We’ve spoken to merchant after merchant who have seen their business start to diminish as Amazon opened up new categories of products…..and we worked with them to identify the assets that they have which will allow them to not only survive…but thrive.

This post covers how you can protect the business you have and also create a competitive edge over the bigger players…with assets you already have. To start, let’s take an inventory of those assets which will help you accomplish these goals.

What You Need to Compete

Here are the items that will give you the edge…

Product Knowledge & Expertise

If you’ve been selling products online for a sustained period of time, and better yet services that you provide around products that you sell, there is value that you’ve built in experience with serving customers to date. At this point, you should have in-depth knowledge about the products that you’re selling and able to dig in deep on topics in order to solve the pain points your customers have which make them want the products in the first place. Your experience and expertise on how to solve problems what people are searching for, products are just a way to solve those pain points. You, your sales agents, your customer service representatives….they all have in-depth knowledge about experiences and problems that your customers are experiencing which leads them to purchase a product. It’s well known that “Content is King”…..well, that knowledge and expertise is gold that fashions the crown upon that King’s head. Digest what experience and expertise you have within your business, that is a huge asset you should be taking advantage of and getting to work for you.

Great Customer Service & Responsiveness

When customers are looking at a product and have a question about how it applies to their specific product, they want to ask a question in order to get an answer before they order. On Amazon, they can do this through the product page Q&A feature, but many of those questions are answered by customers. Those customers have other jobs, other duties, and they may not get an answer in the timeframe they want it. That is a problem for them, and you have the tools to solve it.

It’s time to go back to the old fashioned values of business, in putting the customer first and making sure that they love the customer service they’re given. When you mix the product knowledge and expertise that you and your team have as your first asset, with responsive and friendly customer service that focuses on their problems and resolves them quickly…that is the recipe to get those customers to convert for you and prefer that experience. So, make sure you shower customers with ease of asking their product questions and make sure you have friendly and knowledgeable team members answering those questions quickly.

The Incentive to Do Both Well

When it comes to answering questions about specific products, Amazon’s approach is to offer a Q&A feature on their product page where they control the content and it works to their benefit…and many of the questions are answered by other customers. These customers, while creating some quality content, don’t necessarily have the incentive to do a deep dive in order to give the best responses to those product questions.

Guess who does? That’s right, YOU!

With the mix of in-depth product expertise and answering product questions well like it’s your job (because, it is in fact your job), that is a powerful combination where you can simply do it better than they can. All of the things that you need to effectively fulfill those demands are in your corner, and you have the most incentive to make sure that it’s done as best as it can be done. This is something that you have that Amazon’s way of doing things doesn’t always compete well with, and you can take advantage of it.

How to Use those Assets to Thrive

Do you have all the assets above and looking on how to capitalize on them? Good, the next part is relatively easy…and the good news is, you’re probably already doing this in some manner already, you just need to focus those efforts with the right tools.

Let’s summarize your call to action here…

Use your product expertise to service your existing customers well that increases their lifetime value and also drives new customer acquisition.

Now the obvious question. How?

We know this because at Answerbase, this is what we do and we have case studies to prove it. You need to ensure that you have Q&A calls to action and content on your product pages, and in a way that will accomplish these goals. Let’s explain how it works.

By putting Q&A on your product pages allowing your customers to ask their presales questions, respond to them with great answers, and convert those customers. Answerbase sees that up to 75% of questions answered through Answerbase turn into a paying customer. Also, anybody in the future with those same questions that ask through your site see those answers you’ve already posted, and convert as well.

But, that’s just the short term benefit…..ready for the magic of the long term benefits?

Those same question and answer pairings are valuable content that attracts brand new customers to your website through long tail search! Here’s how it works…

You answer questions with great original content based on your expertise and experience. Guess who love great original content if it’s optimized for search?

Answer, Google does! (and sure, other search engines too)

Make sure that the Q&A content from your products are published in a way that Google gobbles it up and leads users who are asking similar questions through search to your site, so they can purchase product from you. You have the expertise, you have the time, and you have the incentive to do it well…..if you get this consistent content creation working in your favor, Google will reward you with brand new traffic that is relevant to your store. How relevant?

New customers acquired through Q&A content are up to 2x more valuable that those acquired in general from organic Google search, and up to 6x more valuable than those coming from Facebook. That’s huge as you get to acquire new customers, more valuable customers, and all while you’re converting existing customers at a higher clip (as already noted above, up to 75% of customers who get their product questions answered through Answerbase turn into a sale).

Of course, the data that we’re sharing in this post is based off Answebase’s customers for merchants using Answerbase Product Page Q&A, so we encourage you to start a free trial and get your knowledge and expertise working for you today.

We hope this post has been helpful and let us know if there is anything we can assist you with in order to grow your business.

The post How SMB Ecommerce Use Their Product Expertise to Compete with Amazon, and others appeared first on Answerbase.

