I write about how Local Service Business owners can build an engaging Utopian World for their customers to inhabit using Endless-Value-Journeys, a strategy that emphasizes delighting dream customers, fostering deep connections and cultivating lifelong relationships. This paradigm shift moves us from reacting to one-off transactional customers to inviting them into our world where our focus is on Lifetime Customer Value. Welcome to the art of building a Purpose Driven Expert business.
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The Missed Opportunity
Picture the scene: In a bustling corner of our digital universe, there lived a local business owner named Alex.
Alex’s business, nestled in the heart of the community, was his pride and joy…
With dreams of expanding his reach and making a meaningful impact, Alex invested in what he believed was the key to unlocking his business’s potential—a beautiful, sleek website.
It was a masterpiece, adorned with professional photos, detailed service descriptions, and glowing testimonials.
Alex waited for the flood of leads and sales that was sure to come…
Weeks turned into months, and Alex’s inbox remained eerily silent. The phone didn’t ring with eager customers, and the anticipated digital buzz around his business was non-existent.
The beautiful website, which Alex believed was a beacon of his business’s value and professionalism, sat like a deserted island in the vast ocean of the internet…
This story is far too common, and it underscores a critical truth in today’s digital landscape: a beautiful website alone is not enough to connect with customers and drive business.
Like Alex, many business owners learn this lesson the hard way. They invest in a digital facade, expecting it to do the heavy lifting, only to realize that without a deeper strategy, their online presence fails to resonate with their audience…
It’s why I when I mentioned in the manifesto how you need to know the full picture, the full strategy that is trying to be achieved before you can put any tactic in place…
And before that, you need to understand the principles that govern any strategy…
What is your website?
Have you ever given any deep thought to that question beyond surface level?
You see, it is the first platform that you own and have full control over, where you have the opportunity to meet your potential customer.
Read that sentence again and let it sink in…
They say you don’t get a second chance to make a first impression…
Have you ever met someone for the first time and your gut tells you that this is a good person?
That you’re going to be good friends?
When someone lands on your site, you have an opportunity to create something like that or, an opportunity to tell them all the ways in which they can give you money…
Have you ever thought of it like that?
Isn’t that what 99.9% of local websites do?
“Hi, we’re ‘ABC local service (homepage), we’ve been doing this a long time (about page), and this is how you give us money (services page), and you might want to send us a message before giving us money (contact us page)…
Yes, I’m being a little facetious but have I summed it up pretty well?
Like I said earlier, this is the first platform that you own in the sequence, an ad is on someone else’s platform, a search engine search is on someone else’s platform…
If you only get one chance at a first impression, what would you like that impression to be?
- Look how great we are, let me show you how you can give us money, or
- Welcome, come in, get comfortable and tell me about the problem you’re having at the minute, let me see if I can help…
I know which one I prefer…
As a purpose driven expert, I prefer to welcome everyone into ‘my world’ and see if I can help them first (provide value), long before they ever give me money…
I liken it to if a friend or relative was to knock on my door with a problem…
Can I help them help themselves first, would some advice solve the issue before they need my expertise.
One thing I have found in life in general, outside of business advice, just every day advice on normal problems is…
When someone goes away and gets a positive outcome from the advice you’ve previously given them, they tend to look to you when other problems show up…
Have you found this to be true?
Bit of a tangent, sorry, but back to our point…
A customer can be a customer long before money ever changes hands…
Yes, technically they’re only a visitor, a prospect, until the timing is right for them to buy from you.
It’s your platform, your first impression, what do you want to convey?
Now if you’re trying to compete with all of your competitors to acquire customers with ads or search traffic that is ‘Local Service + Location’, I can see how you might think ‘I’ve got to make a sale quick’, but there is 2 people involved in every transaction…
And you’re only getting in front of the 3% who are in the market right now…
There’s a saying “It takes 2 to tango”…
Every transaction takes 2 people, a buyer and a seller, and sure you can make some sales with ths strategy, but will they ever come back?
We don’t know for sure, do we?
I like to put the odds in my favour, if I can…
And it starts with targeting a bigger pool of potential customers than the 3% who are in the market right now…
In the coming pages we will go over the differences between this approach and the one I see far too often…
You see, when the pool of customers is limited, the natural tendency is to resort to persuasion coercion tactics like scarcity, urgency and add-ons to make a sale.
You may have seen this like ‘Special Offer’, ‘For Today Only’, “Offer Ends in ….”, some even resort to countdown timers to force a sale.
What message does this send out, do we really think “I can’t believe I am so lucky, of all the days I visited this website it just happens to be on the day that their mega sale is ending in 3 hours…”
Come on, is it just me who’s skin crawls when I see this?
Is this how you want to be known?
Or would you prefer a different way?