Phil Lauterjung

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How Your Customers Search for You

January 26th, 2010 |

Author: Phil Lauterjung

When I first started in sales – in the dark ages – buyers had to contact us if they were interested in our products. Not any more! All they do is hop on their favorite search engine and start clicking away. Gaining a clear understanding of this new buying cycle is critical to reaching buyers at an optimum point.

Online buyers tend to take their own sweet time doing research before settling on a product to purchase. Studies have shown that these wandering buyers conduct as many as a dozen or more searches over many weeks before deciding. These are not usually the same searches over and over. Most are multiple searches on the same topic.

This buying cycle comprises three stages: Interest, Research, and Purchase. Let’s take a typical example of someone thinking about buying a car.

Interest Phase

Most people start out searching using the broadest terms. In our example let’s use “cars”. Since that returns 522,000,000 results on Google our buyer probably wants to narrow that down. Let’s say our buyer wants to buy an American made car from a company not owned by the government. So he searches for “Ford cars”. Oh, still too many results at 29,700,000; but, better than the first search.

Obviously, one of the top search results is the Ford Motor Company site. So our buyer goes there to narrow down his choices. Hmmm, that Mustang convertible looks pretty cool. Now we’re getting somewhere.

Research Phase

Our buyer goes back to his trusty search engine and enters the term “Ford Mustang Convertible” and gets 12,300,000 results. He gets more specific results with the addition of review sites, auto magazines, and some YouTube videos. Our buyer has entered into the research phase.

This can last quite a while, especially if our buyer discovers that his available budget might not be enough for the tricked out, V8 convertible with the awesome stereo. But, he really wants it and begins to research finance options. Uh, oh – insurance is pretty high for that car too. Better do some research on that. He lives in Redondo Beach, CA so he limits his search to that town. Search results: Auto Insurance – 70,000 and Auto Finance – 23,600. Apparently more people want to take his money than give him money.

Buying Phase

Armed with all of the information from the research phase our buyer is now ready to actually buy that new car. His search queries now get even more specific looking for Ford dealers in and around Redondo Beach. Even a very specific search like that gives him 10,400 results.

Somewhere in this process our buyer will also consult with friends, relatives, coworkers, and social media web sites. The point to consider is this: where do you as a seller of the product he’s looking for get involved in the process? Go back and look at the search result numbers for each step along the way. Looks pretty daunting doesn’t it.

Here’s the interesting part to pay close attention to. As searchers move through each of the three phases, the number of sites returned by the search diminishes. Sometimes a lot. As that happens the conversion rate goes up – good news for you.

Take Away

Are you ignoring keyword phrases because they don’t have higher search volume? Consider carefully the stage of the buying cycle you want to target. Make sure your web pages are optimized for the search terms your potential buyers are likely to use at that stage. There is some art that needs to be added to the statistics. If you target buyers too late in the buying cycle you may lose business, but it will cost you more to target them earlier. Considering the impact of the search buying cycle will help you make better decisions.

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