People who know how to do offline marketing often have no idea on how to get started with one of today’s most efficient forms of marketing – search. They know their market segments, and they know how to think about them in terms of demographics. They know which magazines to buy ads in and which industry trade shows to attend. But search seems so much different, because there are no demographics to latch on to. When they come talk to the SEO Professionals, we explain that search keywords are their search market segments… – That’s when it all begins to come together.
It’s not that demographics will never be important search as an SEO Strategy. As personalized search begins to take off (and especially as mobile search grows in importance), marketers are likely to know much more about how their market segments are searching than they do today. So, you might, in fact, know gender, age, industry, and other demographics (and firmographics).
But that’s not the place to start. Instead of trying to map your existing market segments onto search, you need to give in to the idea that the first level of segmentation in search marketing is the keywords that your customers type into the search engine. Those keywords give you the insight you need to craft the message. There is a huge difference in the proper message between those two segments, just as in offline marketing, you have different messages for different segments.
That’s the key to success. Put your copywriting mind to work. Instead of trying to think about what message you want to send, and blanketing it over as many people as possible, you must do your keyword research to find out what people are looking for. Then, like any good salesman – you tailor your pitch to hit the points they need to hear.
So, market segmentation isn’t dead when it comes to search engine marketing. You just need to take what you know about segmentation and apply it in a new way. If you do, your skills in messaging will suddenly start to make you successful in search marketing too.
Tags: SEO Professional, SEO Strategy