My grandpa turned 92 yesterday. Over his birthday lunch, grandpa told stories about the Ploiesti Air Raids in WWII. Sixty-six years ago to the day (on his 26th birthday), grandpa was flying practice runs from Libya for this bombing mission that targeted oil refineries in Romania (a significant source of oil for Nazi Germany).
I’ve heard lots about Ploiesti over the years. Today, I Googled Ploiesti for the first time. It took multiple search attempts:
- “Plueste mission” = 4 results in Spanish
- “Pluheste low-level flying mission” = 0 results
- “Plueste, Romania” (yes, I tried the wrong spelling again) = “did you mean Ploiesti, Romania?”
- “Ploiesti mission” = JACKPOT! Wikipedia delivers the top listing
Why yes, I did. With the correct spelling, I tackled Google again.
So, what does this have to do with B2B marketing?
Your potential customers can’t spell your “supercalifragilisticexpialidocious” solution or product name!
And, they certainly aren’t going to find you online when your SEO strategy is based on optimizing it—your efforts will be fruitless.
B2B marketers need to focus on how users search. Users search for keyword phrases that describe a problem in order to find a solution; they don’t know your solution exists and, if they do, perhaps they can’t spell it.
There are free tools to help you research and logically deduct what keyword phrases will drive quality traffic to your site. Try WordTracker or Google Adwords to start. You may even consider a misspelled keyword as one of your keywords.
Are your SEO efforts centered on your product name? Can using a misspelled keyword pay off? Did you already know how to spell Ploiesti?
