Tag Archives: Market Intelligence

Market Intelligence vs. Keyword Intelligence – The Critical Difference

Today I want to be sure you understand the distinction between keyword intelligence and market intelligence, because it’s an essential part of developing your hyper-responsive marketing message.  (Listen to the free MP3 – Keyword vs. Market Intelligence)

NOTE: If you’ve heard the audio “4 Ways to Corner Your Market” before, you’ll find it included in this one, but with an important perspective changing introduction (just in the interest of full disclosure)

You see, my opinion is that the proliferation of keyword tools on the internet today is actually making it more difficult for most marketers to connect with their prospects and customers. Don’t get me wrong, I think it’s great that you can find out search volume, bid pricing, competition levels, and which keywords relate to which other keywords, etc. But these are only things COMPUTERS can tell you.

But what’s missing from them is the single most important thing in marketing … an understanding of the HUMAN NEEDS behind those keywords.   Because you see, people hate to search.   What they really want to do is solve.   And what they REALLY want is for a loving person (like you) to solve it for them.

For example, suppose I’ve got a splitting migraine today after having had a fight with uncle.   I haven’t seen my puppies all day long, and I wish I could just run around with them, but all I want to do is go hide in a dark closet, put pillows over my head and shut out the world until it goes away.

What I really want is someone to empathize with me, to tell me something I don’t know already about how to get rid of my migraine quickly, so I can enjoy my puppies for some refreshing renewal before I’ve got to start the whole work routine over again tomorrow.

Now, if you KNEW this about me as a migraine supplement marketer, (and you really DID have something which could help me), you’d know exactly how to design your landing page, what images to use, what stories to tell, what kind of language might be most appealing to me. In fact, if you knew this, you’d be able to write a killer AdWords ad, … I’d venture to say a better one than anyone else in the market. (And I’d be right!)

This is MARKET INTELLIGENCE, and it’s something you’ll NEVER get from a keyword tool, no matter how much you pay per month or how many hours you spend mining it.   Write this on your forehead so you’ll see it in the mirror every day “Search engines don’t know what people are feeling”, and keyword intelligence tells you nothing about the “conversation in people’s heads”.

It’s MARKET INTELLIGENCE which drives hyper-responsive marketing, and it’s market intelligence which will help you cut through the clutter and eliminate the overwhelm you’re feeling about your online marketing efforts.

Because UNDERSTANDING what your market wants on just a very few keywords BETTER THAN ALL YOUR COMPETITORS is infinitely more valuable than knowing thousands of keywords and seo traffic tricks. It’s also infinitely more stable.

And it leads you to a deeper, more heartfelt connection with your customer, and a feeling that what you’re doing in the world is actually making a difference while you’re making a (rather nice) living.

Isn’t that what you want?

Now … back to my puppies!  🙂

PS – I don’t get migraines anymore, that was just for illustration, but I DO have two absolutely wonderful puppies who make my day, every day, by doing something fabulously silly, giving me a special look, or just cuddling up to me when I need it most.
Zachary

Stewie

Are you wasting too much time in AdWords?

Pay Per Click Market Research

What can pay per click market research do for you?

Ppc research can identify upside potential (and downside risk) so you can decide whether it’s worth going forward.  It can also capture consumer language (which you can echo back to improve sales conversions), and identify segments and sub segments and niches within your market who you can laser target to multiply your results.

But even more importantly, ppc market research TEST the responsiveness of the market BEFORE you develop a product, or spend a fortune in money and time:

  • Is there really a need in the market for your product or service?
  • Where are the market gaps?
  • What might it cost you per lead and per sale to enter the market?

ESTIMATING COST PER LEAD AND COST PER SALE WITH SURVEYS BEFORE YOU SPEND ANY MONEY ON A PRODUCT OR ON MARKETING:

When you run traffic directly from pay per click to a survey in preparation for developing a newsletter capture page:

  • You’ll often find that approximately twice as many people (on a percentage basis) will sign up for the newsletter as were willing to take the survey
  • Since you’re paying PER CLICK, you already know your COST PER SURVEY
  • You can then ESTIMATE YOUR COST PER LEAD by simply multiplying by two (note: legally, I can’t guarantee this cost for you, I can only report my experience)
  • On average, if I plan to sell something similar to what my competitors are selling on the front end, I find approximately 1 out of 10 newsletter subscribers will purchase
  • So I can multiply my cost per lead x 10 to get an ESTIMATED COST PER SALE (note: legally, I can’t guarantee this cost for you, I can only report my experience)
  • This model is especially powerful when you track survey response on a keyword by keyword basis because you wind up with a BUYING HEAT MAP of the whole vocabulary of your market
  • Determine if there is viable pathway into the market on a keyword by keyword basis
  • Pause or kill any keywords which look “red” and only roll into the market on the “in the black” estimates

There’s much more info on the free ppc research mp3 – how to use surveys to identify true point of difference benefits so you’ll stand out from the competition, etc

PPC Volume and Cost Estimation for New Markets

I get a lot of questions regarding updates to the Volume Estimation techniques in my method for comparing and choosing new markets.  Here’s a walk through of the EXACT and most up to date method I use for doing this!

