Internet and Coffee

Great. You're the #1 search result for cross-platform infrastructure cluster visualization software. That's exactly what you sell. All set.

Except... nobody's actually searching for that phrase (except you, when you're checking your keyword rank). You're not getting any traffic or leads or customers - so who cares that you're the #1 result?

There are two problems here.

First, you're optimizing your website for the wrong keywords. "But we sell [insert your esoteric term of choice here]". Yes, but no one knows what that is and no one's searching for it. At this point we say, you need to go through a full keyword research process to identify the best keywords for you business - those that have a high number of monthly searches, are relevant to your business, and are actually within your reach to rank for in the first 10 organic search results on Google.

The second problem is, well, these words we found - the high volume, less difficult, somewhat relevant phrases - aren't exactly what you sell, that's not how you would describe what you do. This is a tricky problem. Your customers don't know they need your product, but you know it solves such-and-such problem that they have. Well, in this case you need to educate your customers on what you do. Six months ago do you think anyone knew what "inbound marketing" meant? Still, a lot of people say, "inbound market-wha?" It takes some education. But what we did is we took the perspective of our buyer. He knows he needs to generate leads online to grow his business. She knows she needs to monitor her company's web presence and get found in search engines and start blogging. They know they need to do this "Internet marketing stuff".

We still call ourselves an inbound marketing system. But we know it requires explanation. We recognize people are looking for an Internet marketing solution and so that's where we meet our market in the middle. We go to them, understand their problems and needs, and explain how what we do solves their problems. The focus here is changing from yourself to your customers. Because otherwise you're just standing alone on that soapbox of yours shouting to a nonexistent crowd.

Photo Credit Thomas Hawk