market research

November 3, 2011

Finding New Keyword Ideas - Things You Have To Know

Keyword research is the bedrock of any good SEO campaign and if you don’t have the right keywords you won’t be able to get the targeted search engine traffic you want. Even though there are tons of software tools and services that help you dig into a particular keyword and find other variations, you first need to have a root keyword in hand to use them. The first keyword ideas you have are what will ultimately figure out whether or not the keyword research you do is actually going to help you out. In this article we will teach you a few tips for coming up with good keyword ideas to help you get your research started. I’ve discovered these pointers to become beneficial before selecting things such as FreebieJeebies.

You can get lots of ideas from reading through forums and there are forums all over the place on the internet so you’ll be able to find all sorts of great forums that relate to your niche. As you spend time in these forums and browse the posts and threads you’ll see that the active members often give away lots of great keyword ideas as they post their thoughts. Try to analyze the content that has been posted by other members of the forum to see if there is any inspiration for good keywords that go with your own website. I’ve discovered these pointers to be beneficial before choosing items like http://www.homebrewinstallerreview.com. It might sound really weird but watching television and paying attention to the things that relate most to your niche can really do a lot for you. For example, let’s say that you are trying to build your website about “stock trading” then you should try to find good keywords by watching television shows about this same topic. What you’re doing here is looking for “seed” keywords and that means that you are looking beyond the targeted TV programs in an attempt to find keywords that relate indirectly to your niche so that you can implement them into your SEO campaign. It is extremely important that prior to you making a decision you understand http://thedietsolutionprogramt.com.

Why not test out Wikipedia for your keyword brainstorming? Wikipedia is filled with all sorts of fantastic information on a wide variety of topics and if you use it well, you’ll find all sorts of great keyword ideas just by looking at the pages that most relate to your targeted niche. Of course, don’t depend totally upon this method because it can be really limited.

Sometimes you won’t even have to look for articles that are relevant because when you go through any of the big articles that exist on the website you are going to find good “root” keywords. However, you need to make sure you have other options too so that you’ll be able to further explore your other keyword ideas.

To be sure, keyword idea brainstorming isn’t as hard as it probably seems–as long as you focus on using good methods and put in a real and consistent effort, you are going to be able to come up with great keyword ideas that will help you get a good start. It’s important to remember that choosing the right root keyword is incredibly important for the rest of your keyword research because if you start off in the wrong direction you won’t ever get to the place you want to wind up. As soon as you start using these methods for your own keyword research campaigns, you’ll see just how simple it is to find winning keyword ideas.

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October 8, 2011

The Importance of Customer Surveys - A Part of Your Marketing Plan

A great way to improve your relationship with your clients is via customer surveys. It also gives you the chance to raise questions and gather new information that may help your business expand. Regardless of the size of your business, customer surveys should be a vital part of your business marketing plan.

A survey can take many shapes. It can be as simple as a postcard sent to each purchaser together with their receipt or as all-inclusive as a page-long form that is filled out during an appointment at your office or business.

It’s simple to create a client survey that will expand the conversation with your clients. There are several templates available on the internet to choose from, or you can decide to work with a marketing agency to make sure you get the most relevant questions for your business.

Three main methods to survey your clients are:

1) Paper-based. This creates the chance to collect email addresses as well if you haven’t already done so.

2) Phone-based. In addition to obtaining the answers to the regular questions, there’s also the possibility for your telephone survey agency to ask further questions or get more free-form views.

3) Web-based. Presuming you have your customer’s email, this may be an effective way to ask your customers to finish a survey on-line. Most online survey tools will automatically tabulate the results for you.

Again, regardless of the format, invest time in getting the questions right. A customer survey service agency can create questions are objective, including both closed- and open-ended questions that are successful in securing useful data.

From a consumer relationship point of view, doing good customer surveys on a regular basis lets the client know that you care about their opinion and their business with you. A positive benefit, in addition to you finding out more about what they think, is that you have made your customer feel important and more certain to “spread the word” about your service to family and colleagues.

Louie Pateropoulos is president of OnTarget Research, A Toronto-based market research company specializing in marketing research and customer surveys.

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March 17, 2010

Tracking Conversions to Achieve Your Business Goals

What is the number of leads you will need to earn the income you want this year? This may seem like a simple question, but I haven’t found a lot of folks that have the answer.

There are two things to consider regarding this question.  The first is your costs.  You should make sure to have an online accounting program advanced enough to help you analyze your costs and how they relate to your profitability. 

The next factor to take into consideration is how successful you are at converting sales from your leads (conversion rate).  The better you can convert your leads, the more profitability you are capable of achieving. 

Let’s take a look at the process more closely:

First you need to settle on a sales goal for each month. For our purposes, let’s use $100,000 as your monthly sales goal.

Now you need to figure out your conversion rate. Let’s suppose that all of your leads are generated through you website in order to keep this example simple. 

Assume that you are able to convert 2.5 visitors into sales for every 1000 visitors to your website. Your conversion rate is .25%.

This is the calculation you can use to determine how many visitors you will need to your website to meet your income goals.  To keep it easy, suppose that each conversion will ultimately result in a sale.

(Desired Sales / Sale Price / Conversion Rate) X 100

The formula would look like this, if you want to achieve $100,000 a month in sales, you have a conversion rate of .25% and your average sales price is $20:

($100,000 / $20 / .25) X 100 = 2,000,000 visitors needed per month to achieve your sales goal.

Ouch!  That is a lot of visitation!  Now, there are a few things you can do to change things.  The average price can increase. You can change your visitation, or you can change your conversion rate.

For most people, the best place to start is conversion rate. If you test a bit, it’s actually quite easy to bring a .25% conversion rate into the 1.5% or even 2% range.

Take a look at the difference that makes to the number of visitors you need to achieve your goals:

($100,000 / $20 / 2) X 100 = 250,000 visitors per month to achieve your sales goal.

I could live with that change! 

If you want to decrease the number of visitors you need even more, try increasing average sales to $47:

($100,000 / $47 / 2) X 100 = 106,383 visitors per month to achieve your sales goal. 

Everyone would rather work smarter than harder.  Hopefully these examples drive home the importance of planning the leads you will need to reach your sales goals, and testing the factors you can change to become more efficient. 

Get more small business success strategies and claim your free white paper: “7 Ways Your Stone-Age Accounting System is Stealing Money From You Every Day … And, How to Get it Back This Year”  to learn about an online accounting program that makes it simple to track your conversion rates.

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