For beginners, I recommend choosing markets where the calculation shown in the video is between 30,000 and 600,000.  PPC markets underneath this volume may not be worth the effort, and those above this volume may be too brutally competitive for a newbie to make their first dollar online!

Last, these pay per click search marketing techniques are ONLY intended for use in the How To Choose Your Market method, … I use other formulas and methods for other purposes.  (If you own another product of mine and are estimating volume for other reasons, please follow the formulas therein).

Simpler PPC Marketing?

David made an interesting comment on my post about hyper-responsive pay per click marketing yesterday:
——–
Isn’t the *Hyper-Responsive Consumer* that you are describing the most informed buyer in our market? We could call him our most educated buyer couldn’t we?

So how about this approach to what you are saying in 2 videos: ‘The way to increase your entire campaign performance is to design your marketing around the buying triggers of the smartest buyers.”

Identifying and exploiting buyer’s emotions or reasons are SIMPLE marketing fundamentals. So why the convoluted explanation of smart buyers?’
———
So here’s the reason.

I’m not just talking about the smartest buyers in your market. In fact, often the smartest buyers are the least responsive, most price sensitive, and hardest to deal with.

I’m talking about a very specific type of customer who is UNDYINGLY PASSIONATE about the products in your market, who’s CONSUMPTION APPETITE FAR EXCEEDS YOUR ABILITY TO PRODUCE, and who is emotionally invested in the solutions your market has to offer as an essential part of their sense of self.

So while all hyper-responsive customers may be smart shoppers, all smart shoppers are definitely NOT hyper-responsive customers.

In fairness to David, I haven’t had time to illustrate how to identify these customers yet, nor have I shown you specific examples of how they behave in surveys, blogs, discussion forums, purchase records, etc … so I understand the confusion.

There’s MUCH more to come!

Pay Per Click Back End Products

There were several important comments on yesterday’s post .   I’d like to respond to one of them in particular:

Joey Atlas (a fellow PPC marketer I definite respect) asks:

“Would you say the marketer who has yet to finish/complete his product (name, logo, color scheme, etc…) and website is at an advantage, in terms of honing in on the hyper-responsive elements – as opposed to the marketer who already built the product, etc… – and can only consider the ‘hyper-responsive’ elements in sales copy, PPC ads, funnel, etc…??”

I’m going to re-phrase the question more generally in order to provide an answer helpful to every ppc advertiser  … “Is market intelligence more valuable before or after you’ve developed your product?  Is there a value to doing pay per click research, and in particular, research to identify the wants, needs, and concerns of hyper-responsive ppc visitors AFTER you’ve already developed your product and/or your business?”

The short answer is there are benefits on costs on both sides.  

If you haven’t chosen a market or developed adverising + products, I definitely recommend doing your research first.  There’s no point in playing “blind archery” when you can get an incredible amount of market intelligence and laser-guide your arrow to the mark.

The down side of gathering market intelligence from scratch, however, is the money and time required.  It gets easier and easier as the internet evolves (you can now legally steal your competitor’s hard work), … but it’s still very frustrating to entrepreneurs eager to jump in and get things moving.

On the other hand, EXISTING BUSINESSES stand to benefit tremendously from market intelligence, and it’s often much cheaper and quicker to gather.

For example, one of the absolute most powerful and leveraged things you can do (if you evaluate dollars and time invested vs. the return you get) is to survey you in-house lists … including BOTH existing customers and prospects, especially your opt in lists.

That’s because people who already have a relationship with you, and who are deriving value from it,  are usually VERY eager to give you feedback, and are pre-disposed to evolve into hyper-responsive customers if you tweak your systems to adjust more to their needs.  

It’s not uncommon to see 1,000 responses to a customer and prospect survey in 24 hours (make sure to track them separately … and include some data in the survey so you can determine who is who, and which customers have purchased more from you)

Furthermore, reaching existing customers and prospects to obtain the feedback is usually MUCH cheaper than reaching new prospects.

