The ever-useful and helpful Yahoo Search marketing Blog has a post called “Six Tips for Building Curiosity and Influence Into Your Search Campaignsâ€, where guest writer, Gerry Bavaro, VP of client services at the search marketing firm Didit, 'offers tips on how to pique people’s curiosity and channel it for more influential marketing'.
- “Understand the Nature of Search: When we search for something, we are driven by curiosity. When we look further, we are influenced by new information that changes our thoughts in a way that either gets us closer to our objective or on a different path leading to a different result. The key is to keep searchers on the path that you want them to take from query to destination, instead of your competition’s.
- Know Your “Elevator Pitchâ€: Don’t be the marketer with the fuzzy value proposition, paragraphs of information on your landing pages, and disparate, confusing messages across various channels. In a 10- to 20-second statement, what do you provide, and why is it valuable? Make sure your landing pages clearly express these powerful, simple points.
- Create Buzz, Don’t Wait For It: Search volume is driven by awareness and curiosity created in the real world. If there’s no buzz happening, get some going. Communicate with like-minded communities of interest, whether they exist in the form of relevant blogs, social network subgroups, electronic lists or bulletin boards. Give people a reason to “spread the word†about what you’re doing. These strategies can also support increased links to your website, which can help organic search results.
- Truly Know Your Target Audience: You have a target audience, so don’t dilute your marketing messages by trying to appeal to everyone. You need to understand your target audience not just in terms of demographics, but also in terms of psychographics (what are their lifestyles like, what websites do they visit most, how do they communicate, are they socially conscious and active, do price or quality drive them?).
- Be Creative About Everything, Not Just Your Creative; Creativity isn’t just about the design of banners, marketing materials, websites, landing pages or copywriting. Get creative about how you manage your business around search. Include discount coupons for customers coming from paid search to influence repeat purchases and avoid paying again for these customers. Look into co-branded promotions and events with related companies, or those that have affinity and can drive awareness, which in turn can increase branded or generic search volume. If you promote a topic, concept, or type of product/service, consider “out-of-the-box†marketing ideas such as viral videos posted on YouTube, a company MySpace page,or events that can add user touchpoints that will increase curiosity.
- Test, Test and Test Some More: In pay-per-click search, those who test most, win. Establish titles/descriptions and landing pages across campaigns that achieve a baseline of results, then consistently test against this baseline to improve click-through and conversion rates. Remember, any increase in conversion rates will allow you to afford more aggressive bidding/positions, which in turn will increase click volume and overall curiosity.â€
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Navneet Kaushal, CEO PageTraffic is a trusted authority in the search engine marketing industry. He is a featured author at Web Pro News, Search Newz, Promotionworld, Website Notes, DevWebPro, SEO Article and Web Help Now among many others.
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So many people abuse web 2.0
See: http://alexanderkeenan.wordpress.com/2007/09/14/business-should-stop-abusing-the-customer-with-web-20/
You touched on two points and I would like to add two more.
1) Know you “Good Customersâ€; these are the 20 percent of your customers who earn you 80 percent of your revenue. If you are a business this is the group you really need to obtain the desired awareness with.
2) Offer something of value to the customer. Awareness can quickly turn to a negative unless you can offer the “Good Customer†something of real value to them. You can only do this if you truly understand the wants, needs, and values of this customer. If you are really good you can even take advantage of a denied value that the customer is experiencing.
3) Pet rocks die; they were a fade in the 70’s that never returned. If you only intend to make a slash then you better be prepared to ride the wave quickly then get out of the water. Build relationships with “Good Customers†is a long term investment that considers the lifetime value of the customer. It may not be as flashy or exciting but it can make a major difference in the long run.
4) You can give away free money all day people will always take the free cash but there is no guarantee they will buy anything from you. In fact, you can just as easily attract customers that cost you money. These are the transaction buyers who hunt for the lowest cost or super sale. They take the lost leader and leave.
Yes Alexander, that makes sense too. We are in SEO business and same implies to that too.
Over the period of last 7 years, (we been doing SEO for that long now!) we encountered good clients, bad clients. We have several clients who are with us since last 5-6 years and those are actually 20% of total clients. In recent years most of the clients stayed for a year and so. Some even got the initial SEO work done and went poof in 3 months.