As your company evolved its web presence did you have a clear picture of the
market for your product? Or did you put up a web site and hope that the
right people would somehow manage to find you? Did you develop your web
presence around your potential customers? Or was it developed around your
company and its products? It has become clear that a customer-focused web
site that targets a distinct market offers you the greatest opportunity for
growth. Perhaps it is time to re- evaluate your potential customer base.
The first step is to figure out what the target markets are for your
product. You then need to focus your web visibility on attracting and
keeping those visitors.
Your target market consists of the groups of people who are potential
customers for your product. What is my target market? Begin by looking at
your existing customers. Analyze their characteristics by observing their
demographics, psychographic and behavioral differences. Do you notice
different group characteristics? These groups are your market segments.
These are the markets that you can target. You then customize your marketing
efforts towards these groups or target markets.
It is a good idea to determine the priorities of your different target
markets. Are there some markets that offer you more opportunities? Analyze
the size and potential growth of each market. These should be in line with
your own company objectives and resources. You may have to focus on one or
two markets.
By now you should begin to develop a clear picture of your potential
clients and your competition. From this you can plan your marketing
strategies to maintain an advantage over your competitors. This should be
done for each target market.
You should try to develop an in-depth understanding of these markets.
What are your customer’s needs, their motivations and their interests both
now and in the future? The marketing program for your particular target
markets should be carefully thought out with this in mind. This is easier to
do for smaller sized niche markets. One important goal would be to
communicate the idea that you are the market leader to potential customers.
The main marketing communication vehicle for many companies is their web
site. The goal is to develop a strong web visibility program which will
attract and reach your target market. This is done through effective search
engine rankings. Once you have attracted your audience your site must be
effective in communicating with and retaining your customers.
An important aspect of your marketing communication will be your web
site's content and its focus on keywords and search terms used by your
potential customers.
Keywords are very important. If you choose the wrong keywords you will
miss your target market, and attract the wrong type of customer. You should
not use keywords that you think are the right ones. You should know in
advance that they are the right ones. When it comes to visitors you should
be looking for quality not quantity. To find out what keywords to use you
should undertake some research.
How do you choose keywords? Your keywords are generally phrases, not
words. You should listen to your customers and how they describe your
product. What are your industry buzz words? What keywords do your high
ranking competitors use? Look at your server logs and determine what search
terms people are using to find you. Use tools such as Wordtracker or
Overture to determine alternatives.
Analyzing potential keywords will give you an understanding of which ones
are highly competitive. This will help you to identify possible keywords
that have been ignored by competitors and will offer a niche opportunity for
you. Your ideal keywords will have low levels of competition. Your keywords
should also have existing levels of searches. The higher the better. Low
competition for keywords and high levels of searches will offer you the
greatest opportunities. You should plan to avoid the highly competitive,
generic, one word keywords that have many searches. You should also avoid
keywords that have no or very few searches done on them. Plan to use only 2
to 4 keywords per page. Make sure you integrate these keywords intelligently
into your written text.
Before you finalize your initial keyword selection you should find out
where your competitors rank on the major search engines for the proposed
keywords. The competitiveness of a specific keyword can be estimated using
Google. Search for the keyword and look at: the total number of results
returned, the number of incoming links to the top sites, and the Google page
rank of the top sites. This will give you an understanding of how you stand
against your competition.
Your goal should be to be ranked on the first page of results for your
keywords. This is because most search engine users do not go past the first
couple of pages of results during their searches.
There is so much research and analysis you can do relating to keywords
and your target markets. And it is worth while as it is a way to stay ahead
of your competition. It is not a one-off task but rather a work-in-progress.
Keywords should be analyzed, maintained, and matched against your target
market and competitors on a regular basis.
You should aim to have a comprehensive understanding of your market and
of your competitors. By understanding the needs and challenges of your
market, and what your competitors offer, you will then be able to identify
niches that you can target. Use this to position your company as one of the
few with in-depth expertise in those niche target markets. Build your
website around that expertise to distinguish your company from your
competitors. Aim to give the impression that you are the market leader for
the niche.
By developing a customer focused web site, together with an effective web
visibility program utilizing identified target markets and researched
keywords which show up well in relevant search categories you will attract
traffic to your site. And best of all this traffic will be made up of truly
qualified prospects which will offer you the opportunity to develop the full
potential of your online business.
Copyright © James Peggie
James Peggie is the Director of Marketing for Elixir Systems – a search
engine marketing agency located in Scottsdale, Arizona. Their website is
located at
http://www.elixirsystems.com and their blog is
http://searchblog@elixirsystems.com
Article Source:
http://EzineArticles.com/
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