Small Business Owner. What You Need To Know To Market The Way Customers Like To Buy
by: Claude Whitacre
Literally, every day I get this call at my small business;
“Hello, I need this part. Do you have it? I’m in Houston Texas (or some other out of state place), and I can’t find it anywhere”
These are for products that can be found anywhere people sell what I sell. Many can be found at any local Wal-Mart.
Is it true that the customer can’t find the part (or other item) anywhere?
No. What it means is that they don’t know where to look to find what thy need.
So, how did they find me?
Simple. I’m on the i-n-t-e-r-n-e-t.
The consumer types in a word to search for a supplier, and I’m one of the first places that pop up. Yea!
Is it that I have a website? No. Thousands of dealers have a website selling exactly what I do. But their website is in “Website Purgatory”. If you don’t list your website on directories, post it to search engines, and write convincing Meta Tags Descriptions (the little ads you see when you do a search online), nobody will see your website.
So people are searching online...out of state...for things they can easily find listed in their local Yellow Pages.
Why? Because far fewer people are using the Yellow Pages. More are going online.
The fact is, consumers are searching online for products sold locally.
An extension of this is, consumers can get tons of information about a product before
they decide to buy...and who to buy from.
How does this information benefit you?
You can be the guy they get their information from. You simply need to post tons of good quality information about the business you are in, and the product you sell.
Now, the first thing you may think is “Yup, they will pump me for information and then buy somewhere else”. And that is true, you’ll get some people getting information from you that buy somewhere else. So what? It didn’t cost you anything. It wasted none of your time.
Every week I have people drive 30 miles or so to stop in my retail store to buy things they could have bought cheaper in their own town. But they saw the article I wrote. Like the one you are reading now. They saw the video on my website. They may have listened to a podcast.
You need to be giving information in the places people are looking for information. You can write articles, post videos, or create podcasts. You can take the same information, and publish it in different formats. My videos are simply me reading my articles. My podcasts are simply the audio from my videos. My blog posts are shorter versions of my articles.
The days of making money just by advertising in the local weekly newspaper are coming to a close.
People are shopping online to find the information they need. They either buy online or shop locally. But they will buy where they are comfortable. Make sure that place is yours.
