Tactical Execution

A past client of mine had a business selling wine jelly.  Yes, that’s right.  Wine jelly.  Apparently, it tastes really good.  But that’s not the point.  Before we met, his website had products ranging in price from $4 to $28.  They included different sized jars and one package deal with 4 large jars.  Now, picture what you might think when you stumble upon his website.

If it were me, I would picture a retail shelf vendor and nothing more.  I would picture a few jars with a particular label sitting there on the shelf, beside dozens of competitive products.  There is absolutely nothing that would jump out at me.  And that’s precisely the problem.  He was a retail shelf vendor and nothing more.

After working together, we introduced a once-annual 3-day retreat up in Napa, including an extensive tour of a winery on one day, an afternoon workshop on a second day (teaching participants how to make wine jelly in their own homes) and three gourmet meals per day, each featuring wine jelly in one fashion or another.  The price for the retreat is $3995 and he featured it on his homepage.  Now, picture yourself once again as you discover this website.

In the first case, you have found a retail shelf vendor selling little jars of jelly.  In the second scenario, you have found a parallel universe that you never knew existed; a world full of romance, passion and good food.  You have discovered a world you have never seen, a potential hobby and a rich addition to your life.  It’s a totally different frame.  It’s a totally different experience.

Keep in mind, nobody needs to buy it!

Listen.  When someone clicks onto your website, they are in the submissive position.  They are in the receiving mode.  They have absolutely no control over what they are about to see.  You do.  You control everything they see.  That’s a huge opportunity that few businesses take advantage of.  You can present a small timid frame with your little product or service available for sale.  Or you can present a huge overwhelming presence full of opportunities to change people’s lives.  Your choice.

I’m not suggesting you be deceptive in any way.  I’m only suggesting you think bigger.  Expand the frame of your business.  Think about the personal objectives of your prospective customers.  They are people.  They have their own passions and goals.  Think of ways to let them pursue their own objectives within the context of your business.  Cater to their inner most desires.  Cater to their human side.  Cater to their emotions.

Don’t ever underestimate the passion of your customers.  They might not all buy what you’re offering and that’s okay.  But some will.  Trust me.  Some will.  You’ll see.  Some will engage and see your business as a way for them to improve their own lives.  Cater to them.  Build your business for them.  They have friends.  And if your business is improving their lives, you can bet they’ll be telling their friends.  And some of your other less-passionate customers might just get a bit jealous and engage more themselves.

Think bigger.  Redefine what you do.  Include your customers’ personal objectives into your business plans.  Present an overwhelming online identity and watch your customer interactions change forever!

Today, I taught another course at the Pleasant Hill Adult Education center.  I teach courses like this often and always enjoy meeting the people who register for the courses I offer.  Today’s program was entitled “Modern Marketing in Action” and we took a broad top-level look at some of the exciting marketing options in our increasingly internet-driven world.  My group was full of entrepreneurs trying to grow their respective businesses.

I always spend a good deal of time discussing the differences between yesterday’s “interruption marketing” environment (a phrase coined by Seth Godin) and today’s “permission marketing” alternative.  In particular, I always like to point out how differently the young people view the internet when compared with older people.  Their respective perspectives are near opposite.  But after that, we looked at some of the tools available on today’s internet and there was one they really got excited about.

Many of you may know about the publicly accessible Google keyword tool on the Adwords platform.  If you’re not, you need only click on Resources above and then Useful Links and Keyword Research Tools to find it (or you can just click here).  On that platform, you can enter any keyword you’re interested in and the platform will spit out a long list of related keywords along with the PPC competition and the average search volume for each keyword.  This is an incredibly powerful utility we’re all well advised to take advantage of.

Before I explain the best way to use this platform, let me first explain how it functions.  When you enter a keyword into the input field, Google looks into its database to see what other words people used when searching for the keywords you entered.  In other words, the output is entirely dynamic and determined by the millions of people who use Google every day.  The words they use in their search queries give Google a ready supply of words related to the ones you’re interested in.

Anyway, once you have the output, you can sort the results by the PPC competition or the average search volume.  If you think about it, sorting the results by the average search volume tells you precisely what Google users are looking for most often.  For example, you can put “products” in and see that after “office products”, there are 5 or 6 keyword phrases that all have to do with skin care and beauty supplies – shows you what people are looking for.  Likewise, if you put “services” in, you’ll see that a lot of the searches have to do with dating services, phone services and internet services.  Lastly, if you put “free” (one of the most heavily searched terms on the internet) in, you’ll see that the top results are for free games and free downloads.

For an entrepreneur, this is an incredibly powerful utility.  You can simply put your keywords into the Google tool and immediately find out precisely what your audience is searching for.  Then, armed with that information, you can build out your website with sections that cater specifically to that subject.  Not only will that cater to those who stumble upon your website but it will likely increase the number of people find your site through the search engines.

Never before have we had such access.  Never before have we had a platform where you can immediately see what your audience is looking for.  And if you’re looking to refine your business and grow your revenue, I highly recommend looking here first.  Let your audience tell you where to go and then build exactly what it is that they’re looking for.  It saves time.  It saves money.