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I can’t tell you the last time a yellow pages directory actually made it inside of my house. My best guess is that Clinton was president, my daughters didn’t wear makeup and I was driving a mini-van. The internet and more particularly the advent of search had rendered the yellow pages as obsolete as that damned minivan.
So what’s a business to do? Search is not exactly as easy as going full page front location with Dex…dropping a tracking number and praying that your phone rings. In fact, search is only a portion of what needs to happen these days and the complexity of a search campaign can be maddening to those of you that were used to the tangibility of a yellow page ad.
Depending on what you are trying to accomplish a good search campaign is buoyed by either a highly functional and dynamic website or an offer based landing page … easy enough. Just make sure it’s optimized … that’s important … if you need help with this call me. I know people.
The next step is to figure out just what words your potential customers might type in to find you. If you are a lawn mower repair shop that’s really not a problem … if you are a sporting goods store your word count is going to be significantly higher and more complex. Oh … and don’t forget competitors and misspellings (not all of your customers will be ASU grads). A search query using either comScore Advertising Marketer or Microsoft Intelligence will get you started.
Your next step is to scope out the competition. What are they using as search words and what you have to do to make sure that you are beating them to the searching consumer who … by the way … has way too much money in their wallet (added for dramatic effect). Get a look at your competitors' keywords and ad copy with AdGooroo SEM Insight. Another great tool is
Google Trends … here you do comparative analysis on various topics, see how often they’ve been searched and see just where people are searching for them.
Are you still with me? Let’s catch our breath for a minute. So far we’ve queried the words we need, analyzed our respondents and taken a good hard look at our competition. After a brief stint with a counselor we are now ready to engage in a properly executed search campaign. Right? Not so fast … we had better double back on our traditional marketing campaign to make certain that they will feed our search efforts. You gain extra bonus points for having a cohesive marketing strategy … one that actually helps your potential customers find you.
Your search campaign is underway. Life is good and your hands ache from counting all that money each day. Just be sure to maintain and analyze your campaign weekly. Google Analytics does just that … as does Webtrends. This is important as search performance will vary depending on a number of factors…most of which have to do with the actions of your competitors. How comforting is that?
You can see now why those yellow page ads were so simple (and expensive). Search allows your customer to find you and like many aspects of marketing is an important part of what you should be doing these days to be successful. In most cases search will be a lot less expensive but unfortunately… a lot more complex.
If you need a hand with this shoot me an email to ed@rethincadvertising.com … If it’s complicated we’ll forward it to our certified search specialist … if it’s easy I’ll shoot you an answer right back. Either way … your friends at Rethinc can help you navigate your way to search success…
Comments? Questions? Let us know. We love to get your feedback. Better yet … we’d love to hear your search success stories and methods that have paid off for you.
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