YSM's Tips To Build Search Campaign Curiosity & Influence

The ever-useful and helpful Yahoo Search marketing Blog has a post called “Six Tips for Building Curiosity and Influence Into Your Search Campaigns”, where guest writer, Gerry Bavaro, VP of client services at the search marketing firm Didit, 'offers tips on how to pique people’s curiosity and channel it for more influential marketing'.

1. “Understand the Nature of Search: When we search for something, we are driven by curiosity. When we look further, we are influenced by new information that changes our thoughts in a way that either gets us closer to our objective or on a different path leading to a different result. The key is to keep searchers on the path that you want them to take from query to destination, instead of your competition’s.
2. Know Your “Elevator Pitch”: Don’t be the marketer with the fuzzy value proposition, paragraphs of information on your landing pages, and disparate, confusing messages across various channels. In a 10- to 20-second statement, what do you provide, and why is it valuable? Make sure your landing pages clearly express these powerful, simple points.
3. Create Buzz, Don’t Wait For It: Search volume is driven by awareness and curiosity created in the real world. If there’s no buzz happening, get some going. Communicate with like-minded communities of interest, whether they exist in the form of relevant blogs, social network subgroups, electronic lists or bulletin boards. Give people a reason to “spread the word” about what you’re doing. These strategies can also support increased links to your website, which can help organic search results.

4. Truly Know Your Target Audience: You have a target audience, so don’t dilute your marketing messages by trying to appeal to everyone. You need to understand your target audience not just in terms of demographics, but also in terms of psychographics (what are their lifestyles like, what websites do they visit most, how do they communicate, are they socially conscious and active, do price or quality drive them?).
5. Be Creative About Everything, Not Just Your Creative; Creativity isn’t just about the design of banners, marketing materials, websites, landing pages or copywriting. Get creative about how you manage your business around search. Include discount coupons for customers coming from paid search to influence repeat purchases and avoid paying again for these customers. Look into co-branded promotions and events with related companies, or those that have affinity and can drive awareness, which in turn can increase branded or generic search volume. If you promote a topic, concept, or type of product/service, consider “out-of-the-box” marketing ideas such as viral videos posted on YouTube, a company MySpace page,or events that can add user touchpoints that will increase curiosity.
6. Test, Test and Test Some More: In pay-per-click search, those who test most, win. Establish titles/descriptions and landing pages across campaigns that achieve a baseline of results, then consistently test against this baseline to improve click-through and conversion rates. Remember, any increase in conversion rates will allow you to afford more aggressive bidding/positions, which in turn will increase click volume and overall curiosity.”

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