Seth Godin wrote that if you want to make something seem real, you need to make it closer (or more tangible). For example, if you say you’re taking a trip to Europe next year it seems far away. If you say the you’re going to London on February 8, it is suddenly much more real.

Apply this to marketing. He points out that if you’re specific you make something more believeable. “The more general you are in describing it, the farther away people imagine it is. We’re going to launch a new product next year sounds a lot more distant than handing someone a prototype and saying, this launches on January 3rd at 2 pm at CES.”

He says make it closer – I say make it specific. This is what you need for SEO too. A search engine can’t necessarily tell the difference between “glassses” that you drink out of and “glasses” that you see out of. How do search engines decide which web sites will come up first for a search term? One factor is in specific related words. So if you sell eye glasses then use related words like the brand names of glasses you sell, types of glasses (like sunglasses, or reading glasses), etc. Use the specific terms on your web site and in your links. Then you’re marketing better because you’ll come up for the right kind of glasses.
So my point is: it’s important to be SPECIFIC in your marketing – not only in real life – but in your online marketing.

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2 Responses to “In Online Marketing – Don’t be General – Be Specific”

  1. Kelly King Anderson Says:
    October 8th, 2008 at 1:08 pm

    great point. in fact SL Trib did a feature on our recent startup princess conf and they put “FRIDAY” instead of Friday, Sept 26 and it really hurt us, people were calling us wondering “which friday”? and some called after the event and it was really frustrating. we appreciate the press of course, but…being specific especially with dates is KEY for events, etc.!

  2. Graeme Davidson Says:
    October 9th, 2008 at 4:31 am

    Great post there!

    I have recently had a guest post from one of our PPC experts and this articles show that what he says is true!

    Check it out and let me know what you think:

    http://equatorlive.com/blogs/mmmbop/equator-ppc-management-the-cream-of-the-crop/

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