SEO, or search marketing, is all about making sure you show up when someone is searching for your goods and services. You offer lip filler, and when someone searches for lip filler in your town, you show up. Simple.
But what if people aren’t looking for your goods and services? Along with lip filler, let’s say, you also offer thread lifting. As the screenshot from Google Trends shows, plenty of people look for lip filler but hardly anyone looks for thread lifting. It’s not as well known or as popular as your other service.
But you are sure that people in your community would love thread lifting if only they gave it a try. They don’t know enough about it to search for it, so optimizing for “thread lifting” isn’t bringing you clients.
What’s the solution?
Interruption marketing
We generally focus on inbound marketing: showing up for people who want something. But interruption marketing, or outbound marketing, has a long track record. When you’re watching a football game on TV and a commercial comes on showing you some delectable treat with a phone number to call for delivery, that is interruption marketing. They interrupt you to offer you something you didn’t already want — but once you see it, you might be interested.
Advertising is the usual way to do this, but you can also send out unsolicited emails, bring it up in social media, or use texts and calls to reach people.
Interruption marketing has some drawbacks. You are offering your goods and services to lots of people who don’t want it in hopes of reaching a few who do, and you are paying to reach all those people who don’t want it. It can also backfire; many people nowadays have a very negative reaction to advertising and get disgusted by unsolicited contacts.
Cross selling
When you put an item in your online shopping cart and an ad for a related item pops up, that’s cross selling. In SEO terms, cross selling is about offering something your target customers already search for and bundling something new in the results.
If the perfect customer for thread lifting is already looking for lip filler, you can add information about thread lifting to the information on lip fillers that people are already responding to. To use this method, you can consider what people are searching for now, provide valuable information and offers on that, and tuck in your new product or service information and offers on the same web page.
Certainly, you can add thread lifting offers to your lip filler page. But any topic that resonates with the ideal customer for your new service could work. Someone who is interested in hyaluronic acid might also be receptive to thread lifting. Add a page on hyaluronic acid to your website and include information on thread lifting. Even if you don’t sell hyaluronic acid, you know that the audience for that information might also be the audience for thread lifting.
News and advice on a subject of interest to your target market can be useful and welcome to that audience. Show up when they search for that information or advice and they may also welcome information about your new product or service.
Providing solutions
For many subjects, including healthcare, people tend to search for the problem. People may not be searching much for thread lifting, but they often search for solutions to wrinkles or sagging skin. Optimize your content for the problem, and then use it to introduce the solution.
With health and beauty issues, people often follow a pattern. They begin by looking for information about a problem. Then, having gained some relevant vocabulary, they start looking at various solutions. Finally, they narrow their search down to get access to their preferred solution. Google says they look at four to five providers before deciding, and make 10-12 searches overall.
If you show up as the generous provider of useful information when they’re seeking information about their problem, they will already know and like you when they’re checking out providers of that solution. And people looking for a solution to a problem are often more open to new ideas than people who are looking for a provider of the goods or services they’ve already decided on.
Make a plan
You might want to use a combination of these approaches. With a goal of increasing awareness of the specific offering you aren’t seeing searches for, you can plan advertising, social media, and blogging to reach a clearly defined target market. You can track your success and tweak your strategy as you see results.
You’re much more likely to get results with a plan than without one. Haden Interactive can help you develop your strategy. Contact us to begin the conversation.
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