What If Hot Quixtar Customers Wore Brilliant Yellow Jerseys?
For years, I have repeatedly had the enjoyment of acting as a consultant directly with Quixtar independent business owners. Regardless of all my attempts to explain, I still often get entrepreneurs that say, "search engine campaigns might be good, but not necessarily for my health-fitness-wellness, telecommunications, financial services, books, food-beverage, house and kitchenwares."
While this still shocks me, I'm certain that one of the reasons I hear this is because the "concept" of search engine campaigns is still not understood. Perhaps an analogy will clarify.
What if you could stand at the front door of a Wal-Mart or CompUSA and immediately spot customers who were looking for your product? Lets say they wore brilliant Yellow shirts stating what they were planning to purchase at the store. Imagine if these shoppers knew to go straight to you rather than wander the store aimlessly looking? With Yahoo's Sponsored Search, Google AdWords, or any of the top 10 pay per click search engines, you connect with your prospects immediately, the second they want to hear from you.
Now let's dig a bit deeper into this idea. What if you could have a thousand college students at the door of every market center in the country. What's more, you'd have to pay them only if they located an intersted customer and began promoting to them your health-fitness-wellness, telecommunications, financial services, books, food-beverage, house and kitchenwares.
Now, even if other 'big dog' companies have displayed giant advertisements, hovering over everyone, it doesn't matter. Few shoppers care for a general ad when something more targeted to their wants and needs is more readily available. All the while, your "agents" are continually monitoring every single prospect that seems targeted for what you have.
Using search engine ads is like deploying a team of super sales "agents", except that these search agents won't require breaks and they require no pay unless they produce results. Your "agents" will be waiting 24 hours a day, 7 days a week for customers looking for your products or services. As soon as prospects start search, you'll be the first to know.
Search engine marketing will grow by 33% this year, with growth slowing to 10% annually by 2010, when spending will hit $11.6 billion. (Source: Forrester Research 02/2005)
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Quixtar | PPC | pay per click | Google AdWords | Yahoo Sponsored Search | Dan Hollings | financial services | kitchenware | wellness | fitness | health | telecommunications
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| posted by Dan Hollings @ 5:14 PM 3 comments |
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Yes, you're reading it right. According to authors Patricia Cobe and Ellen Parlapiano, who trademarked the term "mompreneurs" and were recently featured in Time magazine and various other programs like CNN; their mompreneurs online 
That's an important factor in any search engine marketing campaign; you must decide upfront (as you are preparing your keywords, your ads, and your landing page) what the majority of visitors already 'have heard' about you and the health-fitness-wellness, telecommunications, financial services, books, food-beverage, house and kitchenwares you offer. In most cases you are best to assume they've never heard of you. That's always the safe bet. 
