Don’t Let Search Engines Corrupt Your Marketing

Let's face it, for all the focus on search engine optimization, most of us are going to have to get our traffic the old-fashioned way – pay for it. In dollars (ezine advertising) or in time (writing solid original articles.) Well, thank goodness that's out of the way! The obsession with SEO is a drag on internet marketing, taking your eyes away from the basics of ALL business – on or offline.

Offline, the term ‘niche' means a group of customers sharing certain characteristics. Online, it has come to mean a bunch of happenstance folks who accidentally used the same search term!! If you think about it, from a marketing point of view, it is absurd and massively impoverishing of original ideas.

However, once you free your mind from the Google-clamp, you can start looking at your web business the way it should be looked at – from the customer's perspective!! If you design you site to deal with10,000 random visitors tossed your way by Yahoo!, then the experience they will get will either be bland (you designed for the lowest common denominator) or off-base for a large portion of them.

How would the non-SEO-obsessed marketer, market their business? First, a dose of reality…

The vast majority of web home business people are product-driven. That means they create or select a product to sell then they advertise indiscriminately in the hopes of selling it. Their obsession is with the product not the customer. The SEO-phenomenon locks this thinking in place (and encourages the slick and desperately meaningless sales letters that get written!!)

A true marketer looks at things the other way round. Even though their interests are in a particular space (say, gardening or celebrities or dating) they come at marketing by asking three profound questions:

** Who is my customer?

** What does my customer value?

** What experience do I want my customer to have?

Who is my customer?

Am I selling to everyone in the market? Or to a tiny sliver of the total opportunity? Is my customer the sports fan, or the football fan, or the Bronco's supporter, or the young, obsessed, male Bronco's supporter? You get the idea. Focusing down on a sliver narrows your market, but makes your message incredibly specific. Now you needn't worry about excessive focusing. If you want to increase your market you move up a layer and then introduce another group. So instead of just young, male, Bronco's supporters the site is about Football and contains sub-sections focused tightly on specific groups – young, male Bronco's fans on one page, young, male Cowboy's fans etc. Each feels the site is focused on his individual obsession.

What do they value?

People tell you they buy for rational reasons – product functionality, after-sales service, warranties – and they do, in retrospect! But, what triggers a buying frenzy is the soft behavioral, psychological stuff. Status, dreams of a lifestyle that will turn their family and neighbors pea-green with envy (not wealth you notice, but the dream of what wealth can bring), safety or reduction of risk, sex and all forms of ‘looking good', being admired, and so it goes on… . The more specifically you know your customer, the more your site will focus on these buying triggers. If your site focuses on young women, driven by identity needs and the desire to attract a mate or out-do their female competitors, by needs of emotional security or commitment then its tone is going to be very different than one aimed at young, aggressive, testosterone-driven males looking for uncommitted experiences … well you get the idea. But they may both turn up at a dating site!

What experience do I want my customer to have?

Experience marketing is hugely important. In a world with absolutely no shortage of products that can ‘do the job', the actual buying and owning experience has become an integral part of the purchase gratification. Think of almost any major store. It's a form of living theater trying to create a buying environment that will reassure, stimulate and be part of the offering itself. On the web that may seem less easy. But it can be done. At the mechanical level, ease of navigation in the site – for everyone including the disabled. At the emotional level, the selection of testimonial givers (an admired figure sure beats a nobody) and the way they are delivered. Offline, how easy are returns, the customer service reps, and the ease of contacting you, the follow-up calls and so on. Think of every step in the buying and owning process and how it can be enhanced.

OK, I hear you say. I agree. But, if I'm not focused on SEO where do I find the targeted customers this article seems to imply? The answer is simple. Advertise in a wide range of places, with a wide range of text and keep track of the results. Some will yield more customers than others. Track the ones that buy and then focus on the sources that gave the most buying customers delivering the experience they clearly prefer.

That's how the pros do it!

About the Author:
Michael Kay edits the * Insights Letter* and *The Home-Based Business Review*. These are FREE publications stuffed with ideas, access to resources and free gifts. Subscribe now at www.HBBResearch.com To find out more about designing a business for specific customers find "The Value of Design" at www.HBBReview.com/Main_Index.html