It’s true though, that it’s a downer to get feedback which makes you realize you need to redesign your sales systems, products, customer service, etc. But not knowing this information doesn’t make reality any different, it only makes you blind to it, and vulnerable to the marketer who figures it out.

Lest I seem to harsh, let me say I’ve made these mistakes in my own businesses, and have to deal with the consequences just like anyone else.  There are products I’ve already developed, and sales funnels with literally hundreds of autoresponder follow ups which need to be rethought and re-worked due to these new insights.

But I won’t shrink from the task.

I WILL prioritize the efforts and allocate resources accordingly.

Hope that makes sense … look forward to all your thoughts!

Dr. G 🙂

Advertising and Marketing (Sharon)

Let’s take a break from pay per click search marketing today to watch my Wife’s video all about her experience as a focus group moderator working with large brands, and the trials and tribulations they go through. (The one lesson I take away from this regarding PPC marketing is how important it is to avoid accepting that “wall of diminishing returns” we all hit when split testing adwords ads, trying to improve our landing pages, conversion rates, etc. She frequently hits this with large advertising campaigns and it’s the companies with the courage to go back to the drawing board and leverage what they’ve learned so far who eventually break through)

Hyper Responsive PPC Search Marketing

There are FIVE reasons pay per click search marketing is evolving to center on around the hyper-responsive PPC searcher:

1. The 80/20 rule means one out of 2,000 PPC visitors really matters online

2.  PPC searchers look for real points of difference, and the hyper-responsive ppc searcher knows this better than anyone

3. Hyper Responsive Pay per click visitors have huge BS detectors, so if you can satisfy them, you should satisfy your entire search market

4.  Hyper responsive ppc visitors are the best ones to give you the right pay per click BUYING LANGUAGE … the words you need to convince searchers to take out their credit cards and pay!

5. Hyper responsive marketers can help you estimate your ppc costs.

Watch this pay per click search marketing video to understand more!

Part 1:

To Lear More: Hyper Responsive Marketing Secrets

Part 2:

To Lear More: Hyper Responsive Marketing Secrets

Emotional Search Engine Marketing

The thing which distinguishes the most successful adwords advertisers in ppc is their ability to immediately forge a deep emotional bond with the searcher.  The art and science of doing this is what I call “emotional search engine marketing”, … but the vast majority of search engine marketing gets this entirely wrong.  

Sure, “people buy for emotional reasons and then justify their purchase with logic”.  But if the emotional hot buttons you’re trying to push aren’t matched to what you’re selling, you’ll UN-SELL your customer.  (Most people don’t realize it’s possible ppc advertising can  convince people NOT to buy your product … people who WOULD  have purchased if they never saw your ad!)

When you link real human needs to a real product or service feature you’ve got something.  Otherwise it’s just hype… which is a nice word for bullshit.

I’m about to release a product with Terry Dean and some other well known marketers which includes a detailed review of emotional marketing by my darling wife (Dr. Sharon Livingston – who’s consulted for over 40 Fortune 500 clients).

Here’s an excerpt from the product all about emotional marketing … if you’re actively pursuing pay per click, or search engine marketing of any kind, you really should listen:

Emotional Marketing MP3

PPC Business = 1 out of 2000

As Adwords and other pay per click search engines evolve, only marketers who understand competitive ppc principles survive.

I believe the quintessential adwords marketing principle is understanding, reaching, and converting the Hyper Responsive searcher.  The hyper-responsive ppc search is the one customer out of 2,000.  (See this post on adwords marketing to understand why).

pay per click search marketing – mp3 download

Pay Per Click Tools – My Favorite

Your competition has already spent
thousands testing keywords and ads …
why re-invent the wheel?

Watch this short video
and you’ll quickly see how to…

  • NARROW DOWN THE FIELD OF COMPETITORS TO THOSE YOU REALLY NEED TO WATCH: Find out who actually maintains successful campaigns for months at a time (know who to emulate and who to ignore)

  • GET THEIR COST PER CLICK: Estimate how much it’ll cost you to get into a market, or successfully maintain a presence on a given keyword.  Your competitors have already tested this  … why not just look at their numbers?

  • LEGALLY STEAL THEIR BEST PERFORMING KEYWORDS AND ADS: Hmmmm … why would anyone want to see a competitor’s best performing keywords and ads?  Get a running start on the market by leap-frogging their hard work!

  • WHAT ARE YOU COMPETITION’S BEST AFFILIATES DOING?: Identify your competitor’s MOST SUCCESSFUL affiliate ads, follow up systems, and landing pages … see which of their strategies are already working.  (You can get a list of the contact info for their best affiliates too … just in case you’d like to have them promote YOUR product)

Click here for the trial offer