Here's how to find the right keywords for your business

I thought I’d share a story with you about a keyword we found for us as a digital marketing agency.

I think it’ll help you with planning your own content marketing strategy.

We’ve talked before about how your website content must connect with a range of people, through different stages of the Buyer’s Journey.To quickly re-cap on some points…

You will seriously diminish your ROI from your website if you limit your thinking to:

• Talking about your products and services
• With information aimed at
• People who are ready to make an enquiry or buy NOW.

Don’t get me wrong. You need that type of content. Particularly on your product and services pages.

That is where the people who are well down the Buyer’s Journey. They:

• Have done their initial research.
• Know what they want.
• And are now at the ‘Decision’ stage of their journey.

They’re looking for benefits, specifications, costings, deliverables and other info that suits their intent at that stage. 

But what about your potential customers who are not there yet?

They are not yet looking for that stuff.

They are earlier in their journey, at the stages of:

Awareness — When they are searching for broad answers to their problem.

Consideration — When they are figuring out which option is the best way to go.

You need to think about these people in your web content strategy. Because Google sure is!

What website content should you be writing?

The thing to do here is to really go back to basics, and figure out the type of questions your potential customers are mulling over in their minds while turning a snag on the barbecue.

• Or talking to their spouses about if you are in a B2C space.
• Or bouncing off their workmates if you are in a B2B space.

These are the type of questions stemming from:

• “I wonder how to…?”
• “Will it work if we…?”
• “What’s the best way to…?”
• “What’s the safest way to…?
• “Does it work to…?
• “Can we get a pipe to fit a…?”
• “What happens if we were to …?”
• “Will it work if we…?”

 You’ve asked these types of questions yourself. Many times. 

They are the questions that people are asking Google when they are early in the Buyer’s Journey. Writing content around these keywords is a very powerful move — as it puts you in the box seat to make a connection.

Here’s how we wrote website content based on a keyword we found

 One of the keyword research tools we use in the mix is http://answerthepublic.com

They call the guy on the home screen the “Seeker”.

We are a tad more down to earth. We call him the “Old Goomer”.

You enter a keyword into the search box, and it comes back with actual data based on the searches that people are making around that term.

Sometimes, the data is useless. It doesn’t do well with keyword phrases of three or more words, so you’ll need to experiment a bit. But with primary/short keywords, you’ll occasionally find some gems. It’s worth a dig – if only to sharpen your thinking around long tail keywords and how to structure your content.

In this instance…

We have a couple of home builders in Brisbane who use Crockford Carlisle as their digital agency, and are delighted with their ROI. Their marketing cost/lead has dropped significantly and they are very busy due to a steady flow of leads.

Happy days!

We know the building business well, and would like to attract builders from other metro areas (Sydney, Melbourne etc.) as we know we could really help them. We even have a marketing persona, with the amazingly original name of “Bob the Builder”. 

So, I bunged “Home Builder: into the Goomer’s search box, and buried in the results, I found “Home Builder Marketing Ideas”.

Hmmm… 

That tells me that home builders who need our help are likely to be searching for “marketing ideas”.

How to know where keywords fit into YOUR content writing strategy

Let’s unpack this for Bob. But remember to apply the same thinking to YOUR market personas. 

Remember we talked earlier about the EARLY stages of the Buyer’s Journey: 

Awareness — When they are searching for broad answers to their problem.

Consideration— When they are figuring out which option is the best way to go.

This search term (Home Builder Marketing Ideas) fits into that category, right?

When Bob the Builder is searching for “Home Builder Marketing Ideas”, he is EARLY in the Buyer’s Journey. Later, he might be looking for specifics such as a marketing automation system that builders can use, or a digital strategy for custom homes or what have you.

But at THIS point, right now, he is still looking for marketing ideas.

So, putting on our content writer’s hats, we created this blog post about marketing ideas for builders, which is rich with helpful information that a builder could really benefit from.

And…

Because we use marketing automation, we have included a CTA (Call To Action) like this one, which enables Bob to download a helpful resource about Inbound Marketing Ideas.

Once he downloads it, our marketing automation system will ensure that he receives additional information in the days and weeks to come — helping him to increase his knowledge as he progresses through the Buyer’s Journey. And in the process, he will become more confident in our ability to do the job.

So there you have it.

It is only one example, but I wanted to share it with you to help you to get your thinking heading the right way with your content writing.

Use the Goomer. Use Google’s Keyword Tool. Use whichever method you like.

The lesson is to make sure your content writing covers a range of topics, across a range of stages in the Buyer’s Journey. You’ll generate more traffic to your website, you’ll reach more people and you’ll set the foundations in place to grow your business.

Get help to get your content writing sorted

If you’d like to have a chat about your business, and how you can improve your digital marketing ROI, please call us on (07) 3891 3800. No matter where you are in Australia, we can help you with strategic thinking and a measured, logical approach that you’ll feel comfortable with.