I can safely say that the 3 most important skills as an Internet marketer are the ability to:
- research
- diagnose the cause behind low statistics and identify opportunities in your analytics
- promote like mad through SEO and the various paid advertising methods.
I would say that copywriting, designing and everything else, which are still very important, comes in second in terms of importance.
I would also say that I’ve listed the 3 most important skills in the right order.
Why Research & Analytics Lead Advertising, Including SEO
SEO is not free. It’s not even cheap. It’s labor intensive.
I would venture to say that the number 1 enemy of your business is your own assumptions of what works and what doesn’t.
9 out 10 businesses fail within 10 years. Most of them never bothered to research their market. They went with what they thought was best, looked good, etc. The problem is most of us can’t read mind, so unless we research what our market needs and WANTS, using analytics and other various research tools, we are likely to miss the boat and promote the wrong message. Our statistics will then show little to no sales.
It’s not internet marketing that fails us, its OUR marketing that fails us.
The reason why I say copywriting and the crafting of a powerful marketing message comes second is any child would know what to write if they truly knew what their audience is looking for.
If you were a car dealership and you knew that the prospect entering your store was looking for a red pick up truck with lots of Torque and Horsepower and within a price range, then you would go, greet that person and lead that prospect directly to a red pick up truck which has all the features and benefits that he’s looking for.
The best sales people ask several questions before presenting a product or service to the prospect. They do their research first and then present second. The low performing sales people jump right into presentation and often present the right product the WRONG way.
The same apply to marketers and advertisers. As SEO experts we need to know what keywords are money keywords. In my 9 years of experience, I’ve seen some interesting situation where one key phrase is identical as another key phrase except for the order of the words in the phrase and that made a big difference. One was a money keyword, while the other wasn’t.
You need to know which are your money key phrases BEFORE you invest months doing SEO on key phrases that are attracting tire kickers.
You Have More Than 1 Audience – Identify Them for Maximum Return
Looking at your analytics, you can see how people coming from different key phrases react differently to your offers. That’s because, as most businesses, you have several audiences. You need to segment your various audiences and customize your marketing message to each of them.
For example, a car dealership would use a different tone and words when addressing people looking for a powerful pick up truck than people looking for a small economical car.
The Steps of a Successful SEO Campaign
- Research – Use keyword research tools to discover how your audiences search for businesses, products and services like yours.
- Research which are your money key phrases BEFORE beginning your SEO work. You can get a pretty good idea by looking at the PPC bids for each key phrase. The ones with the most PPC competition are usually the most profitable key phrases. This is just a starting step. Use the free Google keyword tool to find that information.
- Install an analytics software to track your website visitors and conversions. 2 free powerful analytics software are Google Analytics and Yahoo Web Analytics. I recommend Google Analytics for now.
- Start your SEO work and track your analytics to see where you site is failing.
- Optimize. Your site will never be perfect from the beginning. It will require optimization. In fact, your audience will change over time, so your site will always require some form of optimization. You need to keep your finger on the pulse and you do that by keeping a close eye on your analytics. Your analytics will tell you what action to take next.
There is a science behind reading your analytics, but that’s an article for another day. I’ll make sure to link to it from this article as soon as I post it.
