

7) Follow THE CUSTOMER'S buying process, not your selling process. If you understand and support the customer's actual buying process, you will sell more. If you assume you know how customers buy your product, you will be trying to lead them in one direction when they really want to go in another direction. You will both lose. They won't find what they want, and you won't sell it to them.

That's why my book, Rivers of Revenue, explains customer buying processes in detail. It shows you how to map out the buying process for your own products and services. Search engine marketing assumes that the customer already has a need, and is already searching for a solution. You want to get right in sync with her and walk with her to the completed sale. You don't want to do anything to distract her, slow her down, or irritate her. You want to help her buy from you.

Search engine marketing is here to stay; many CEOs and their marketers are pulling dollars from other marketing vehicles and putting them into search marketing. But it's also a rapidly evolving medium, in its "hot star" stage. (On the StepForth news site, they warn that, "The following articles are often time-sensitive due to changing search engine conditions. If an article is more than a week old, there is a good chance that portions of an article will be out of date.")

Expect that you and your marketing people will have to stay in hyperlearning mode for a while, until the star cools down a bit. Even then, your search phrase strategy will change fairly frequently as your customer needs change, as competitors come into your market, and as the search engines develop new ways to produce more relevant and helpful results.