Most business owners simply set about trying to promote a product or service without finding out if there is a market for that product or service. This is the number one reason why 85% of businesses or new products fail.
The research process is not exciting nor glamorous but it is the foundation of the whole business venture. Good research still does not guarantee success but omitting the research almost always guarantees failure.
Here are two examples of the importance of the conducting keyword research. The first shows the imperative of choosing the right keywords.
Search term           Competing pages                Number searches per day      Â
business consultant                       3,320,000                              1,519                         Â
business consultants                     3,020,000                              3,397
Just one letter different, a similar level of competition yet more than double the number of searches by potential customers. That’s why it is important to do the research process properly to identify the phrases that will be more useful to your business.
Another example shows how making an in-house keyword assumption rather than investing in actual market research can be counter-productive and cost considerable amounts of future money. Business people know the language as an expert but often not that is not the language of their customers. This shows the Top 3 search terms for a very small, high-ticket price niche.
Search term           Competing pages               Number searches per day Top 3 by searchers                   225                                         83
Top 3 assumed by site owners            3,360                                          7
So the entire industry COMPLETELY missed their market because they didn’t speak their customers’ language.
The right way to market your product
The marketing process should be
Market to serve – Message to communicate – Medium to use.
Almost everyone does it in reverse i.e. decides to advertise in a specific paper, magazine or website, then create an ad and finally hope the market spots it. They rarely do because the activity is so untargeted.
Research shows what people are actually looking for, rather than broad, general ideas. This makes it much easier to write messages for or about products to promote directly to those markets.
What is a market?
A market is a desire or want from a group of people. It isn’t the group of people themselves as they will be interested in multiple markets and products. The tighter and more closely the market can be defined, the easier it is to successfully penetrate that market.
An example: Rather than using a keyword like “furniture” or “lounge suites” which 98% of websites do, a much more targeted term would be “green leather lounge suites.” That is what people would be searching for to match their carpet or walls yet very few website owners optimise around such specific terms.
It’s also important to identify buying search phrases not just searching ones.
Communicating with your market so they take action
Copy writing to communicate to help people move forward in the buying process is a task many business owners don’t enjoy doing. They feel that they don’t know how to write and to a large extent, that is true. Writing is a skill that requires:-
understanding of the process, structure and techniques to craft copy visitors will read.
integrating the appropriate search terms in a way that makes coherent reading.
writing without risking exclusion from the search engines by spamming with excessive use of keywords.
Most business people try to market to too many groups or markets at a time rather than focusing on one specific market. They therefore create confusing messages and as a result people do not take action. It’s better to communicate one message at a time, generate profit and then move on to another market or message.
Poor writing can reduce the effectiveness of all the good design work of a site.
But not finding the right market will mean your site is never seen.
Keyword and market research are essential BEFORE you do anything else in your business.
Stay in touch with the conversation, subscribe to the RSS feed for comments on this post.
Recent Comments