In
the past if you wanted to be sure you'd found the best name for your
business or the right phrases to use in your marketing materials,
you needed to hire a marketing research firm to get a reliable answer.
Using phone surveys and focus groups, a market research firm can tell
you which names turn prospects off and which make people want to buy
your services and products.
While marketing research firms may still be the best answer for mid
to large businesses, most independent professionals and small business
owners, don't budget tens of thousands of dollars for this type of
in-depth analysis. So how do you find out which key words and phrases
will attract clients to you?
You can research and test words and phrases to dramatically increase
the response to your marketing. Thanks to the development of the internet
and a couple of free and almost free online tools you can easily research
which words pull in prospects and which push them away. Use the steps
outlined below, to refine the words you use in your marketing.
START WITH A FOCUS ON CLIENT'S PROBLEMS
Don't make the mistake of marketing your services and products by
focusing on your name, professional label, your credentials or processes.
Your prospects are concerned about their own problems, issues and
needs. For example, the phrase "back pain" is searched for on the
internet one and a half times as often as "chiropractor".
If you're a chiropractor, your marketing materials should focus on
the pain that your clients' experience. Start with words that focus
on prospects' problems. If you can't think of any, use words that
describe the solution to their problems. What problems and solutions
are your clients looking for?
USE ATTENTION GETTING WORDS
Everyone knows that certain words like "sex" attract attention. The
problem is "sex" won't attract clients for 99.9% of small businesses.
It's not going to help a lawyer, cleaning service, caterer, etc. Other
words that get attention are how to, secrets, and free. The title
of this article contains at least two attention-getting words. Can
you identify them? FISH WHERE THE FISH ARE Certain category phrases
exist to describe most types of businesses or tasks. If you are a
web designer, the phrase "web design" is one. If you sell pyrotechnics,
the more commonly used term is "fireworks"; by a factor of twenty-two.
Improve the response to your marketing by using the common phrases
people use to search online, the same ones used commonly in association
with the services and products you sell.
Overture and Wordtracker provide free online tools to help you find
the words and phrases your prospects are interested in. Make a list
of all the words and phrases you think people associate with your
services whether or not have a web site. Then test each phrase to
find out which words attract the most attention.
The easiest tool to test word or phrase popularity is Overture's at
http://inventory.overture.com/d/searchinventory/suggestion/
Type in possibilities from your list and look at the how many times
it was used in a search in the last month. Write the number down next
to the word or phrase on your list and continue testing until you
have a clear winner. Make sure the keywords you use to describe yourself,
and the ones you use on your web pages to help the search engines
find your site are ones your prospects use, too.
ALMOST FREE MARKET RESEARCH
Once you know the category phrase that best describes your services
and products, the next step is to develop your tagline, or the copy
you use in your web site description or even yellow page advertising
copy. If you are a lawyer you might have a listing in the yellow pages
under attorneys, but what should you say to prompt people to call
your office? Do you know which of the following phrases is most likely
to pull in prospects? - F*ree consultation for serious injuries -
Need legal help? - Find the right attorney - Maximum cash compensation
Without doing some market research you won't know which phrase, if
any of these, is the most effective. Thanks to www.Google.com/adwords
it's easy to test out your ideas. Depending on the popularity of your
key words and how long you run your test, it will cost twenty to fifty
dollars or more at Google. You can sign-up, put up as many variations
of your ad as you want, and see which ones people respond to. You
may be surprised that changing a word or two can increase your response
by factors of five or more. Once you see which phrases are working,
try combining them to improve your response even more.
Even if you never run an ad, researching which phrases pull in prospects
can help your business grow. Use the results on your business card,
in your tagline, as the title to your web site or as the title to
an article and pull in many more clients and customers.
2003 © In Mind Communications, LLC. All rights reserved.
About the Author:
The author, Marketing Coach, Charlie Cook, helps independent professionals
and small business owners who want to improve their marketing and
attract more clients. Get a copy of the marketing guide, 7 Steps to
Get More Clients and Grow Your Business. Get the FREE marketing guide
now: Go Here ==> http://www.charliecook.net
mailto:ccook@charliecook.net
Read this Newsletter at: http://www.smallbusinessupdate.com/2004/0203.html |
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| From the Forum: |
| Page Rank Change |
 I am a web designer who, before retirement, worked for a corp in San Jose and published 200+ pages that were proprietary to the company. They existed on an Intranet site behind a firewall. I never had to contend with Internet Search Engines so PR never was an issue.
Since leaving the company, I started doing web design from a small town in Texas. When I first published my site, Google gave me a PR of 3. In an effort to increase that I renamed several pages, splitting the names with hyphens rather than leaving the words run together. All pages except index.html were renamed and all now have a PR of Zero. ...
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By
Charlie Cook
