Scale Your Conversions From Ads with Keyword Research
Ever since the dawn of man, conversion has been important for businesses — albeit it didn’t always go by that name. Even from the days of the earliest traders, the difference between someone browsing products and actually spending money was important and well understood. Fast forward and this has remained true for stores and now online. It’s great to attract customers, but to survive in this competitive world, sales are the most important metric.
We don’t need to tell you about the importance of keywords. In fact, you’re probably here to learn how to use them more effectively. Let’s get started.
Understanding Keywords and Intent
When considering audience discovery, it’s important to think about prospective customers at different stages of the funnel. In an ideal world, every lead is about to make a buying decision and we must convince them to choose us. Unfortunately, we’re not in a dream world and there are various stages. Different stages demand different keywords.
Just because someone is further away from a purchasing decision doesn’t mean they won’t become a valuable customer. It just means that they need to be reached in a different way. Below, we’ve listed each keyword type in order of those most likely to convert, to least likely.
1. Brand-Related Terms — If they’re searching for your brand and using terms specific to your business, they should be easiest to convert. Although this might be a smaller market compared to other keyword groups, it leads to the most conversions.
2. Product-Related Terms — The individual hasn’t come across your brand yet, but they are searching for products that you sell. The more products you sell, the larger the audience in this particular group. Since they’re further back in the decision cycle, CPA (cost per action) is likely to be higher.
3. Competitor-Related Terms — Depending on the size of your competitor, this group may be easy or extremely difficult to convert. They know your competitor’s name/brand — now it’s time to target them and attract their interest.
4. Substitute Product Terms — Instead of your product, they use a substitute. Unfortunately, these are expensive in terms of PPC and they’re also difficult to target with SEO. However, many have found success after exhausting the first three.
5. Complementary Product Terms — Rather than reaching out to those searching for substitute products, you could focus on complementary products. For example, this could be pen and paper, strawberries and cream, or iPhones and iPhone cases.
6. Audience Terms — Finally, the furthest away and therefore least likely to convert is those that search various other terms that relate to your industry; it can include a great deal of keywords for which your audience is searching.
Boosting Conversion at the Three Different Stages
If we want to boost conversion rates, we need to adopt a dynamic targeting strategy where we concentrate on the three different stages of the funnel with the right keywords. Therefore, we should consider:
• The questions consumers ask in each of the stages
• The sort of information they seek
• The most effective types of content
• The terms that will lead the consumers in the right direction
With this in mind, here’s how you use keywords to increase conversion at each of the three main phases of the buying journey.
Stage #1: Ready to Purchase
If we assume that this first group has done their research and is ready to purchase, how do we reach out to them? First, we need to understand that these customers are absolutely ready to spend money; it’s no longer about teaching them or informing them…they’ve been through this process. They want to find out the best company, the best product, and how to become a customer.
At this stage, we recommend using tools that allow you to find buyer keywords. If you haven’t seen this phrase before, it’s the terms that consumers use when they’re actively looking to buy a product or service. With these tools, you can filter for buyer keywords and focus on those that specifically relate to your own business.
In terms of the content itself, you can drop these keywords into the following:
• Reviews
• FAQs
• Free consultations
• Testimonials
• Free trial sign-up pages
• Live demos
Those ready to purchase understand the niche and what companies offer — what you need to show them is how differ and differentiate yourself from the rest. These days, consumers rely on reviews and testimonials, so this is always a good starting point. Furthermore, they’ll have questions, which is why we suggest utilizing keywords in a FAQ page. If you can offer a free trial, this is ideal because you suddenly come with no risk and the buying decision is easier than ever.
Before moving onto the next stage, we want to note that buyer keywords are useful at all stages of the funnel. Rather than just helping with conversion at the end, they’re useful for audience discovery and elsewhere. By including them at each stage, you’re more likely to show the right content to the right audience.
Stage #2: Evaluation and Research
As we move away slightly, we come across those who have some knowledge but not enough to spend their hard-earned money. Generally speaking, they’re investigating how many brands exist and who has the best reputation; their research is deeper, and they build off the foundation of knowing that they probably need or want to make a purchase.
At this stage, it’s all about finding low competition keywords. In fact, it’s a delicate tightrope that many businesses get wrong. As well as paying attention to competition, there still needs to be some interest in the product. If there’s too much competition, you can’t shine. If search frequency is low, you’ll feature on the results pages in which nobody has any interest.
This stage differs from the one we’re about to see because it isn’t just about exposure and getting your name out, it’s about considering the competition too. You should review the strategy of your competition to see what they’re doing with content, promotions, products, and more. As long as the competitors are similar to your own business, some tools will allow you to generate a keyword matrix.
As a side note, you’ll probably see these two terms so it’s important to understand the difference;
• Competition score — the difficulty of ranking
• Popularity score — the popularity for a given keyword in search
By assessing these two numbers, you can learn the optimum keywords to make an impact in the niche. Otherwise, you either won’t get attention or you’ll be drowned out by the competition.
Stage #3: Audience Discovery
Now, let’s move toward those who are only just starting their journey. As you can imagine, this will require the most effort but, if done correctly, you can guide them through the funnel and add them to your conversion statistics.
Since they’re beginning in the niche, it’s all about information and exposure. These may become valuable customers, but for now they’re looking for information. They’re aware of a problem and don’t know how to resolve it. It’s casual. They don’t even have a product or brand in mind.
Therefore, you need to present yourself as an authority figure in the industry. You can do this by dropping keywords into:
• Blog posts
• Buyer’s guides
• Checklists
• Videos
• Interactive content
• Infographics
With keywords, you should follow the advice we provided in the previous section, but you don’t have to pay attention to the competition just yet. Instead, find the balance between frequency and interest and target those who are just getting started in the funnel. Often, just looking at popular keywords will provide you with topics for your content.
Creating Content with Keywords
To finish, we want to offer some advice on using keywords in the six categories we mentioned earlier. There are three steps to mastering this process:
1. Create a Seed List
To start, write some keyword ideas in each of the six categories and consider the three stages of the funnel. Since the brand-related terms are the easiest to convert, this should be your priority from the start. Don’t worry about synonyms just yet.
• Research the audience
• Use your chosen analytics tool for search terms
• Search for alternatives
From here, we’re going to expand the list using Google AdWords Keyword Research Tool or another you like.
• Keep all keywords grouped according to category
• Assess the competition and their choice of keywords
• Take advantage of Google match types (and Exact Match)
• Filter for location and language
3. Refine the List
Finally, you can apportion your groups of keywords to the different stages of the funnel and work out how to accommodate them in real content. How can you bring these keywords into your SEO strategy and get a higher ranking on Google so that you also benefit from organic growth?
If you can master this process and use keywords in the right way for the different stages of the funnel, you’ll have a dynamic targeting system whereby all prospective customers are nurtured and have a high chance of converting.
Bonus! Marketing Tools:
2. Bilbi AI: Daily Marketing Campaign Insights
