Part 4 – Principles of a Purpose Driven Expert
Thank you for reaching this far, I don’t take your time or attention lightly, we are being bombarded with diluted content from so called ‘influencers’ who are creating shallow click-bait for likes, follows and clicks.
My goal is to be a voice worth listening to, value your attention and I will never take it for granted.
Have you ever walked into a store and as you’re leisurely browsing, a member of staff starts walking towards you…
“Do you need any help?” they ask with a smile…
How do you reply?
I bet you say “No thanks, just looking”…
Am I right?
If I am, you’re not alone…
But let’s take a deeper look at the human psychology of the interraction.
We went into the store with hope, if not an intention of seeing something we’d like and we could buy, right?
We didn’t just enter for the sake of it, perhaps we’ve bought something from there before or something caught our eye in the window while passing by.
But we felt in control of our actions…
If we see something and decide to buy it, it’s our decision…
Once a salesperson approaches us, it’s like the dynamic changes, we almost get a sense that they’re going to convince us to by something, and we get a feeling to ‘back away’…
“No thanks, just looking” is our defence mechanism…
There is a saying that “we all love to buy, but we hate to be sold to”…
This isn’t entirely accurate, you see ‘we all love to buy and we love to be sold… when it’s in our best interest‘
Read that sentence again… it’s important.
Let’s go a little deeper with the concept…
Have you ever gone into a store when you have got to buy an outfit or garment for a special occasion, and when the salesperson approaches it’s like you are on a mission?
“Do you need any help?” they ask…
“Yes I’m looking for a …” and you rattle off all the specifics of what you had in mind, the colour, the size, the type of fit you’re looking for, what it’s going to be matching and even the event that you’re going to be wearing it to…
What changed?
Same scenario, different intention!
It was now in your best interest to buy…
Was that an aha moment?
This is important when we want to apply a strategy of how we attract and acquire customers…
Check out the image below I found, and when you get to read each different coloured highlighted sentence, slow down and read it on it’s own…
The reason I say that is because it’s easy to gloss over if you just read the whole paragraph…
I really want you to get this…
Let’s state the sentences differently for clarification.
- 50%+ will buy what they enquired about in the next 18 months
- 15% of them will buy in the next 90 days
- The other 85% of them will buy after 90 days
As a Purpose Driven Expert, we are playing the long game, we are no longer Transaction Value focused…
We now have some understanding of the market dynamics over the next 90 days to 18 months.
But what about now?
Another study was carried out that showed only 3% of your potential customers (visitors to your site) are in the market right now.
Check out the image below…
Isn’t that fascinating?
97% of all our potential customers are not in the market right now…
Read that again… that is a massive number.
So armed with all these stats, what conclusions can we draw from them?We can conclude that interruption marketing is probably not going to work and any paid advertising using that method is not going to be a good use of our budget, right?Next we can conclude that if we are able to get someone to our site and they take an action towards an enquiry, 3% are ready to buy right now if the offer meets their needs, 15% will buy in the next 90 days, and half of them will buy in the next 18 months.So, do you think it would be beneficial to have a system in place to take advantage of all 3 scenarios?Me too…So let’s explore this concept further…One of the best marketing statements I’ve ever heard, and I wish I knew who said it first so I could give them credit is…
The best way to show someone that you can help them… is by actually helping them…
So how can we show someone we can help them by actually helping them?
Let me explain…
But before I do, a bit of context will help…
Have you got a website? If yes, is it bringing in leads for you every day?
If the answer is no, it’s probably because when the website design company asked you “what would you like to be ranked for?”
And because you didn’t know any different, you probably answered “your profession + location”, for example that could be “Plumber London”, or “Electrician New York”, this also goes for “Plumbing Services San Diego” or “Electrical Services Manchester” etc, etc…
The issue with that is that every other plumber or electrician with a website in your area wants to be ranked for those search phrases too.
Hence the competition and why your website doesn’t anywhere close to page 1 in the results and the only people who ever visit your site have been given your business card or you’ve told them over the phone.
This is because you and the web designers are not aware of the ‘5 levels of customer awareness’
So there are 5 levels of customer awareness, there are also levels of search intent that prospects can make…
So depending on where your prospect is in their awareness will determine the search intent they have and the messaging you make to convert them to your customer.
Does this make sense?
There is another concept in marketing that states “Meet your prospects where they are”…
To make this a liitle more concrete for you, look at the image below and you’ll see the different levels of search intent with the example of how it would affect a local bicycle shop.
Take a look at the image below and you’ll see where the majority of local service business owners are competing, perhaps even you before you found me…
Let me give a ridiculous example of the levels when it comes to footwear.
Did you know there are still parts of the world that don’t wear shoes?
The Maori’s of New Zealand, many parts of India and even Equador still predominantly walk barefoot outside.
These people would be at the Unaware end of the spectrum…
Educating these people on the benefits of shoes and your well being when it comes to the stress on joints etc could lead you to sell these people anything from flip-flops, to trainers to any number of other options…
These people would not be price conscious at all…
However, at the other end of the spectrum is a trend conscious 25 year old who wants the latest pair of Nike trainers in gold with the latest gizmo they’ve added.
This person is going to search for the trainers by brand and product name, and probably put words like “best price”, “discount”, or “deals” at the end…
This person is going to be most aware, even brand aware and is going to be ‘price shopping’…
Bringing this back to your situation, if you’re marketing or prospects are at this end of the awareness spectrum, it might be why you spend a lot of time quoting on jobs and being asked to compete on price…
Are you getting this?
As a Purpose Driven Expert, we don’t play in that Sandpit…
We play in our own Sandpit, creating our own world where we meet customers where they are in the Problem Aware category…
At this level of awareness from the customer, they just know they have an issue and are looking for information on how to find a solution…
The image below shows where we would be aiming to provide a ‘how-to- guide or tutorial or some other content piece digitally that can leverage our time…
So let’s take a breath and recap what we’ve learned so far…
- Not all prospects are at the same awareness level
- Depending on their level determines how they search for solutions (keyword intent)
- If we meet our prospects where they are, we get the opportunity to…
- Show them we can help them by actually helping them!
- When we’ve helped them move out of their current pain point, we know that…
- 3% are ready to buy from us right now…
- 15% will probably buy from us in the next 90 days, and…
- 50% will probably buy in the next 18 months, when it’s in their own best interest, and we’ve nurtured the relationship over time.
Does that sound a better strategy than “What would you like to rank for?”
Can you see how Purpose Driven Experts create their own little world where they no longer compete with everyone else out there?
Below is an image of a venn diagram of the world we create our world as a Purpose Driven Expert…
So now you know how as Purpose Driven Experts we don’t play the same game as our competition in a race to the bottom…
Our dream customers enter our world via our strategically engineered acquisition systems, we then move them up a framework I developed called the Trust Triangle…
Which I’ll explain all about next…
Continue to Part 5: Creating Your World