If You Build It, They Will Come!
Great movie… but not so great for business. It’s amazing how many businesses are still operating under this principle. Worse yet, many business owners will tell me how they aren’t sitting back and waiting for business to come to them, but their actions tell me something different. And, it’s really hard to fix something that you don’t realize is broken!
Whether your business is “brick and mortar,” “click and order,” or a little bit of both, your business will not survive if you wait for customers to come and find you. A scary trend I’ve been noticing lately revolves around SEO (search engine optimization). SEO experts are helping create a belief that if you find the magic phrases and optimize your site, then customers will start flooding through the digital door.
SEO is not a panacea, it’s a tool. It’s also a tool that does not necessarily work for everyone. If your business is a highly niche, professional service, then your customers may not be looking for your service online. Seriously! I’ve spoken to people who are flabbergasted that their highly researched and optimized pay-per-click (PPC) campaign received no – that is zero - clicks. But, their services are highly specialized and the target client is a high level executive in an enterprise-sized company. Odds of them looking for the service by clicking on a PPC ad are very low.
Further, did you know it’s possible to be #1 on Google and have it not be of much value? Before the world of search engines, many businesses came up with clever names that used analogies that have nothing to do with the business at hand in order to stand out. If you type the name of the business into Google, you come up #1. Yeah!! Right?? Look at the rest of the results. Do they have anything to do with your business? If not, then chances are most people typing in the words of your business aren’t looking for you. And, if they are looking for you, they already know about you. So, how valuable was that #1 ranking?
Whether you’re opening a restaurant or an online candy company, you have to promote your business in order for it to grow. And, by promotion, I don’t mean simply listing it in the Yellow Pages or having an SEO guru optimise your site.
Now that you’ve built it, they’ll come when you ask them to!
SEO is not a panacea, it’s a tool. It’s also a tool that does not necessarily work for everyone. If your business is a highly niche, professional service, then your customers may not be looking for your service online. Seriously! I’ve spoken to people who are flabbergasted that their highly researched and optimized pay-per-click (PPC) campaign received no – that is zero - clicks. But, their services are highly specialized and the target client is a high level executive in an enterprise-sized company. Odds of them looking for the service by clicking on a PPC ad are very low.
Further, did you know it’s possible to be #1 on Google and have it not be of much value? Before the world of search engines, many businesses came up with clever names that used analogies that have nothing to do with the business at hand in order to stand out. If you type the name of the business into Google, you come up #1. Yeah!! Right?? Look at the rest of the results. Do they have anything to do with your business? If not, then chances are most people typing in the words of your business aren’t looking for you. And, if they are looking for you, they already know about you. So, how valuable was that #1 ranking?
Whether you’re opening a restaurant or an online candy company, you have to promote your business in order for it to grow. And, by promotion, I don’t mean simply listing it in the Yellow Pages or having an SEO guru optimise your site.
Now that you’ve built it, they’ll come when you ask them to!
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