Understand the Online Sales Process to Increase Keyword Marketing ROI

The purpose of any marketing campaign is to generate sales. Keyword marketing is an investment, not an expense; therefore you can't leave the results to chance. For every dollar you spend on marketing, you should generate significantly more than one dollar in sales. Fortunately there are no awards for keyword marketing so you won't even be tempted to campaign for the judges or spend time stuffing the ballot box. It's all about bottom line results for your business.

ROI = Relevancy

There are no catchy slogans, no imagery, and no pretty pictures in a keyword marketing campaign. Your sole job is to get inside the mind of your audience and anticipate how they will express their needs, wants, and desires in the form of words and phrases.

Sales and Marketing Converge

The first step in the sales process is to get the attention of the person searching. A web page title or paid listing title that contains your keyword phrase is step one. You need to get the attention of the visitor.

Step two is to keep that attention and draw the click. Your title is likely to be five words at most; your description can be substantially longer than the title. The description needs to speak to the visitor using their words and tell them why they should click on your listing.

Once they've clicked on your listing, you've got their interest. The landing page needs to accurately reflect the image in your visitors' mind, which was represented by the keyword they used to search. You need to present them with exactly what they were looking for. The words and visual queues on your site will determine their actions and the paths take through your site. ClickTracks is one tool that can help you determine how people navigate your site.

If you've done your homework, the visitor clicked through to your site and hasn't left yet. You want them to take an action step toward a purchase or perform another conversion event. Your words will be one of the primary factors that influence this. Keywords are secondary at this point; your copy needs to encourage your visitors to take step toward completing a transaction. Remember, the sales process is just that, a process that may take a while.

Marketing campaigns on the web can be, and often are, measured exclusively with direct response metrics. Depending on the site, these types of measurements may be sufficient, but rarely are for anything except the most basic purchases. A purchase is always a considered action. The more specific the keyword search, the more consideration has already been given to the purchase and the closer the consumer is likely to be to making a purchase decision. The more relevant and specific the keywords you target the more likely you are to make an immediate sale from a keyword referral.

Test, Track, Analyze, Repeat

In order to measure ROI, you'll need to explore a variety of website analytics software and services. You'll need to experiment with words; test different placements, landing pages, and ad copy. Some things will work like magic; others will fail miserably. As long as you track your results and identify specifically what to track, why you are going to track it, and how you are going to act on the information you'll be well on our way to making the most of your keyword marketing investment.