Pain and gain maps help search engine optimizers classify the persona who view their site. If you think about it, every decision is made weighing the pain and the gain, or the risk to reward. This means online decisions are no different. Knowing the pains and gains of our internet persona helps us to think about keywords, how to sell, and much more. Knowing the pains and gains is the foundation of persona development. It helps us connect with our audience on a deeper level. If someone who gets cold easily receives an advertisement for a heated vest, they will immediately feel as if someone saw their need and met it. They will probably be much more likely to buy something they relate to. Pains can be a wide range of things, such as needs, fears, frustrations, gaps, challenges, obstacles, or threats. Gains can be things such as hopes, goals, wants, opportunities, profit, acquisitions, and success factors. Targeting pains and gains, and understanding where our target consumer lies will be key in making our SEO effective.
3 Responses
I agree that Pain/Gain maps are important tools to use when thinking about how to use SEO to attract target customers. Understanding what people are looking for (gains) and why they are looking for it (pains) helps a company generate keywords and content for their site. Doing so requires thinking about a specific search persona you are targeting and putting yourself in their shoes so you can better understand the kinds of searches they will make.
I agree as well. Using pain/gain maps have proved to be very helpful for me in other business related subjects; I am sure that they will be an important tool when beginning to attract target customers to a website.
Agreed targeting the Pains & Gains effectively cna change a business’ revenue over night. The example of the cold consumer getting the appropriate ad most likely has more conversions than just random heated advertisements. They must be at specific times to drive that conversion.