your market

As an example, let’s say your firm sells software for managing the accounting function.  Those market segments represented by accountants and CPAs might enter a search string such as “accounting systems” or “accounting software” – perhaps modified by a geographical locator, such as “Orange County”, if they were seeking a local supplier.  Thus – the accountant would enter “accounting systems, Orange County” into their Yahoo search string.  From December, 2004 through September of 2005 (the latest time of this writing) – this particular search string brought up NetPathBusinessSystems.com (“ahem” - one of our websites) at or near the top of page one search results.

To take this example a bit further, if we were also trying to “scoop up” bookkeepers and office managers – often in charge of billing, recording receipts and disbursements – we might use the term “bookkeeping” in our string since most information workers at this level refer to accounting functions as “bookkeeping.”  Keeping the Orange County localization issue noted above in mind – we would also apply search engine optimizing to our site to achieve high search engine placement on the phrase “bookkeeping systems, Orange County”.  Again, as above, we note that for December 2004 – this phrase brings up our website - NetPathBusinessSystems.com, as the first search result on page one.

Finally, for this example, our market also includes a layer of Chief Executive Officers who, our research has shown – usually refer to software of this type as “business software” or “business systems”.  Now, in order to achieve good website search results for this market layer as well, we use the “high value keyword results” phrase – “business systems, Orange County” in anticipation of achieving top search position for this market layer (Presidents, CEOs, etc.) as well.  As you might guess, at least in late December of 2004 – our accounting software site, NetPathBusinessSystems.com, came up as number one on page one - but had slipped down near the bottom of the first page by September of 2005. There is a reason for this - see the sidebar >>>

Your target market has a vocabulary and a dialect. It describes the features and benefits it seeks in terms of this vocabulary and dialect. Know your market's feature and benefit appeals, understand its vocabulary, and speak in its "dialect" - and you are on your way to web marketing success.