Why My Grannie Will Never Be My Customer
My childhood home is a healthy nine-hour drive from where I and my family currently live. It’s in the mountains
This Article…
If we share the same philosophy—that the central goal of your marketing is
—then there’s more brain-time and action that must go into the 3-pillar overview of online marketing I lay out in this presentation I delivered to my local chamber. (video below)
Why are you so concerned with ranking number one in Google [search]?
This is where most everyone—small business owners, restaurant owners, CEOs, non-profit administrators, board members, directors of this or that—gets the concept backwards.
What good is it to be in the very top spot of everyone-in-the-world’s search results if they aren’t very likely to become your customer?
I’m in a geographical area where, if someone makes a website and spends the minimal amount of energy adding even just a little “surface information” about whatever industry the website represents, they are actually likely to do relatively well with their search engine ranking—at least concerning “local search.” (People looking for brick-n-mortar businesses)
1) There’s not a lot of similar-business competition. And if there is, many don’t have stand-alone sites. A few more might not have anything (no Facebook business page, no GoogleMyBusiness page).
2) Google, and its mysterious algorithm, is indeed interested in serving up helpful information. So a site with very little content (no blog articles or cool videos) yet a few pages of information (like a niche directory listing) can still surprisingly do well in local search results.
But even in these rare cases, they’re still faced with a huge problem.
This is how many businesses and organizations think. They don’t necessarily know they’re thinking this way… but it’s this notion of:
“As long as we get placed in the top spot (and of course, we’ll get the click), visitors will be our customers.”
Hold on there, Hondo. You’re missing a few steps. That’s like a marriage proposal in the first 3 seconds.
What about… the thing that goes between the “I found and clicked you” and “I’m your customer”?
What about the thing between “I’m your first-time customer” and “I came back to you”?
We gotta get on the same page with something: 98% (or more) of your online traffic will likely be just browsing. Shopping around. Researching. They might find you, and that’s a good thing. But then what? What are you going to say?
Are you going to offer them a promotion? But we just covered, the vast part of them, they’re not at that point. They’re just looking. They’re not even in the final decision mode of choosing anyone, let alone taking an action to exchange dollars for a product or service with your website they came across for the first time.
From here, you’ll need to check out the video presentation.
Check it out. I’d love your feedback.
To the right (below if you’re on your phone), are the slides I had prepared for this presentation. And sure, I used them… but I whizzed right by some of the more technical discussions.
So here, you can check them out and take your time clicking through. And if you have a question about one (or if I’ve confused you more—certainly not the first time my teaching has ever done such a thing), simply tell me. I’d love to hear from you.
My childhood home is a healthy nine-hour drive from where I and my family currently live. It’s in the mountains
This Article… is especially for business owners and leaders (Local Chamber of Commerce members) as well as for anyone who