Search engine marketing offers a much better return on an investment than any other means of acquiring sales leads. It has also been proven that sales leads generated through search engine listings on the Internet are quite often easier to convert into actual sales.
Search engine marketing is the art of getting a web page listed high in the search engine results pages to drive people to a particular web page. Most of the major search engines today do not charge to be listed. Therefore, any sales leads acquired from search engine listings are virtually free; and therefore offer the best return on a marketing investment. Top search engine positions, though, do come at a significant cost. Someone must take the time to write quality web pages with a significant amount of content about a company’s products or services. This also requires daily monitoring of search engine positions, an active interest in promoting the company’s web presence, and keeping up with the latest techniques, tips, and tricks to keep the company’s products and services at the top of the search engine results. Just buying a domain name, redirecting it to a web page, and telling the search engines about the website address will not get top search engine positions.
Sales leads generated through search engine listings are quite often better leads. Just about anyone can pay to advertise on a website, as long as they have the money. When it comes to search engines, though, it’s a little different. Search engines look at the content of a web page and determine whether that particular web page deserves to be positioned higher or lower than other web pages with content on the same subject. Search engines strive to provide their users with quality results. Therefore, they try to figure out which web pages are more relevant to the search term used being used.
Someone who searches for a particular type of product on a search engine and finds exactly what they’re looking for is a better sales lead than someone who is on an website and happens to see an advertisement for a particular product. Someone who searches for ‘data management software’ at a search engine and immediately finds a data management software product will probably be a better sales lead then someone who is viewing an industry website and happens to see an ad for ‘data management software’. The person who searches at a search engine has a goal of finding a particular product because they typically have a need for that type of product. If they find it quickly, are given enough information about it, and are immediately presented with a way to contact the company for more information about that product, they will become a good sales lead. If, at any time, this process breaks down, then that sales lead is lost. And if, at any time during that process, that person has a bad experience (a broken link, not being able to find the company’s contact information, etc.), they will form an impression of the company, which may not be a good impression.
Search Engine Marketing and Sales Leads
Search Engine Marketing from the Beginning