The Holy Grail in Sales and Marketing

The Holy Grail in Sales and Marketing is to have the ability to deliver useful and enticing marketing communications on-demand, 24/7, when the customer is looking to buy.

Whether it is for B2B or B2C, 81% of Americans use Search Engines to find information to help them make purchase decisions. Effective Search Engine Optimization (SEO) of your promotional information to rank on the top result pages of popular search engines is the key to marketing success.

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is not to be confused with Search Engine Marketing (SEM) or Pay-Per-Click (PPC) advertising.

SEM or PPC typically refers to the sponsorship links displayed on the top or the side of the search result pages. Google and other popular search engines provide technology and tutorials to help their customers to develop keywords or search phrases based on the sponsor’s industries, products and services. The pay-per-click (PPC) rates are calculated against the bidding prices of each of the selected keywords or search phrases. Sponsorship cost varies from engine to engine. Generally, the per-click fees are assessed according to the number of companies bidding, the time of day, the geographical location, the size of your pre-paid placement budget, and where and how the advertisement is to be displayed on the search result pages.

PPC can be very expensive. Especially when the person clicking on your ad is only doing market research, or worse - a competitor!

There have also been many incidences when PPC advertisements were a total waste of money due to "Click Fraud" – a situation where a competitor or an unethical PPC advertiser would use low-cost laborers or software to keep clicking on a PPC ad until the legitimate sponsor's winning bid budget is exhausted. At that point, the fraudulent ad buyer would only need a low bid to win the keyword sponsorship space.

Although Google and other popular search engines continue to deploy various counter measures. "Click Fraud" will never go away. The one sure thing in life is that the "Good" and the "Bad" are always at war. The moment we come up with an effective anti-virus solution, another more damaging malware is most likely already lurking around the corner. Moreover, whether we call it SEM or PPC, sponsored search result links are still unsolicited advertisements.

Nobody likes advertisements unless one is looking to buy! Even then, what the customers really want is useful and relevant information that can help them make purchase decisions.

Conducting effective Search Engine Optimization (SEO) to deliver marketing information that is in alignment with what the customers are searching for can promote your brand image, cut down your sale cycle, and improve your customer's experience.

Many companies believe that they do not need SEO. This is because their Website is already listed on the top result pages when they enter their company name or product brands in the popular search engines.

Most promotional campaigns are designed to generate new customers. If a searcher already knows to use a company's name or product brand to search, he or she is NOT a NEW customer. More likely, the searcher is already doing business or was referred. A new customer tends to use descriptive search phrases, e .g. "commercial brokers in Orange County", "document imaging and record management solutions", "best and biggest HDTV under $3,000" etc.

Here are some basic guidelines to developing a SEO program to ensure your marketing information can achieve top organic search result rankings:

1. Your customers need to be able to FIND your marketing information from the top search result links of Google, Yahoo, MSN, AOL, and Ask. These five search engines account for over 90% of all internet searches.
2. When the customer clicks from the result links, your content needs to be in alignment with what is being searched. If your home page provides only general information and the customer is looking for a particular product, the searcher may think he or she is at the wrong site.
3. The navigational design and interactive DEMO experience on your site need to be simple, intuitive, and easy to use. The customer should be able to locate the information they need with no more than 2 to 3 clicks.
4. As the customer is clicking through your marketing information, your call-to-action should be clearly displayed with enticing communications explaining how, what, when, and where they could BUY or inquire.

In summary: "Effective SEO is not about whether you know what keywords to use and how to embed best practice search algorithms to your marketing information. It is really about knowing how to conduct proper market research so you can create, design, engineer, automate, and streamline your marketing communications and sales processes to match your target customers’ profiles and buying behaviors. The primary objective for SEO is to deliver the best user experience and most relevant information to help your customers make the right purchase decision - to buy from you!"

In the next issue, we’ll discuss the process and components to developing a successful Search Engine Optimization (SEO) program.