Can You Tell If Your Customer Is Ready To Buy?

How To Tell If Your Customer Is Close To Buying By Looking At The Search Keywords They Use To Find You

If you are interested in doing keyword research for an on-line marketing campaign, it is crucial that you understand how the keywords that a customer uses during their search can be a clear indication of how close they are to making a purchase. Choosing the right keywords and optimizing your marketing efforts around them can have great results and deliver more targeted clicks to your website.

An on-line purchase cycle has 3 different general stages:

1. Browse stage: when the customer is 'just looking' around for general information.

2. Comparison stage: when the customer has an idea of the type of product or service they are looking for and are comparing different offerings.

3. Buy stage: when the customer has made a choice between products and is trying to find the best deal (price, availability, etc).

Every customer that types a keyword into a search engine is engaged in a different internal dialogue depending on which stage of the purchase cycle they are. If you want to reach your customer at the right stage, you have to think about this dialogue when choosing keywords. As an example, put yourself in the shoes of a customer who is searching for 'theoretical physics' and go through the 3 different stages of the purchase cycle and see the evolution of your internal dialogue.

1. Browse stage:

At this stage, you might have questions similar to:

- "What is the big fuzz about theoretical physics?"

- "I have seen theoretical physics being mentioned many times in the Big Bang Theory and would like to know more about them"

And you would most likely use general, all encompassing keywords like:

- theoretical physics

- big bang theory physics

- physics

2. Comparison stage:

Possibly after a bit of information gathering, you decide that you want to find out if there are any good books on theoretical physics that are accessible to the general public. Some questions you might have are:
- "What are some popular books on theoretical physics?"
- "Are there any reviews for theoretical physics books that I could look at?" 
At this stage, you would most likely use more specific, refined keywords like:

- theoretical physics book reviews

- theoretical physics books for dummies

- theoretical physics made simple books

3. Buying stage:

At this point, you have most likely gone through several review sites and read some articles on specific book recommendations. Your current objective is to get the cheapest prices with the best availability for the books you have chosen:
- "Where can I find Michio Kaku / Gary Zukav / Stephen Hawking books for cheap?"
- "Is there an eBook version for Physics of the Impossible?" 
You would tend to use very specific keywords of book titles or authors like:

- Michio Kaku

- Physics of the Impossible eBook

- Gary Zukav

- Dancing Wu Li Masters
- Stephen Hawking
- A Briefer History of Time 

This is not a set-it-and-forget-it strategy and requires constant refining but by knowing well your target customer and analyzing his internal dialogue at different stages of the purchase cycle you are better able to target them at the right moment. If you have an educational site where you have plenty of articles about general topics in theoretical physics you might want to target the customer from the 1st stage, but if you are an author selling books on the topic you might want to target the customer at a later stage.

Further reading:

http://www.roi.com.au/index.php/search_engine/keyword_strategies_for_the_customer_buying_cycle.html