How our clients search for us online?
Not everyone, and I would say almost no one who chooses to build a website or an e-commerce platform with me asks themselves how our services or products are searched by potential clients in Google. We don’t check the volume of traffic in a given region of the country or globally (depending on the scale of operations), we don’t do market research before deciding to build a website or an e-commerce platform, and that’s a big mistake because sometimes the target we’re chasing is unrealistic, meaning that the costs of advertising will be so high (due to high competition) that it makes no sense to start such a project.
Are there tools that would allow us to check, before investing even a single zloty, if our business idea has any sense at all?
Everyone seems to think that Facebook can handle this task, but that’s a big mistake because not everyone knows that people who spend time on Facebook are in a special mode, i.e. they may behave differently than usual. People who are active on Facebook at a given moment are not in the “buying” mode, which means that investing in advertising, especially for small companies where their image is secondary and what matters is profit today to survive, makes no sense. This applies mainly to service companies, but also in some cases e-commerce platforms, such as when selling products that do not evoke any emotions, everyday consumer goods, etc.
On Facebook, only large companies with big budgets can afford to run successful advertising campaigns because they can postpone their potential future profits, and even then, these campaigns are often focused on evoking emotions rather than promoting specific products. In the case of small businesses, it’s best to focus on building a brand rather than investing in advertising.
Media social networking has taken over our lives so much that everyone thinks that through advertising there they can immediately start earning – which is a big mistake.
Have you heard about Google?
Now think for yourself how you search for products online, e.g. shoes or clothes? Do you enter Facebook and wait for ads to appear from some stores? (…no, of course not…)
You open Google, often unconsciously because all you need to do is type “Nike running shoes” or “best running shoes” into your smartphone’s search bar, and instantly get a list of results. But where do these results come from?
Mostly from Google, which is over 80% of the internet search engine market.
People are looking for products and services mainly on Google, not in online catalogs, Facebook or Instagram.
What can we do to capture some of the traffic generated by Google?
First, you need to create a free Gmail account through it, which will give you access to Google Ads. This is a paid service, but only when you decide to launch an advertising campaign.
How can we use this paid tool to, for example, check what keywords our potential clients are using to find the services or products we offer?
Very simply, Google Ads has many free tools that we can use for this purpose. One of them is called “keyword planner”.
You enter a few keywords related to the products or services you plan to sell through your website or e-commerce platform.
Clicking on the “View results” button will display a screen similar to the one below.
On this screen, Google presents us with all the associated search suggestions based on its own statistical data. The first column shows the exact keywords people are using in Google searches, closely related to running shoes. The second column shows how often these keywords are searched for in Google and their overall trend (increasing or decreasing). The third column provides information about the competitiveness of these keywords – i.e., how much time and money it would take to achieve this traffic.
The fourth column provides a value expressed in Polish zlotys, which represents…
If you already know what I’m getting at, then skip to the next section. If not, let me explain: this is an estimated cost-per-click (CPC) based on Google Ads data. The cost of advertising in Google Ads is calculated per click, and these values give us an idea of how much it would cost to get traffic for a specific keyword.
Keep in mind that not everyone who visits your website will become a customer – statistically, this number can be as low as 1/10 or even 1/100. The deciding factor is usually price, so if the price is competitive, the conversion rate will be higher.
There are niches where it’s not worth entering at all, especially when considering a low margin that we might get from advertising. That’s why it’s worth doing these analyses.
The traffic displayed on this screen can also be achieved through free Google search results, but how do you get to the top positions in those listings?
SEO activities and content marketing are necessary for this, which I will discuss in a separate article. With enough products in your e-commerce platform and knowledge gained from Google Ads (keyword planner) and on-page SEO, you can eventually get organic traffic without paying for it.
Many new online store owners make the cardinal mistake of trying to artificially boost their website’s ranking by doing work that they would have done anyway when publishing new products. It’s worth knowing how to do this correctly so that something tangible comes out of it, not just the fact of publishing a new product on your website.
