how-to-develop-successful-keyword-strategyThere are many reasons inbound marketing has become one of the most effective and popular marketing strategies in the business world. For starters, it’s extremely cost effective – relying completely on the internet for marketing eliminates those expensive direct mail and traditional marketing fees. It’s also eminently adaptable; since everything lives online, you can change your website, messaging, content or email campaigns with just a few keystrokes. But perhaps the best part about inbound marketing is the fact you don’t have to go out looking for potential customers; instead, by creating informative content, you bring the potential customers to you.

Inbound marketing emphasizes the use of content to attract visitors, and that content is meant to lure your ideal customer, who is referred to as the “buyer persona“. By attracting your buyer persona, you’re bringing in high quality leads; and quality leads are more likely to become completed sales. But just creating good content isn’t enough. You need to make sure that content gets found in the first place. And the way you do that is by utilizing popular keywords.

What makes these words so key?

If you’ll forgive the uninspired play on words, these phrases and terms are so key because they are the words your customers will use when searching for your products/services. Figuring out what these words are is up to you, and it will vary based on what field/market you’re involved in. But there are some ways to help narrow it down.

Solutions-based keywords

A great way to narrow your marketing focus is to consider what problems your products/services solve. For example, if you run an event planning company, some common problems you can solve are “how to plan a wedding,” “organizing an anniversary party,” or “how to find a caterer for 200 people.” When your potential customers are searching the web, they’re going to be looking for solutions to these problems. Therefore, you should use those problems to discover some keywords. In our event planning example, “wedding” “anniversary party” and “caterer” are some of the keywords that would make sense.

Using your customers for research

Another smart strategy is to consider why your current or former customers came to you. What services or products did they want you to provide? What were things they always seemed to talk to you about? Look for common themes or subjects among your customer base. Returning to the event planning business, perhaps many customers were confused about how far in advance they should send out wedding invitations. If that’s the case, “wedding invitations” or “wedding invitations timing,” would seem to be good keywords to use.

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