Set the Buying Criteria on the Web: Always Be Useful

Posted: July 08, 2011

By establishing your site as the preeminent resource in your market space, you have the opportunity to set the buying criteria, and therefore gain the greatest influence over the conversation. All visitors have their own reasons for conducting an online search. They could care less about you. It's about them. What do they need to know to make their best decision? To take action? To feel better?

Google anything. No, seriously, Google "anything" and see what you get. 1.89 trillion results. That's a lot of guesses about what you could possibly mean with such an impossibly vague search term. Regardless of your intention, Google is poised and ready to open the fire hose on you, clarity be damned. As with all search engines, knowing what you're looking for is up to you.

Countless websites, however, have evolved to behave in a similar way. Their hopes of a sale are pinned on assumptions made about visitors based on their keyword searches — a horrible way to judge a prospect and what he or she really wants. They expect the prospects to fend for themselves.

You should do the opposite. Forget about “always be closing.” Stop trying to pitch your features and benefits to strangers when you don't really know what they need. Instead, always be useful.

Attempting to convince visitors of your value is so old media. Using your online platform to provide real value, on the other hand, positions your brand as the preeminent choice. That's the true leverage gained through new media: delivering your brand experience to anyone, whenever and wherever they find you.

...why wait for money to exchange hands to make a difference? When you adopt this mindset [of preeminence], your prospects will soon become your clients, all because your way of relating to them is totally different than that of your competitors.

—Jay Abraham, The Sticking Point Solution

Some concrete examples of visitor-focused resources:

Regular, insightful blogging and articles, not PR puffery
Do-It-Yourself instructions
Industry buying guides
Detailed FAQs, based on customer inquiries and long tail search phrases
Forum discussions
Live chat
Videos and Webinars
Objective, industry-specific white papers
E-books
Free widgets and mobile apps

Of course, teaching your prospects how to be smart, informed clients doesn't mean that they will always buy from you. Some will still go elsewhere. Many still won't buy at all. However, both your social and search engine magnetism will increase dramatically, moving you closer to the top of the sales funnel.

Being the most useful site among your competitors is not something you're paid to do, but it's the cost of entry on an endlessly informative Internet, when competing options are one click away.

Biz Tip Source: Talentzoo

Author: Mike Sobol