WORDS ARE KEY/KEYWORDS
Eight words changed the way I approach marketing and business communication.
They are words for deep contemplation … words to experience and savor … words to embrace and take deeply to heart.
We shape our words,” said author, business guru, and self-certified Word Fanatic Tom Peters at an American Society of Association Executives meeting I attended in Chicago. Then, paraphrasing Winston Churchill, Tom added, “Thereafter, words shape us.”
Words help companies and organizations build relationships, establish credibility, create communities, demonstrate expertise, energize causes, power customer or stakeholder conversations, support initiatives, raise capital, and influence and direct decision makers.
Active words, emotive words, thought provoking words, and descriptive words with relevancy for the reader or listener drive effective marketing and business communication, creating receptive, responsive environments of confidence and trust.
Words shape benefit-oriented stories, showing prospects and stakeholders what they can gain or what they can avoid by partnering with your company or organization. Words create context for facts and deliver information with emotional impact, driving profitable action and positive return on marketing and business communication investments.
In contrast, communications invoking jargon, abbreviations, fluff, or company/organizational hype erect walls of caution, defensiveness and mistrust, and compromise relationships and action.
Search, Click, Find
Words also shape the way prospects and customers search for information on the world-wide web.
U.S. Internet users conduct more than nine billion search queries monthly. The payback these Internet uses seek is GRI: Gobs of Relevant Information. The act of effectively providing this information, which is known as inquiry marketing, creates the footing and foundation for establishing credibility and confidence, which are vital for building strong, profitable, long-lasting relationships.
Providing GRI requires sites be optimized to provide multiple touch-points and interactions … increasing the number and quality of opportunities for Internet users to engage information – initially, and in subsequent site encounters – as they move through buying (awareness, interest, desire, purchase) or technology diffusion (awareness, interest, evaluation, trial, adoption) cycles.
Keyword Advertising
Keyword advertising uses search-engine-entered keywords to trigger sponsored ads. Typically, advertisers select a set of keywords related to the product or service they wish to advertise. The ads are placed in relevant places on search result pages or result listings, based on those keywords.
Conversion from inquiry to sale can be immediate for many product and service categories (books, office supplies, consumer electronics, and domain registration and hosting, to name a few). But for most businesses and organizations, conversion from inquiry to customer or member happens offline.
Keyword advertising is vital to the success of e-Commerce sites. It can also benefit businesses and organizations with offline prospect conversion strategies, providing prominent placement on top-ranked search result pages, with the goals of attracting prospects, initiating relationships, and lowering prospect resistance by building credibility and trust.
Great tutorials on keyword advertising are available from the major search engines, Google, Yahoo, and Microsoft Live Search.
Words Shape Us
What you won’t learn from the search engine company tutorials is the lesson Tom Peters is trying to impart: Words are powerful.
These are keyword phrases I would love my customers to embrace:
- Einsteins of Engineering
- Hestia of women’s healthcare
- Ringmasters of event planning
- Brilliant bellwethers of bubbles
- Michelangelo of cement masons
- Pavarotti of pavement contractors
- Titans of Wisconsin tennis court construction
- Heart, soul, and voice of the Wisconsin ready-mix industry
- Radicals of commercial kitchen and servery system design.
Aren’t these the types of businesses and organizations you would beg to be on your team … the classes of organizations and businesses you would love to work for … the kind of businesses and organizations you would passionately support and recommend to others? The phrases are emotive, yet accurate descriptions of my customers. But none of my customers are willing (yet) to include these words in their vision statements … much less use them in their marketing and business communication.
Imagine the power they would unleash, internally, and with prospects, customers, and other stakeholders, if they were less inhibited.
I appreciate their resistance (my business card announces I am a construction materials evangelist). Words like those used in the customer keyword phrases above cut to the very soul of a person, organization, or business.
With risks real and deep, very few individuals or entities are willing to provide open windows to their souls.
Yet words shape us. In the ultra-competitive world we live in, exposing your soul is the only way to motivate stakeholders and differentiate your company or organization.
Words are key to your success.
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Post Script
The most effective way to bring people to your site is to provide useful, well-organized, well-written, well-designed, and well-search-optimized information, and to leverage word-of-mouse from guests who find your site useful.
Post Script Two
For fun ... why not Google the nine keyword phrases I would like my customers to embrace?