If you knew the true intent of a search inquiry (query) and you could respond to that intent perfectly then you’d convert most of the time.

For more than a decade Bryan, John and I have been working with clients to determine all the different buying modalities (read “Waiting For Your Cat To Bark?“) and provide relevant pathways for them. That’s complex. It’s hard work. I won’t deal with all that here.

I will share just one powerful concept that will make you a lot of money if you execute it well.

If you want to convert your prospective customer into an actual one you’ll need to scratch her itch. That’s just common sense. The offer must be relevant to the query.

It helps to think of EVERY hyperlink (PPC ads, SERPS, your navigation, banners etc.) as a contract between you and your reader/ prospective customer. Every time someone clicks on a hyperlink they are asking a question either implicitly or explicitly that they expect you to answer with relevant information. Understanding and planning relevant hyperlinks and the content that corresponds to that hyperlink (UX people call this concept “scent”) is how we teach companies to maintain persuasive momentum.

Relevance is always relative to buying mode. Lots of factors affect buying mode (economics, demographics, psychographics, stage of buying process, etc.) but for the sake of this discussion let’s assume a rather straightforward-mythical-ideal you-have-what-I-need-at-the-price-I-want-and-I’m-ready-to-buy sort of prospective customer.

If this prospective customer finds you through SEO and it takes too many clicks with questions unanswered for them to find the relevant scent, shame on you. You may very well have lost the ability to convert them. It’s a lot of work, even if it’s worthwhile, to make sure that you’re relevant for all your prospective customers. Nevertheless, while SEO isn’t free at least you’re not paying directly for the privilege of disappointing your prospective customers like you are in SEM.

It’s so sad! Sad is the amount of smart companies we see paying for keywords that are not helping them convert well. The real money cost is often so large that it approaches tragic.

It’s not that these smartest companies haven’t thought through the you-have-what-I-need-at-the-price-I-want-and-I’m-ready-to-buy questions and provided mostly relevant responses. They have, and not only that but many have done extensive keyword research to find all the terms associated with their product or service. Additionally they’ve tested the SEM ad for click-throughs. Plus the very best of them have probably even done some landing page optimization. This is all good and necessary because there’s a deep connection between the landing page and the search query.

Keywords are the bridge between the prospective buyer’s intent (want, desire and/or need) and the experience you provide. Divining the searcher’s intent and responding appropriately should be the holy grail of all search marketing.

Bryan often says:” Keywords don’t fail to convert…it’s the fault of the marketer to not offer the right landing page experience.”

I agree.

If you get the landing page right you’re well on your way.

But wait, there’s more!

Have you ever considered that a landing page can become irrelevant simply because of the way you’ve set up an SEM campaign? Your keywords/ key phrases are only the triggers for the actual search queries. Both the ad and landing page need to be in sync with the intent of each query;  so it seems obvious that you need to focus on the keyword and the landing page.

But it’s not obvious that you need to pay really careful attention to campaign structure, match types & negatives when you test your ad copy and landing pages for maximum results.

My colleague and friend Craig Danuloff, President & Founder of ClickEquations, offers a wonderful explanation of how to to do this in his free ebook “21 Secret Truths of High Resolution PPC“.  May I recommend that you download it, read it and put it into action immediately?

*** P.S. Full disclosure Bryan and I are advisors to ClickEquations

Can you spare an hour this week for what took me the past decade to put together?

This Thursday, January 7, 12pm EST, courtesy of my friends at MarketMotive, you can join me for this free workshop on the 21 Secrets of Top Converting Websites.

The average conversion rate for a website is around 3%, but many websites convert at 10% or higher. What do they do that you may not be doing? Bryan Eisenberg, who has been helping companies improve their conversion rates since 1998 will reveal 21 of his most valuable tips that will help you increase your conversion rate. In this fast paced session you’ll find relevant examples from retail sites, B2B sites, publishers and everything in between. You’ll learn the key principle of GTC – Get the Cash! Guaranteed you’ll never be able to look at a website the same way again.

Why is this webinar free?

1. My good friends from MarketMotive and I want you to kick off 2010 the right way by focusing in on improving your conversion rate. They gave away all their workshops in December, but I pushed them to give this one for free as well.

2. This is my last presentation for MarketMotive before we begin our Certification in Conversion & Landing Page Optimization course on January 11. We want people to see the caliber of information we provide monthly in our workshops, so please invite others to check it out. They may decide that learning internet marketing online from MarketMotive’s esteemed faculty may be just the edge they need in 2010.

3. If you want to find out more about how you can improve your conversion rate after learning the 21 Secrets to Top Converting Websites, you can always sign up with MarketMotive to have me be your hands on instructor  for the Conversion & Landing Page Optimization certification, so you can do it yourself or you can reach out to me and I’ll help you find someone to help you in your efforts.

I dislike the term “Demand Generation”, also referred to as “Demand Creation” because it’s misleading.

Surely marketing professionals know better. I hope. You could always look it up on Wikipedia where it’s reasonably explained.

It’s only in several conversations with business owners and C-level executives over the last few months that I realized how misleading the term is.

Think about how the term sounds to non-marketing professionals. I mean really, you get this image of a marketer ripping and tearing peoples clothes off so that clothing would be in demand.  Or perhaps a mafioso showing up and asking you if you might need some fire insurance.

The demand for your product or service should already exist or you wouldn’t have a business, right?

As marketers, we want prospective customers to raise their hands, call, email or pick up the phone and talk to us. We want the opportunity to explain how their demand is met by us supplying our solution. So the objective is to frame our solution, product and/ or service as the answer to the prospective customer’s existing problems, needs or desires.  Therefore the objective is to re-frame the prospective customers questions so that you are answering them. In order to do this you must determine, in advance, what is their angle of approach.

What does that mean for your online marketing? You could have two different prospective customers reading the exact same content with each coming from a different angle of approach.  So that content you created can mean one thing to one person and another thing to the other person. You might convert one into a lead and not the other. The sad part is that both might be demanding exactly what you offer.

If you’re planning a persuasive experience, that’s more than a landing page for complex sales, please remember that people don’t read pages online.  Instead they experience online hyperlink to hyperlink. That’s why you need to plan the persuasive paths of your campaigns, website and lead nurturing material carefully in order to remain relevant and answer the questions they have the way they want them answered; that’s their angle of approach. An early stage buyer and late stage buyer would have different questions and therefore their angle of approach would differ. Plan your content that way, from the persona’s ( please read “Waiting For Your Cat To Bark?” for a more thorough discussion about personas) point of view, not your point of view and you’ll be successful at re-framing demand. Only once you’ve re-framed the prospective customer’s demand will they be willing to discuss your offering.

I hope that helps.