Cater For Different Motives to Gain More Customers Through Search

This post is about a little piece of information that can turn around a failing search campaign; A golden nugget of knowledge that can turn an already-good campaign into an utter barnstormer; A pearl of super-condensed wisdom that can… You get the picture - it’s something really simple that offers big benefits yet hardly anyone recognises its possibilities…

Here’s a chart from the latest Enquiro search survey showing a summary of 1,086 b2b buyers answering the question (totally paraphrased):

“where (online) do you start each phase of the purchase cycle”?

• 65.3% begin the ‘awareness’ phase of a purchase at a search engine
• 51.8% begin ‘research’ at a search engine
• 42.1% start ‘negotiation’ at a search engine
• 42.6% begin ‘purchase’ at a search engine

What’s The Golden Piece Of Information Here?

The main take-away from that chart is something that most online marketers will say they recognise if you ask them, but few e-commerce sites address & make use of this information. It is the knowledge that ’search’ is used heavily throughout the entire purchase cycle: ie. searchers aren’t always looking to buy there and then. Many searchers are just making themselves ‘aware’ of what’s out there, ‘researching’ the options available, or looking for a better offer in the ‘negotiation’ phase.

How Does This Help You & Where Does It Fit In?

Recognising & catering for the different ‘motives’ of your search visitors offers three big benefits:

1. Increase the volume of your relevant search visitors
2. Improve the effectiveness of your search campaigns
3. Catch buyers earlier in the purchase cycle, when they’re more likely to be willing to consider other possibilities than their usual supplier

The best way to illustrate this is an example. Let’s say you sell one product: The E3000 Super Hair Restorer Serum.

The Obvious, Bog-Standard Search Strategy

The most obvious way to promote your E3000 Super Hair Restorer Serum via search would be:

1. Set up a pay-per-click campaign using the E3000 product page as a landing page for the phrase ‘hair restorer’
2. Try to rank your site as highly as possible for ‘hair restorer’

Obviously that’s a simplification - you’d probably expand your keywords, bid on a few brand terms, etc, but you get the picture…

The ‘Motivation’ Based Search Strategy

A much more effective system is to segment your visitors into ‘motivation’ groups. Instead of focussing on ‘what are we selling?’ this strategy is based on ‘what are our potential customers looking for?’

We do this by Breaking down the purchase cycle into stages & target each of those stages individually with its associated keywords & landing pages focussed on the needs of a searcher at that specific stage. Here’s an example for our E3000 Super Hair Restorer Serum:

Phase 1 - Awareness (find out about the problem)

• potential keywords to target: balding, alopecia, hair loss
• landing page tactics: educate the visitor, present a memorable experience & trustworthy information, offer pdf info sheets, whitepaper downloads, etc, try to capture their email address to follow up later
• objective: try & keep yourself in the front of their mind during later stages of the purchase cycle & present your site as a trusted information source

Phase 2 - Research (find out about potential solutions)

• potential keyword to target: hair restorer, hair loss treatments, best way to restore hair, hair regrowth products
• landing page tactics: educate the visitor, be memorable/trustworthy, try to capture the visitor’s email address to market to later
• objective: put your product at the top of the visitor’s shortlist of options

Phase 3 - Negotiation (evaluate the solutions & narrow the options)

• potential keywords to target: cheap hair loss treatment, best hair loss treatment, hair restorer comparisons, hair regrowth reviews
• landing page tactics: focus on benefits/value for money, prove you’re better than the competition
• objective: present yourself as the option they’re looking for, the logical choice, offer the opportunity to buy

Phase 4 - Purchase (decide whether to buy this product now)

• potential keywords to target: e3000, hair restorer serum, e3000 serum, buy hair restorer
• landing page tactics: provide images/instructions for using the product, focus on benefits, include special offers, persuade toward a sale
• objective: sell the product

The idea is simple: potential buyers have different needs at different points. By meeting those needs (rather than just assuming that they’re always ready to buy here & now), you give yourself a better chance overall of gaining them as a customer.

How To Apply This To Your Sites

There you have it - a complete plan to take someone at any stage of the purchase cycle toward buying your products or services:

1. Define the stages a customer would go through in the purchase cycle of your product (from discovering there’s a problem right through to buying the solution)
2. Put together some initial sets of keywords that searchers would use during each of those stages
3. Create site pages to cater for the needs of visitors at each of those stages
4. Launch the campaign
5. Tweak/expand landing pages to improve your results
6. Tweak/expand keywords to improve your results