Your Ideal Customer’s Journey To You Often Begins With A Simple Search
Back in the day, you flipped open the phone book to find a solution to a problem, or to look for the right business to meet a need or fulfill a want.
But when was the last time you looked something up in the phone book?
Nowadays, you look stuff up on the phone itself!
We’ve come a long way, Baby.
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If your business is relying on a listing in the phone book – or, even more weakly, on that famous “word of mouth” – you’ll struggle. In fact, most small businesses fail… and the overwhelming majority of those fail because they didn’t leverage smart marketing dollars to keep their business growing.
You need to have a presence in the exact marketplace in which your ideal prospective customer is looking for you.
A hundred years ago, you needed a storefront and a sign on Main Street – because that’s where prospects were looking for solutions.
Fifty years ago, you needed a listing in the phone book – because in those days, prospects were letting their fingers do the walking by flipping through the yellow pages of their local directory.
Today, you know where prospects are looking for solutions. Same place you look.
You need a web presence.
And a good one.
Do You Have A Main Street Location?
Step One: have a professional website.
You can spend very little to put up a cookie-cutter website. But whatever you spend doing that will be wasted money.
That’s like having a storefront in your garage or basement out in the ‘burbs.
If prospective customers find you at all (a BIG “if”), they’re likely to eliminate you from consideration almost immediately. Because you won’t look like a real business to them. You’ll come across as a “hobbyist.”
You won’t compare favorably to your competitors, who have professionally-created and maintained web presences, and who show up right on the “Main Street” of today (the customer’s search results).
So don’t be “penny-wise and pound foolish” – get a pro to create and maintain your website, and make sure it’s both technically-sound and content-rich.
That’s how you get found.
And if you can’t get found by your ideal prospects, you can't convert them to customers.
Strangers Will Find You On The Web – The Key Is WORDS
Your ideal prospect is looking for you, right now.
She’s thumbing some key words into the search app on her smart phone, hoping someone nearby offers the solution she’s looking for. “Nearest animal clinic,” or “Best local barber,” or “Thai restaurant in Homeville” – whatever key words occur to her in her search for the right business.
If that business is yours, you need to be there when her search results come in.
You need to “own” the key words your customer is likely to use in her search.
Your web professional can help you make sure the right customers will find you by designing a web presence that anticipates the key words prospects will use when they search for you. In fact, his work will make all the difference in your online marketing.
Prospective customers will find you, but it won’t happen by accident. They’ll find you because you deliberately put up a “sign” exactly where they’ll look for your business – by allocating an appropriate amount of your marketing budget to your online presence. Get a professional website and stock it with great content rich in the right key words… and those ideal prospects won’t be strangers for long.