That’s why you need to get creative and find effective ways of expanding your organic search results, and do as much as possible to make sure your content matches the search terms people actually use. Organic search can be more effective than paid search when people are in the early stages of search, while they’re still open to being influenced by what their searches turn up – and when they may be mistrustful of paid results. Assuming you’ve already optimized your website to rank high in organic search results for your highest converting keywords and key phrases, what else can you do to help ensure good end-results – especially if you’re in a highly competitive market?

By using a search marketing strategy that includes content such as Q&A, customer reviews and blogging, you can drive better organic search results for your business. Here’s how.

Use Q&A to share specific useful information

Q&A is a great way to drive organic search traffic for several reasons. As we’ve explained in a previous post on the topic, Q&A has helped businesses double or even triple their organic traffic year over year; we’ve even seen some businesses have notable increases in the early weeks or months of rolling out Q&A software on their website.

Q&A works well largely because it tends to focus on information that people need and to talk about it in the same terms and language they use when they search. For example, let’s say you run a business that sells cookware to consumers. If people are typing in the question “Do I need to replace a rubber spatula if it started to melt in a hot pan?” and you have Q&A content on your website that addresses that very question, in very much the same language that people are using when they ask, that content’s going to drive traffic to you. It also works because it’s so specific. “Do I need to replace a rubber spatula if it started to melt in a hot pan?” is going to get you a higher ranking than, say, a broader, more competitive search phrase like “rubber spatula” or even “melted spatula.” Check out our earlier post to learn more about how that works. Then you can accompany your Q&A content with an appropriate call to action to steer visitors to relevant products.

Draw more search visitors through customer reviews

Another way you can draw more search traffic to your site is by inviting people to review your business or product. This is an indirect but powerful way of drawing more organic traffic to your website. Let’s dive into how this works for you.

Let’s say you sell CRM Software. Do a search for “CRM Software Reviews” and you’ll see results with lists of reviewed companies on industry-specific review sites like Capterra and SoftwareAdvice.  If you’re a local store or company and do a similar search, you’ll likely to see results that include review-driven sites like Yelp or TripAdvisor, or Google Places. As potential customers are doing their pre-sales due diligence, a notable number will go this route. When they do, make sure you have a chance to capture their attention with a presence on these review sites that are ranking well for your industry. Try it for yourself: Search “[YOUR INDUSTRY OR COMPANY TYPE] Reviews” and see what pops up. Make sure you ask your customers to put honest reviews on those review sites, and you will in turn be able to indirectly draw more relevant customers to your site via search engines.

That leads to another important point to keep in mind, especially is the area of customer reviews is new territory for you. It’s good practice to ask for honest reviews rather than asking for positive reviews. (In fact, Yelp discourages asking for reviews, partly because they assume businesses will only ask for positive reviews.) Of course, if you ask for honest reviews, there’s always the risk that not all the reviews will be good. Some may even be downright negative. But don’t let that stop you. Instead, focus on motivating positive word of mouth by encouraging people who’ve had good experiences with you, and who are happy to be advocates for your business, to review you.

When you do get a negative review – which you’re probably going to at some point – turn it into an opportunity. Thank the reviewer for letting you know about the problem, promise to fix it and then follow through with action. This can lead to a couple of different positive outcomes. First, you may turn a dissatisfied customer into a fan, which is something you would have never had the opportunity to do if you didn’t include customer reviews in your search marketing strategy. Second, you’re likely to make a good impression on people who see that you’re eager to do right by customers.

These practices can lead to more satisfied existing customers, and more potential customers finding out about your service through search engines, which will allow you to highlight your strengths in service and support and lead to new business.

Blog, blog, blog!

Blogging is an excellent way to drive up search engine results. When you blog about topics that people are interested in, you create content that has the potential to come up in searches for those topics. There are a number of things you can do to improve how your content performs in those searches, such as including relevant keywords, coming up with a catchy yet concise title and linking to other content you’ve posted on your website. Some say posting frequently is also a good idea because it can increase your chances of being found by a search engine.

Perhaps the most important thing to do when you blog, though, is to provide fresh, high-quality content that will interest and excite people. Good content encourages others to link to and share your content, which will further improve your search engine performance. It can also establish you as an expert or authority on topics in your field, making your business a natural destination for people to go when they’re looking for information on those topics – not to mention just generally helping with positive awareness of you and your brand.

Keep in mind that when people are looking for useful content, they don’t particularly want to find advertising or promotional material instead. So while it may be tempting to use your blog mainly as a vehicle for promoting your products and services, it’s better to avoid that temptation. Let it instead be a channel for people to learn about the concepts and needs that underlie your offerings, rather than the offerings themselves. Save the pure-promotion angle for paid advertising and paid searches – that’s what paid promotion is good at. When people are looking for something that will help or enlighten them, they’ll appreciate finding exactly that on your blog. If it seems natural to mention what you do as part of making your point, that’s fine; just don’t make it the main point.

