Last week, I had an excellent reminder of Search Engine Marketing basics.

I was writing about Yahoo! Search Marketing’s problems and the reactions to their last upgrade. While trying to find the right words I used a variation on an old phrase “venting spleen” – and ended up with:

During the last few weeks there has been a lot of spleen vented in the direction of Yahoo! Search Marketing (formerly Overture).

A very clever turn of phrase (I thought).

Unfortunately, it was not so clever. Most of my co-workers (a very bright group of people) did not know what was meant by “spleen vented” nor had they heard of “venting spleen”. Instead of being a ‘hook’ my opening sentence was a stop, a dead stop.

I had made the fatal error of writing to please my tastes – and not the tastes of my target audience. If you read that article before my repair was uploaded, my apologies.

“...failing to deliver your corporate message to your target audience in the manner your target prefers will cost you sales.”

For some sites, while Marketing departments may have full a grasp of how and what they need to say their target audience, interference from upper level management keeps their websites from being the powerful marketing tools they could be. For some sites the writing was left to the web master and never reviewed from a Marketing perspective. For other sites, multiple upgrades and re-vamps have destroyed any sense of cohesion and focus. Whether it is the choice of words, the visual design, the navigation or even the color - failing to deliver your corporate message to your target audience in the manner your target prefers will cost you sales

When explaining Enquiro’s view of successful Search Engine Marketing we say it is:

• targeting the right person,

• at the right time,

• in the right place,

• with the right message,

• and delivering the right experience.

It sounds simple, and yet as I was reminded last week, there a many factors that go into each of these components.

Take a moment and read over your website from the perspective of your target audience. If you have not developed a profile of your target customer and her main personas, you might want to spend a few minutes to develop a visual ‘snap shot’ of your target audience. Where does she live? What kind of education does she have? What kind of job does she have? Is she married? Does she have children? What is she hoping to find on your website, and in what format?

Look at your website with fresh eyes – her eyes - what does she see? Is she being delivered the right experience with the right message?

There is a very good reason that our explanation of successful Search Engine Marketing begins with “targeting the right person” – it is the essential first step in building a profitable marketing program. Once the target audience is identified, it is then possible to build a website experience that will convert targets into customers.