Sauce or Gravy? Dishing up what your customers want...

We have this discussion in our office all the time. It's like the battle of the Italian Americans and those that grew up around them.

In my parent's house, it's sauce. Period. Sunday sauce. Meat sauce. If it's red, it's sauce. "Gravy is brown," Dad always said.

Ask Single Throw's CEO Larry Bailin who grew up in north Jersey, and it's gravy.

Now ask yourself, if you had a website that featured Italian recipes, which terminology would use? Most people go with what they call it. Me, I'd make a site that featured recipes of the great sauces of Italy. But would my site - one that would likely appeal to even gravy lovers around the world - ever be found by them in the search engines? Not necessarily. And if it was, would they even click on it, knowing full well the two "may" be the same thing? Probably not.

First, simply speaking, the site that is most relevant to the search request will show up first. So "sauce" sites will likely show up for "sauce" requests before those that feature only "gravy" references. Secondly, if I am looking for "sauce" I am more likely to choose the site that says "sauce" not "gravy" as I know it matches my needs - even though in the back of my head they could be the same thing. (Although I hear my Dad's words over and over again!)

So what's the big deal? It's this: the new world of Internet Marketing has introduced us all to new tools and skills that allow us to find out exactly what your customers are looking for. Don't give them "sauce" if they are looking for "gravy" even though you think they are the same. They are not to the person with that specific need in their head. And they will choose the site that meets their exact needs first.

Mangia!

Read more about it...
About.com Italian Food article
Wikipedia definition of Tomato Sauce
Slow Travel Talk Forum Discussion
Technorati Tags: internet marketing, Search Engine Optimization, Marketing, SEM, tomato sauce