Apr 16 2008
The Most Important Question for Your Search Campaigns
Running a search campaign requires that you collect and analyze a bunch of data. Of all the metrics you are collecting what is most important question that you should be asking? Some might say what is my conversion? Others might state cost per click. But chances are you aren’t collecting the most important thing.
What should you be asking: Why are my potential customers here? This is by far the most important and overlooked aspect of a campaign. Let’s say for example that you are a jeweler and advertising on terms related to “ruby.” Now, from your perspective that makes perfect sense. You sell rubies so you should naturally be advertising on them right? Not always.
What you should be asking yourself is what do people typing in this term really want? In the case of “ruby” most of that traffic is actually looking for information on the Ruby on Rails programming language and framework. So you might be paying for quite a lot of traffic that completely misses the mark.
When you are researching your market you want to break up all your keywords into really tight groupings. Each of these is a segment. Now ask each of these segments. So in our jewelry example we might have a tight group around “ruby” terms. When you drive traffic from this segment you’ll want to ask them “What were you looking for today? What is your most important question?”
When you start collecting this data the psychology of each and every single terms starts to unfold. By analyzing their answers you’ll realize that a majority of the traffic search on “Ruby” wants computer stuff and not gems. On the other hand you might find that “Rubies” is the where your audience truly lies.
But wait, it gets better. when you collect this data you can immediately integrate it into your search campaigns. When you analyze the data you can prioritize a list of concerns that people in a particular segment have. You can use this information in your landing pages and absolutely trounce conversion. When you speak to your audience in the same language and hit on all their major concerns you are much more likely to close the sale.
Go out and start digging into the psychology of your market. I bet you’ll find a huge pot of gold.
This blog and the video about domain values are two of the most educational things I’ve seen about making money online. You should really do more of this stuff and establish yourself as a serious expert on the topic. Maybe writing an article for a print magazine?
Well done, and thanks for the help!