I usually try not to post (or work) on Sundays because that’s my day for family and friends, but I have a few minutes to myself this morning and had an experience with a reader of the blog this week that I thought would make a great share for everyone involved in Internet Marketing.
James contacted me last week asking that I take a look at his web site and some of the various entry points to it that he had created (articles, a Squidoo Lens and etc.) because he wasn’t converting any sales, yet had high organic traffic coming in for his keywords.
Normally I decline requests like this simply because if I started reviewing the methods and copy of everyone who asked I’d never have time to do my own work, let alone write on the blog here.
But, the letter from James was compelling and I had a few minutes to spare when it arrived, so I had a look.
On first glance everything looked good. He has a solid “buying” related keyword that gets lots of daily search traffic and has a low competition level. His main site is in the top 10 SERPs and 3 of his entry points are also on the first page of results-meaning he has 4 of the top 10 results for his keyword right now and he’s getting the expected traffic from that.
Also, it appears that his copy and articles are well written. They pin-point a problem you would expect people in his niche to be having and guide readers to the solution–his sales links.
Nothing seemed out of place or wrong to me, except the fact that he hadn’t converted any sales in 2 weeks.
Then I realized something crucial, all of his copy on his main site as well as all of his entry point sites and articles were focused on the same problem. Which made me wonder, are people actually looking for help with that specific problem?
I asked James why he picked that problem to focus on since there are a number of related problems people in his niche might be facing and he said it was what he thought he would want help with if he were searching for the keyword term he picked.
That sounds good on the surface, but if you aren’t actually dealing with an issue that you’re marketing to then you can’t really walk in the same shoes that your target market are wearing, so there’s a chance that you’re viewing it from the wrong perspective.
So, I went out to a couple of forums related to the niche James is working and browsed around for a few minutes to see what kind of questions people were asking. Then I checked out Yahoo! Answers to see what was getting asked there.
What I found was that nobody was asking questions on the specific problem James had focused on with his content. There are several reasons why that might be, but they don’t matter. What matters is that James is targeting the right keyword, a good hungry market, but addressing the wrong needs with his copy.
I gave him some pointers on other problems he might want to focus on with his content, based on what I saw people were seeking help with in the forums and on Yahoo!
All of this took place between James and I on Thursday and Friday, and today (Sunday) I had an email from James telling me he had spent all day Saturday editing his main site copy and within a few hours had a sale.
I expect he will have many more sales to come now, especially if he revisits the content on his entry point sites and articles too.
The moral of this is simple, finding good keywords and a hungry market are just the first steps. The equally important next steps are to understand your market and target their specific needs.
The good news is that’s not hard to do at all. Between Q&A sites like Yahoo! Answers and niche related forums you can usually find exactly what people are the most desperate for help with in very little time. Use that knowledge to determine what product you promote and as a focus point for your content creation and you’ll get much better results from your efforts.
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