How Are Your Prospects Finding You?

By Deborah Gallant

Remember the olden days when you needed to find a local service professional like a plumber or windshield repair; you would go into the kitchen drawer and pull out the good old Yellow Pages. Now the book gathers dust as consumers have moved almost all of their purchase research onto the Internet.

There are some categories of service businesses like attorneys, physicians, dentists, auto repair that used to spend the vast majority of their advertising budget on the local Yellow Pages directory. And sometimes you had to buy more than one geographic area to make sure all your customers could find you. Remember the trick that some plumbers used to use: AAAA Plumbing gets them the first listing? It used to work. Whatever strategy you used, you could not afford NOT to be in the book.

And maybe you should still be in the printed phone directory. There are still some throwback consumers who use the book to "let their fingers do the walking." However, more and more consumers are using the Internet as their primary research and information tool before they make a purchase decision.

Since the explosion of Internet usage (nearly 80% of the US population is online), consumers have taken to the web in droves when they have to research any high-consideration purchase like sophisticated electronics or choosing a therapist or attorney.

But now it isn't only the high-end and sophisticated purchases that get researched online.

You may think that because you get much of your business from referrals or from repeat customers, you do not need to worry about a website. However, even those clients—existing and prospective—will be looking you up online, even if all they need is your phone number.

If someone is buying a personal service from you, they want to know more. Your photo, your biography, where your office is located, what you are all about.

Are you being found? Does your business have a professional, effective site that gives the basic information people need to find? Because if they can not find you, they are going to your competitor.

When your prospect is online doing research, statistics show that in about three to four minutes a person might arrive at up to twenty different websites. Your website needs to make a great impression in 8 seconds. Focus all your efforts on giving the critical information they need quickly: What problem you solve, where you are located, your phone number. If people are motivated, they will dig deeper into your site for more information. And if they like what they see—just like in the old directory days, they will pick up the phone to call you to close the deal.

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Deborah Gallant is the Business Coach Who Gets the Internet. Her firm, Web Power Tools, provides affordable website design & development tools for service professionals. Visit their website (http://www.webpowertools.com) for a free 30-day trial and a free copy of "Five Steps to Finally Getting Started with Internet Marketing".