The other night I had the pleasure of going to the new matchsticks movie premiere party. I haven't been to a premiere since I was a little kid and my dad's friend Dwight Brooks premiered his movie. One of the things that impressed me about the matchsticks movie THE WAY I SEE IT was the producer’s connection to his audience. Every single person in there was a skier or snowboarder. No one showed up just because it was a premier. The night that I attended, the premiere had three showings and I would estimate 350 people per showing. Not a bad gig when we don’t even have snow yet.
At first it appeared a little strange that this premiere was being held in a hotel ballroom. I would expect an established production company premiering a new movie to be in a traditional movie theater. After a while I realized this was by design. Scott Gallagher and his team understood that their customer would sit on the floor or stand in the back if that's what it meant to see the movie. Sit and stand they did. As a bonus, skiers featured in the movie like Ingrid Backstrom and JT Holmes were in the back of the ballroom signing posters and magazines.
It's an amazing connection between the folks at matchstick and their customer was something worth watching and thinking about. What amazed me was how narrow the niche was. And it was clearly a good niche. When we use the Internet to connect with our customers we are connected in a couple of ways. The most important of course the referral connection which we can get through social media. You don't get that connection unless you very clearly understand who your customer is exactly.
When you're looking at your business on the Internet can you say exactly what your perfect customer would be searching for when searching for your business. For example if you sold used cars on the Internet, how broad is used cars? Every used car dealer has some slightly narrower niche if they are successful. Some focus on people with bad credit, others focus on people looking for a good deal on a sports car. Each of these give the business an opportunity to find the right customer.
The second type of connection we can make with our customer over the Internet is through search. By search I don't just mean search engines but rather the all-encompassing search. This includes search engines, affiliate networks and placed advertising based on the customer's preferences and activities at the moment they are doing it. For instance if you are the used-car guy who focuses on people with bad credit, your ad could show up every time somebody types in used cars. You'd be wasting the time of money. We try very hard to avoid one-word search keys because the probablity of reaching a customer is close to nil. Many two word phrases like used cars, are so broad that they too count as a one word search term in the world of search marketing.
For example if someone is searching and you have the keyword "cars" in your keyword list and they are searching for the movie Cars your ad will show up even though they have no interest. In the CPM (click per M views) campaign that is a wasted view. In a PPC (pay per click)campaign the person searching might click just out of curiosity but again a very thin chance that they are a potential customer at that time. So if you changed your keyword selection to the phrase "used cars" you greatly increase the probability of reaching a buyer.
Trying to connect to those “maybe later” customers is a waste of time. One of the great selling stories of our generation involved a guy at a major stock firm that hung up immediately if you didn’t say “yes”. He figured out that the time used converting “no” or on the fence person was time lost finding a “yes”. This rule applies to seach. Putting your ad in front of the wrong people at the wrong time just irritates them and wastes your money.
Using keywords like "no credit used cars" as a phrase will increase the likelihood of reaching a customer significantly. For a successful online marketing campaign you must target the right keywords. The better you know your customer and how they search the better and more narrow you can make your keyword niche. The better your keyword niche the better your website promotion efforts in the more likely you are to reach a client.
If you think about building a keyword list for your website advertising campaigns, look for three and four word phrases to use of keywords. Additionally using phrase matching will make sure that you match all of the words in your phrase not just one of the words.
When you focus on your customer and truly understand them it makes it much easier to connect. Your three word and four word phrases should also describe exactly what you do.
Stay on focus and you will connect to the right customers every time. Don't believe me, go to a matchstick movie premier. By the way, Subaru was there too, they knew this group fit the Subaru niche nicely.
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