What happens when your prospect gets ‘interested’?
… they start researching and end up confused.
Part of understanding WHO you are marketing to (See Part 2) and WHAT will attract their interest (See Part 3) is knowing where you will find them… more specifically where you can find them without having all your competitors fighting for their attention too because when your prospects see you with 20 other lookalikes, you only have a 20-to-1 chance of winning.
Yes, you can go to the obvious places:
- Business directories and yellow pages
- Google and other search engines
- Facebook, LinkedIn, Instagram etc.
And you do want to have your entries in all those places optimised… but why STOP there?
For every valuable market there are other places you start a conversation with your prospects where you won’t be fighting against your competitors and in which you can control the conversation you have and the vocabulary they use to research their options so that you avoid the ‘Google slap’.
What is the ‘Google Slap’?
Guess what happens when you use predictable keywords to describe your business?
Your prospect loses track of you in pages of sponsored ads and competitors… and you probably lose the sale!
If you’re dependent on search results for keywords to attract prospects then you are not even talking to a lot of potential prospects because you didn’t show up on page 1 of their search. You can pay a lot of money to get to the front page, but then you still have to hope that the page they check out answers all their questions. It’s a risky strategy for attracting great prospects because they are probably going to research all your competitors at the same time, and you have to hope they don’t accidentally close your tab in the process.
So…What Else Can I Do?
Control the Conversation
For most businesses, standard keywords will return over one hundred thousand results… even if you add a city to your search. A business or personal name returns far fewer options (unless it’s John Smith with 2,360,000,000 results) but demands that people remember your name.
That’s why businesses create custom-terminology to describe their services and cut through the search clutter as well as to ensure that their description and offer are memorable. When you talk in terms of the problem you solve for prospects and the transformation your business creates using the vocabulary your prospects use combined with your own terminology, rather than ‘traditional industry-speak’ you not only connect emotionally with your prospect, you also create unique opportunities to converse with them.
Your authority book or free report should provide prospects with your chosen search terms… terms which lead them directly to you, rather than losing them in the morass of search. Interestingly, this doesn’t always happen: I recently was researching building investment property portfolios and the authority book on that topic used generic terms and offered generic advice that led me to a whole host of other resources and reviews. From a captive prospect, I became a lost opportunity because the author didn’t control the conversation (nor did she address the thorny questions that bothered me and were answered or exacerbated by my research.
Contrast this with a similar book by a Financial Planner who specialises in estate planning. This book creates it’s own terminology (all the searches using those terms lead to his sites and materials), addresses the questions and objections commonly raised with subtlety and conviction, and sets himself apart from all his potential competitors by operating in a completely different manner. He controls the conversation and gets the attention of his ideal prospects in an arena where most of his competitors never even appear.
Show Up Like No-one Else… and Where Others Fear to Tread
If you go where all your competitors go and do what they do it’s very hard to stand out. It’s like the real estate agent who once asked me to write his website based on all of his competitors… he was too lazy to even think about what might be different about his business (apart from saying that he was different).
Have you ever noticed that businesses who do what their competitors do and offer what their competitors offer all have the same problems as their competitors? Mostly that problem stems from lazy marketing.
Here’s another real estate example… but this time a positive one: a client wanted to test a novel approach that would release her from doing listing presentations. We borrowed the idea from a US agent, but all her colleagues told her it wouldn’t work in Australia. She advertised in 3 hobby/interest magazines which she knew her target market read… using half-page advertorials which offered a lead generation book prospects could request either online or by phone and she also advertised on the radio. Along with the lead generation book she sent other collateral in a classic shock and awe box complete with sales letter, DVD, brochure, fee schedule, process description and some biscuits. Someone from her office followed up by phone, but there was no heavy sales pitch and no listing presentation. Over 90% of respondents ended up using her services with 6-9 months and her ROI far exceeded every other form of promotion she tried.
The truth is that most businesses are fairly lazy about both their self-knowledge and their target market knowledge… and they pay for that laziness by struggling to get the attention of enough qualified prospects. But, when you do things differently, your results change.
Know Where They Go!
If you present the perfect message to the perfect target but they never see your message then you will not gain any traction. So, it is critical to know your target audience hang out, what magazines they read, and what they listen to on the radio so that you can justify a higher spend on your marketing.
Are you Interested in a System that Helps You Do This?
A well-designed marketing system not only avoids the 7 major causes of marketing failure, but ensures that your marketing succeeds. You can work this all out for yourself, you can hire a marketing consultant and ask them to set up a direct-response marketing system for you, or you can invest in the 25th anniversary edition of The Magnetic Marketing(™) Program developed by Dan Kennedy to short cut your learning curve.
I always advise business owners to thoroughly understand the marketing principles they want to use in their business so they don’t get distracted by bright shiny objects. Too many businesses end up spending money on marketing that does not yield a satisfactory return on investment… and that leads to a general distrust of marketing that hurts their business even more.
If you’d like to learn more the underlying principles of a Magnetic Marketing System you can get a copy of Dan Kennedy’s Magnetic Marketing book for just $10 (includes shipping and handling anywhere in the world. Visit https://hiltoncopywriting.mykajabi.com/offers/CXivH6fe/checkout to order your copy.
If you’re in Melbourne, why not visit our Magnetic Marketing Mastermind which meets monthly in Box Hill. To learn more and sign up for notifications visit https://memg.com.au