As you look for ways to increase traffic to your ecommerce store or website, keep in mind that Q&A, reviews and blogging are all good routes that you can use to avoid the toll-road approach of paid search. Of course, as in your real-world travels, there are times when a road that charges a toll is the best one to take. But just as you would never drive only on toll roads, so too should you look for alternatives to paid search that can drive people to your website.

The post Stepping Beyond Paid Search in Search Marketing appeared first on Answerbase.

Our clients’ experiences show that user-generated Q&A is proving to be one of the most effective ways to improve organic search results for your business and to drive people to your website. We’ve seen Q&A consistently deliver growing amounts of organic traffic and have positive impact on ecommerce SEO for our clients, as the numbers below show. These are real results of Answerbase clients. If you make Q&A a key component of your website content, don’t be surprised if you start to see dramatic results like these in your own business.

• Many clients double or even triple their organic traffic year over year
• One client shows a 19% increase in organic traffic per week in the first two months after launching Q&A
• Another client’s results show a 32% increase in organic traffic month over month for a period of 12 months, and continued consistent growth

Further down in this post, you can also see the actual Google Analytics organic search chart for one of our customers and the consistent growth pattern described above. But first let’s dive into the reasons why Q&A produces such compelling results.

Longtail search drives traffic…

Q&A falls in the category of “longtail” search content, which report after report has shown to drive high search rankings. “Longtail” refers to a relatively long series of words in a search – for example, “How does Honda Accord mpg compare with Toyota Camry mpg” vs. just “Honda Accord.” Q&A lends itself to longtail searches because questions are more likely to take a longtail form than other types of searches. This makes Q&A extremely good at driving organic search traffic. Here’s why.

• Natural language: Like other user-generated content (UGC), Q&A tends to match closely with the natural language people use to construct their search phrases. For example, Angie’s List has pushed to the top of search rankings with a Q&A blogpost on how much it should cost to install a water heater. If people are typing in the question “How much should water heater installation cost,” and the content Angie’s List provides is headlined “How much should water heater installation cost?” it’s a no-brainer that the content will do a good job of driving traffic to the article on the website. That content originated on Q&A.
• Specificity: Q&A by nature offers very specific information that people are looking for – and the more specific the information, the more likely it is to contain the “longtail” keywords that often characterize a person’s search language. To return to the example above, “Honda Accord” is so general it’s going to return countless hits if you’re the rare site ranking high for those general terms. But “How does Honda Accord mpg compare with Toyota Camry mpg?” is so specific it’s going to connect you directly with people who are looking for a particular piece of content, and it’s also less competitive. If you can provide the content people are seeking in a less competitive space, you’re going to rank high. Basically, people are telling you exactly what they want to see. All you have to do is deliver it.
• Content insights: Q&A is a back-and-forth process in which you can incrementally improve organic search performance by constantly learning more about what people are looking for and fine-tuning your content accordingly. One expert on the topic recommends using Google Analytics to identify the best longtail keywords for your business, as well as paying close attention to your own website’s forums and monitoring social media for clues about what people are interested in and what they’re looking for.   Answerbase creates longtail content naturally, but also provides Content Insights to accomplish this goal; the technology identifies content that needs refinement or that needs to be created to effectively satisfy demand.

…and longtail traffic drives conversions

A growing amount of Q&A content means more relevant content being indexed with higher rankings in organic search, which will bring more people to your website. Once they’re there, you’re in a perfect position to ask for their business – and get it. After all, they’re in search of specific information that you’re providing. Once you’ve done that, follow through with a strong call to action to help move you closer to your business goal and then continue to stay in front of them through remarketing (or retargeting) your call to action. Your goal might be driving sales, by requesting that they buy a product or sign up for a service from you, or driving database development, by simply asking them to provide contact information.  Traffic produced through Q&A content can help produce more results in both these areas.

Always include a call to action and remarket to your audience to successfully convert visitors who find your website through Q&A content. The longtail keywords that typify question-based searches are far better at converting visitors than short keywords. One study concluded that “longtail searches outperform generic shorttail searches on almost every measure,” including click-through rates and increasing ecommerce conversion rates.

There’s no arguing with results

Of course, we always like to point back to the actual results of Answerbase clients that make the best case for Q&A, as the graph below demonstrates. It shows the search engine traffic growth one of our clients experienced from using Answerbase’s Q&A system, and you can actually see the sustained growth of organic traffic to their Q&A environment.

If you’re looking to bring dramatically more traffic to your site and also increase conversions, consider Q&A as part of a larger content strategy that puts together quality content, effective distribution, and constant measuring and refining to get the results you’re looking for.

Try it out for yourself, with a Free Trial of Answerbase Q&A Software.

The post How User-Generated Q&A Grows Traffic and Conversions on Your Site appeared first on Answerbase.