Your customer journey is hiding secret gems in the form of keywords that you can put to use and drive more leads to your venue – right now. Learn how we look at the 5 phases of a customer journey to find new keyword ideas that can be used in SEO, Google Ads, Social Media, Blogging, and Email Marketing. Scott Fish, Unique Venues’ Strategic Growth Director shares his strategies to boost leads for your venue.
Keyword research for most businesses is important, but for your venue, it’s a critical foundation that you can build a steady flow of leads through. Oftentimes when we talk about keyword research we just talk about it’s SEO implications or the type of keywords that need to be targeted through Google Ads. In today’s multi channel environment it extends beyond SEO and Ads to include social media, email marketing, and into business intelligence.
A great starting place in conducting keyword research is to talk about the Customer Journey Map, which includes Awareness, Consideration, Decision, Service, and Advocacy. Keyword research can help you find keywords that you might want to target in all 5 of these areas.
The most critical and biggest area of opportunity is Awareness – this is the wide net that could include keywords that are very general or include geographic terms that extend beyond your city or even state. Venues that want to have a national presence need to include a deep list of keywords in their strategy so that they can be competitive in niche areas while also having exposure in competitive keywords like [city name] Conference Center.
The Consideration phase for a planner can look very different depending on their level of experience and comfort with your venue. If they are a casual or first time planner they will likely collect a lot of information up front before they reach out – they need to get a feel for your space size, pricing, contract terms, general style of the venue, catering options, etc. In fact a new planner may not know what to ask for in the discussion process and this is a great area of opportunity for venue planning checklists that can be printed or downloaded as a tool for the planner. Seasoned planners will want to see upfront information and may be ready to move along to the Decision phase quickly.
As a planner moves into the Decision phase they need an easy way to connect with you. Some venues are using email forms, while others would prefer that you give them a call. At Unique Venues we know that planners want immediate response so a call option is important and even more important is a quick email response. What are the things that can make or break a deal with a planner? Those are keywords that need attention and are areas of content development opportunity.
The Service phase may not seem like a big area of opportunity to find keywords – but there are hidden and important areas to consider. Do people attending an event need driving directions? Might they need a floor plan to navigate your venue? What policies are important for attendees to know about? These are all things that a day-of-the-event attendee will seek, but planners likely want to see these things before the book and it makes a lot of sense to bring this type of information to the forefront of your website.
Advocacy or sometimes called the Loyalty phase of the Customer Journey Map presents an opportunity for your venue to capitalize on reviews. Do you know of any 3rd party websites that have an abundance of positive reviews for your venue? It may be time to bring them into your own website and you can do that! Tripadvisor has a great keyword tagging method where they capture common words or phrases in hundreds of reviews that a business may have. This can be a great place to find common themes that planners or event attendees find to be positive about your venue.
Take a step back this week and think about the five areas that we just reviewed in the customer’s journey to booking with your venue. Do you see areas of opportunity to dig deeper and find new keywords that you can use to optimize your website, target through Google Ads, include in an email campaign, or discuss over social media channels?
We lay this foundation for our consulting clients as they build new websites or expand their marketing channels. If you would like to talk with us about how you can get laser focused with your digital marketing strategy to drive more leads, send me an email and let’s set up a time to chat.
Every few weeks we also have webinars focused on topics like this one – check out the schedule to see if any interests you.