Make Your Search Engine Marketing Work Hard For You!

Make Your Search Engine Marketing Work Hard For You!
By Patrick Zuluaga

You have a website and you are looking at implementing Search Engine Marketing (SEM) to build web visitor traffic. Before investing in Search Engine Optimization (SEO) and or Search Engine Advertising (i.e. Google AdWords) you need to ensure that your website is business ready! You must have an online web business presence that is ready to convert your web visitors.

If your web business presence is not optimised to convert your web visitors the money you spend in any form of search engine marketing is wasteful. It is the worst possible scenario, after spending heaps of money to get web visitors to your website they will just bounce back out of your site because you failed to capture their interest and did not provide an compelling ‘call to action’.

To ensure you are in a position to effectively convert your web visitors you will need to act on the following four points:

1. You must understand what is driving your target customers. This is the key foundation to ensure you are able to convert your web visitors into customers. If you understand what they want and what is important to them in their selection or buying cycle for the product or service you are half way there. This critical knowledge will allow you to provide valuable, relevant and compelling content that will interest your web visitor and with a well crafted ‘call to action’ motivate them to act.

2. Each and every web page in your online web business presence must have a primary conversion objective and a secondary backup action. The majority of your web visitors may not be ready to convert during the initial visit as they may still be in the research phase of their buying cycle and you will need to provide a value that is perceived as risk-free. This could be free information, guides or subscriptions that will help nurture and build a relationship that may help convert at some future time when they are ready to do so.

3. Test, measure and improve. Effective marketing requires that you test, measure the results and identify areas for improvement. This process is an on-going activity and will ensure that your web page conversion efforts remain optimised.

4. Know the Life Time Value (LTV) of your customer. If you are not aware of the monetary value of your customer you will need to calculate the amount. You will need to determine the average order value received from a customer whether it is a single purchase or multiple purchases over a period of time. Estimate the average gross profit and now you will have a guide on how much you can spend on marketing to secure a new customer.

It is only when you have understood and implemented these points will you now be in a position to invest in search engine marketing.

Patrick Zuluaga has more than 20 years experience in marketing and business development roles with Australian and international companies. He is Director of PMZ Marketing, a consultancy focused on Small and Medium Enterprises to help you succeed in business with better marketing results.

You can reach Patrick via email at patrick@pmzmarketing.com.au or visit the web presence at http://www.pmzmarketing.com.au

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