The Holy Grail of Marketing

Pardon the interruption, but do you mind if I take a second of your time to tell you about an exciting new product that will change your life? Now I know what you are thinking…I am here to do coursework, not to be marketed too. My apologies, I should not have interrupted your studies, I will try again when hopefully the timing is more convenient for you.

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Sound familiar? Almost every form of marketing revolves around an attempt to find what your target audience is paying attention to and attempt to distract that attention towards your messaging. Search engine marketing, however, is one of the few opportunities marketers have to put their message in front of an audience that is not only interested, but also asking for more information. If I work for a company that sells ceiling fans, I could spend a lot of money to take out an ad in a home improvement magazine and hope for the best, but I would much rather have the people interested in ceiling fans come find me for free! For some, this is why a successful search engine marketing strategy is the Holy Grail for online marketers. “Unlike nontargeted, interruption-based advertising, the information that appears in search engines after you've types in a phrase is content you actually wanted to see. You’re actually looking for it. This should be a marketer’s dream come true” (Scott, 2013).

Search engine optimization is the art of improving your web presence to capitalize on search engine algorithms so your content ranks as high as possible in an organic search. Although many factor’s attribute to this formula, Scott explains one of the most important factors is content. “I am convinced that the single best thing you can do to improve your search engine marketing is to focus on building great content for your buyers” (Scott, 2013).

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For this week’s discussion, please pick a company/organization that you feel has strong web content. For the first section of your post, please deliberate on the content. Consider questions like: What is the organization and how are they sharing their content? How often do they update or provide new content? How does the content relate to their target audience?

For the second part of your response, use a search engine to look up words or phrases related to the organization. Discuss how the content performed in your search results?

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Scott, D.M. (2013). The new rules of marketing and PR: How to use social media, blogs, news releases, online video, & viral marketing to reach buyers directly. Hoboken, N.J: John Wiley & Sons