More importantly, which type of internet searcher generates more sales for appointment-based small businesses?

In Marketing 101, we all learn how consumer behavior varies while in different stages of the Consumer Buying Process. That process holds true online as well. Different stages generate different types of online searches. 

1. Problem recognition
2. Research 
3. Evaluation of Alternatives
4. Purchase Decision
5. Purchase

Gatherers

Once a consumer has determined that he or she may have a need for your business’s product or service, he or she has virtually unlimited information available to research the subject via the internet. We call these people (Information) Gatherers.

At this stage of the buying process, people are not yet ready to make a purchasing decision. Yet many small businesses spend their marketing dollars trying to reach them. It’s no wonder businesses don’t get new customer inquiries from this type of marketing. They’re targeting consumers at the wrong stage of the buying process.

Hunters

At Swift Marketing Partners, we target consumers when they become “Hunters”, i.e. after they’ve done their research and are ready to evaluate the alternatives and make a purchasing decision. They’ve gathered the background information they need, and now begin the hunt for the company they want to work with to provide the product or service they’ve decided they want to buy.

For example, we’d waste a lot of marketing money if we tried to convince consumers that they needed to replace the windows in their home to save on energy costs. But, once a consumer has determined – through their own independent research – that they’d like to replace their home’s windows, then we work to get that hunter to find our client and select him to do the job.

We hunt just the hunters. It’s another reason why our Pay-Per-Inquiry program is such a cost-effective alternative for small businesses that have struggled with high marketing expenses – and disappointing results –  in the past.

Tony Stewart’s NASCAR® mechanics will tell you there are about 700 things they review, adjust, tune and tweek to get optimum performance around the track. The same is true with online lead generation. Here are 17 of them…

1. Geotargetting the campaign – Where are the most-likely-to-buy customers for your business located? How far is too far for a customer to drive to do business with you?
2. Careful selection of what is to be promoted – What items or services are customers most likely to search for?
3. Timing – When should the campaign run, when should it be paused? Are there seasonality, weather, economic, trend or holiday influences that may affect optimum timing? 
4. Search engine visibility – Are all search engines equally effective for your business? How high should your Search Results Listing or Text Ad appear on the first page to get optimum results for the expenditure?
5. Keyword selection – Which keywords do “buy-ready” internet searchers use? Which are worth the click-cost and which do not convert into customer inquiries and sales?
6. Keyword bidding –Is it more effective to bid for a lower text ad ranking with a lower bid, or does that “leave money on the table”? What is too much to pay for a click?
7. Text ad writing – Which words in a text ad generate click-thrus and which do not? Which words generate clicks from non-buy-ready searchers, and which generate clicks from buy-ready people? Should you write a different text ad for every keyword you bid on? What common mistakes do small business make when writing their own text ads that routinely cost them dearly?
8. Directory and map page submissions – What is necessary to generate a response from buy-ready searchers using this strategy? Are the people using online directories and map pages simply looking for your address or phone, or do valuable buy-ready new customers actually use maps to find your particular business?
9. Search Engine Optimization – Is it really worth paying a company for a year or 6 months to get you high organic ranking for specific keywords? Many companies that hire an SEO specialist for 6 months to get them on the first page of Google still do not get significant new customers from their expenditure – because other items listed here are not optimized properly.
10. Business domain naming – Slight variations can result in very different customer attitudes toward a business – and determine if you receive a ton or a trickle of new customers.
11. Landing page design – Bad design can cause even the hottest buy-ready prospect to click off your site and move on to a competitor’s site. What design factors work best at generating the most inquiries?
12. Landing page content – What are “absolute must” content items (without which a prospect would never call you) and which are “avoid saying this at all costs!” content items? Which content items generate the most inquiries? With text, often “less is more”.
13. Landing page offers – What offers generate calls, and which are worthless? How many times have small businesses offered “free estimates” and wondered why nobody calls them.
14. Landing page response mechanism – Is there a trackable email form and unique, trackable phone number on the landing page? Do they work properly? How valuable are email inquiries versus phone inquiries?
15. Pacing of inquiry generation – Our biggest complaint (which we’ve since learned to avoid) is over-delivering too many qualified new customers to our clients from our online lead generation campaigns. It’s important for us to know how much new business you can handle with your current staff and facility – so we can pace new customer inquiries to you appropriately.
16. Feedback from listening to inquiries – Since we listen to recordings of all calls to our clients that we generate, we often hear tidbits of valuable feedback that can help us improve the ROI on our online spending. For instance, when occasional callers requested “unfinished” cabinetry from a kitchen cabinet client of ours (who only sold “finished” cabinets), we added the negative keyword “unfinished” to our pay-per-click campaigns, which then prevented those searchers from finding our client’s text ad.
17. Feedback from listening to clients – Our clients often tell us which inquiries are the most valuable, and the easiest for them to close the sale. Knowing which set of campaign adjustments generate more of a specific type of call helps us to reduce the spending that generates the other, less valuable calls.

Find out more about how we can cost-effectively generate quality new customers for your business on a Pay-Per-Inquiry basis. Call Swift Marketing Partners at 877-525-1381.

How so, you say? You’re the expert at providing the product or service that your business sells. You may have been in business 15 or 20 years. You do what you do every day.

But when a prospective customer evaluates your business to determine if he wants to buy from you, he now finds an internet full of knowledge. Frequently, that knowledge is greater than what you’re aware of.

Consumers today read not only your website, but also your competitors’ sites and online reviews.

Do you know what each of your competitors are telling your prospective customers? Are they telling them that they are more reliable, have larger selection, are more trustworthy, have better customer service, longer warranties, higher quality and lower pricing than you?

Prospects also read reviews, both good and bad. What have people written and posted about your business? And what do you do if someone posts something derogatory about you? What if prospects only find reviews about your competitors and not about you?

If you’re not aware of what prospective customers will read as they determine which company to call, it’s much more difficult to position your company against them effectively.

At Swift Marketing Partners, we make it our business to know everything that prospective customers might see on the internet when making a purchasing decision. The more we know about what’s being said, the better we can position our clients to become the preferred choice.

Find out more about how we can generate quality new customers for your business on a Pay-Per-Inquiry basis. Call Swift Marketing Partners at 877-525-1381.