When we are talking to potential new customers, their wants and needs are more often the same. “We want more visitors to our website” – “We need more customers” they say. It’s a hardly a surprise that this is a common theme in nearly every kick-off meeting we have.
As a Digital Marketing Strategy Company we need to implement the right kind of strategy to get the right kind of visitors to a clients website, that may in turn become new customers.
It is often said, and it is completely true, right now, there are people searching for your products and services on Google but if they can’t find you in search results you might as well be invisible. It’s like having a shop on Planet Mars. No-one will visit you because they just don’t know you are there.
Selecting keywords your customers use to search for your products & services
So which words do you need to be found on when someone searches on Google? You might know, at least think you know what people search for, when looking for your products, but what do they actually search for? It is likely your customers use different words and phrases than you do.
To an extent there is help at hand, in the form of Google Keyword Planner. This tool provides some information on search volumes for different keywords based on location. However, it is only of limited value as the information provided is often inaccurate. I was speaking with a Google Account manager recently and even he conceded the tool was not the most reliable.
So what to do?
Enter Google AdWords, probably the best keyword tool in the world.
As you might know Google AdWords is the paid advertising platform, offered by Google. Every year billions of euros are spent across the globe by businesses driving visitors and customers to their websites. The model is fairly simple – your write some adverts, you select words you want your ads to show for, you bid on those words, your ads show when people search on those words, people click on your ads and arrive on your website.
Use YOUR OWN data to select Keywords
Google AdWords is a great keyword tool because you can test the market or markets you want to target with the keywords you think are the ones that are going to convert. You can choose a daily budget and include a whole host of variables that determine how and when you are ads will trigger.
So lets say you have two target markets. One is within a radius of 10KM of Cork Airport and the other is 10KM radius from Dublin airport. With Google AdWords you can you can set up two separate campaigns to run in these specific areas selecting the keywords you want, writing appropriate adverts and pushing people through to relevant pages on your website. You can select a budget and set to run these campaigns for a specific period of time to build up some real data on actual visits you get and the number of searches your keywords generate.
Following the running of these campaigns you will have built up real, actionable data. You will now have factual information on the number of searches carried out on the keywords you selected. You will also have information on how these visitors interacted with your website’s content.
You’ve now found some good keywords, what are the next steps?
The results of this simple experiment will allow you to shape your digital marketing strategy going forward as you begin to build a knowledge of which keywords are the most important you.
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Want to know more about Google AdWords? SWOT Digital have been driving new business to customers websites since the beginning of the century! Find out more about our AdWords Management Service