Traditional marketing techniques used with search engine marketing

One of the most common mistakes marketers make is getting too involved in the creative. It could be as innocuous as suggesting that a particular colour is more appropriate for the background or that a model of every colour is better on your print ad! Don't get me wrong, it is imperative that you be actively involved in creating the brief and work with your freelancer or agency to ensure that what is created is on strategy. However, you shouldn't try to influence the creative based on your personal perspective or values. It's all about connecting with the consumer. "Let consumer insights be your guide". Note what target consumers are saying and thinking, and what truly matters to them. Give this to them - not what you think matters. Do what traditional marketers do!

So what does this have to do with search engine marketing? Many online marketers try to compete and rank for keywords that are particular to their industry since those are the words that are commonly searched. Higher rank equals higher sales right? Shhh…don’t tell your competitors.

Here’s the challenge:

As incredible as it sounds, you are not the only one trying to get a decent page ranking using this method. Yes you may end up in the top 50 out of millions of web pages but really, does anyone click past the first page? Okay, you may be the exception. How about the second page?

Let’s assume you are getting some clicks based on your bought keywords and organic rankings. How many convert into sales for you? What is the cost per conversion? I would suspect it is not something that you’d want to proudly promote on your blog. But hang on to those converting keywords – you’ll be leveraging those soon enough.

Back to traditional marketing. Remember the consumer insights? What matters to your customers? This is what you will be using to create more impactful campaigns. You are not determining what is communicated, the consumer is. So why not use this same traditional marketing principle online?

Here’s the solution:

Stop using CPC campaigns for general keywords that everyone else is using. Differentiate (yet another traditional marketing term). Pull out those converting keywords. Don’t worry if they don’t make sense to you based on your knowledge of your industry. You’re not the one buying your product or service – the consumer is. Let consumer insights be your guide.

Take the money you saved on general keywords and reinvest it into the converting keywords. Work your SEO efforts around this. Do this again. And again. And again. And again. Each time you look at the converting keywords, you are gathering consumer insights.

Applying traditional marketing strategies to your online activities will help improve your sales.