If you have taken marketing or business courses then you’ve been introduced to buyer behavior and the decision process. Often times analytics gives a picture of what people are doing on your site. What is also important is getting people to your site. In search optimization it is just as important to look at what people are doing off of your site in order to get them to your site. That is where the decision process is helpful in targeting your audience and creating content based off of it.
Satisfying problem/need recognition will help create content that your audience is searching for. Why does your customer look for your product or service? If you can determine the buying behavior of your customers it will be easier to provide the information they are looking for. So take a moment and do a little research. Luggage, for example, is tied to travel. A simple real time research from Facebook and Twitter shows that people buying luggage are going to travel or have already. That’s intuitive right?
Not exactly because most of these companies aren’t looking at the needs of its consumers except Eagle Creek. (Image 1, Click to view in detail)
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What I like about Eagle Creek:
1) They have the destination of consumer in mind. Images of unordinary places with product.
2) During travel the consumer is concerned about size and safety (at check in, on trip, etc…).
3) Consumer has a lot to think about, organize, and watch (Make the trip easier).
Just because Eagle Creek understands this doesn’t mean that they have information gather stage down. Because most people don’t click past the first page in search engines, Eagle Creek loses on the information side of the search. However, it is possible that they don’t do this because their marketing model is a push strategy.
Using keyword research will help you find the right verbiage in the information search. Google’s keyword research tool will give you both a rough idea of what keywords are performed in the information search. The term luggage has over 9 million searches per month. It might be a bit optimistic that a keyword like luggage may be unattainable at 34 million results. So focusing on long tail keywords, like garment bag luggage, with 22 thousand searches and 1.8 million results, will give a better opportunity to reach that first page than a single keyword.
Making use of the buyer intent and information gathering will help your search results. Do little research of your services/products to find out what the needs of your customers are. Then provide relevant content that answers the information gather stage. Keyword research tools give you an insight into the information gathering stage of your target audience. With these two parts in the buying process you will have both more visits and a better click through rate of your customers.
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