I've discovered one of the neatest little tools. It really is a goldmine in these tough times. I guess it would be even in good times.

How would you like to have a tool that shows you exactly how many people are looking for you, how they are looking for you, and assuming that you should capture X% of those you can tune up your sales and marketing until you capture at least that many. A scientific formula for your sales.

How Many People Are Looking for You . . . RIGHT NOW

I was talking with a small construction company owner just before Christmas. He absolutely swore no one was buying. He was lamenting at how the new home construction market had gone to hell in a handbasket when the real estate market crashed. And then he even said that Christmas is always the worst time of the year. So, he was saying that this month was the worst of even a really bad time.

Finding That There Were 13,000 Looking

However, when I used the tool that I mentioned above to show him that there were over 13,000 people right here in Kansas City looking for construction, remodeling, and any number of other ways people were looking for his services he was shocked. And then I told him that my rule of thumb is that we should be able to get  in front of about 5% of those, 650. And then we went and did it.

And then there was the landscaper who said the same thing and I showed him that there were 2,000 people right in his neighborhood looking for landscaping right at Christmas when he told me no one was buying. And he Mary Kay Lady that increased her calls from 1 a year to 72 in the next two weeks.

OK, do I have your mouth watering yet?

The tool is Google Keyword Tool. Just get on Google and search for "Google Keyword Tool."

Once you are on that page type in the words you believe that someone would use to search for what you do. Start with the obvious, how you describe what you do, then think what pain is your target market experiencing.Look for that. Then what solutions do you provide and type that in next.

If you are doing business only in your city or community be sure to add that description. Let's use the landscaper, we might look for "landscaper Kansas City," "landscaping Kansas City", etc. However, before adding the geographic location you might use the tool to broaden your wording from landscaping and beyond. Google will give you more variation if you don't type in the geographic location first. So expand your mind, and then add the geographic location to the most searched for words.

Although you could build a long list of words to type into the block all at once, don't. If this would generate too big of a list Google has a tendency to drop some of the words without telling you. So, type in only 2-3 words at a time that are closely related. When you get that list, right at the bottom of that list Google will allow you to download that list into Excel. Do that. Use Excel to accumulate all of your lists.

Once you get your first list into Excel, rename it, save it as an Excel, or .xls file. Then cut and paste every new list into this list, or create groupings of search words into different tabs.

Google will tell you how many are searching for each word, and it will expand on the words you originally typed in to show you other ways people are searching for words similar to that word.

Now you know how people are looking for you and how many for each of those words. Use those words in your marketing materials, in your sales discussions because that's what your customers are REALLY looking for, and that may not have been the way you thought people were looking, or you might have thought NO ONE was really looking. But I'd bet you are surprised at how many actually are, even in this recession.

Where are they? They Aren't Calling ME

So, what do you do when you see that that many are looking but you are setting here . . . right now . . . without being able to reach anyone?

Marketing is a simple formula. It's the number of people who get to see or hear your marketing message times the conversion rate of that message, and that tells you how many leads, calls, sign-ups, or whatever it is you want those people to do. Let's say that you find that 1,000 people are searching for widget blocks. I typically assume that 5% should be obtainable. So, 1,000 x 5.0% = 50 people monthly.

And if you aren't getting in front of that many people monthly, right now, that likely means that the way you've been reaching out with your marketing has been the wrong way or to the wrong people. The construction company above continued to market the way he had always marketed, pretty much just waiting for the word of mouth from his customers to bring him new clients. And that wasn't bringing him anyone under the current conditions. Yet, Google told us that there were 13,000 right here looking for him. So, we had to find them.

As we looked there were lots more people looking for a remodeler than for "new home construction" or "contractor" or just plain "construction." Maybe more people are fixing up older homes than building or buying new homes. So, my client did two things, he started sending mailers to older homes, and he also started a Google Adwords campaign focused on "remodeling" words, "remodeling," "bath remodeling," "kitchen remodeling," "whole house remodeling", and low and behold he got 43 responses at a time when he had sworn no one was calling. And I'd bet he's the busiest construction company in the city.

So, find how people are looking for you, and how many?