For me, the fundamental marketing insight which underlies all my successful pay per click search marketing has nothing to do with mining keyword databases, setting the appropriate match types, geotargeting, negative keywords, fancy testing protocols, or even click through rates.

It all starts with 9 simple words I remind myself about over and over again:

“People HATE To SEARCH But They LOVE To SOLVE”

Searching is a frustrating experience.  The latest published study I saw indicated the average search requires at least five iterations.  That means at least five tries to find the right keyword phrase which brings you the answer to your burning question …

Which means (assuming they ALL get it right on the 5th try, … which obviously they don’t) at least 80% of the time, the searcher is frustrated.  Think 80% x BILLIONS of searches per day and you’ll get the scope of what people are experiencing.

What people REALLY want is to sit down with a loving, experienced relative who they trust implicitly, … to be able to pour their heart out about whatever problem they’re experiencing (the thing that motivated them to search in the first place) … and get the perfect solution presented to them with an arm around them and sometimes a shoulder to cry on.

Instead, they have to compress their whole life’s experience at the moment into a stupid little box, and hope YOU (the ppc marketer) understood them well enough to present exactly what they need.

This is why RESEARCH is so important.  I’m not talking about keyword research … any 5th grader can do that.  I’m talking about doing the kind of human connecting we used to do before all these electrons danced around computer screens and kept us safely hidden from one another …

But linking it back to the keywords people came from so YOU can be their “loving aunt or uncle” next time they’re banging their head against their keyboard because they just can’t get thru to any of the other pay per click marketers via that stupid, stupid search box.

I hope I made you think … stay tuned and I’ll show you exactly how to do it 🙂