Thomas Young - How to Attract Qualified Customers (E1218)

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Thanks very much for joining us. Welcome to the show. I want to remind you that you can go to Exocoachradio.com and listen on our audio library to hundreds and hundreds of advisers, authors, and thought leaders, all categorized into 40 different file folders of topics of interest to you like family, business, succession, um, life after exit. Uh, learning about buy sell agreements, learning about how to run your business and lead your business. My next guest is Thomas Young, and Tom's joining us from Intuitive websites in Colorado, and they help develop websites. We're going to talk about inbound and content marketing and how to attract qualified customers to your company. Tom, welcome to the show. Thanks for joining us. It's a pleasure to be here. Thanks for having me. My pleasure thanks for joining us and uh let me ask you a question about uh your company um intuitive websites uh the name I I think I know what it means that that these are websites that someone would come to and understand immediately did I hit the nail on the head and if not um what are what is intuitive websites all about? Well, we are about website marketing, designing, developing websites, and helping people actually grow their business with the help of their website and, and being that their website is a key marketing component for their business, and then we got the name intuitive websites. many years ago, I think I purchased that domain name in the late 90s because I was doing usability testing back then where we were watching people interact with websites to really understand how do people use this new thing, the internet, how would they use it to meet their needs and as we were watching people use websites, they kept using the word intuitive. You know, this isn't intuitive, or I wish this was intuitive, or I, I don't know where to click next. It's not intuitive to me. And so I said, well, I'm gonna get that domain name intuitive websites, and then over time that became the name of our company, uh, around 2004, so we, we decided to go with the with the name Intuitive websites. It just makes sense and we have the domain name Intuitive websites.com so it's straightforward. When, when you first look at people's websites, um, what percentage of them do you think are, are not intuitive when, when you first look at, uh, let's say 100 websites, what percentage would you say are not really uh cutting cutting the grade as far as being intuitive? Well, I think that it's getting better. I've been doing this a long time. We've been been in this business now for about 17 years. When we first started doing website work, almost every website was an ad and just wasn't really aware of what the user needed from the website. I think that now more than half the websites we look at are not as intuitive as they could be, even with simple changes. Um, and some websites are just really off the mark, um, but it's getting better, and there's leaders out there now in the industry that have had phenomenal success on the web by keeping things very simple and by being very much in tune with their users and their users' needs, but there's still a tremendous amount of growth that's needed, and I think if we look at the typical small business, let's say businesses that are under 10 million in revenue. Um, I would say maybe it's closer to 75% of those websites really need some work, and the ones that are doing well are the small businesses that are totally web focused, the web retailer, an online store, or a lead generation website for someone providing web services. Those websites tend to do better, so there's still a lot of room for improvement out there still. I've heard one of the key tenets of website development is is follow the rule don't make me think is that is that right? Right, that's, that's, that's the title of the book by Steve Crag, a great usability expert, and what I love about Steve's work, um. And everyone should get that book. It's an easy read. Don't make me think. But, but basically what what Steve did is he said, wait a minute, we're going to do this this website marketing thing. Why don't we go out and see how users actually use websites and, and that's why he titled his book Don't Make me Think cause users wanted intuitive websites that are easy to use where they don't have to think they can just do and get their needs met. And we all do that as website users every time we go online, whether we're researching personal business, whatever it is, we want something to come to us and not have to think too much or have difficult usability issues in front of us. And I think what, what is happening with most small businesses. Is is that they're so entrenched in their way of approaching marketing and what's important to their company and their own company's internal language and how they do things that they're losing track with the real simple basic needs of their website users and one of the things that that I talk about in, in my visage presentations and in in in my book and so forth is the idea of people want to find you, they want to do research. And find you and then when they find you they want it to be a very simple and easy experience and if you can do that then they'll become very loyal customers for you and that's really at the heart of of inbound marketing which is, which is basically at the heart of web marketing and all this is driven by content um and and and that's, you know, kind of what these new rules of marketing are all about. In fact, it's really this concept that um. Instead of going after an infinite audience, right, where you're you're doing this mass shotgun approach and you're hoping to just grab people that fall in, you're, you're really going after an audience of one, and you're going after an audience of one, but, but you have an unlimited reach to that audience of one, and you have unlimited time because whatever content is posted on the web will be there for a very long time. So even this, this interaction you and I are having today. In the old days this would have been broadcast out to however many listeners were tuned in, but right now this will become a piece of content that will be on the internet, probably in multiple places that could be listened to by one person individually many, many times over, and that is kind of at the heart of of inbound marketing. It's what's changing the rules of marketing. Um, and you know, getting back to, well, is is my website going to be intuitive is gonna, is it going to drive results for me? Well, it will if you understand these concepts and concepts and these new rules of marketing. Great point, great point, and, and again that's the, the premise of all of this change is that instead of a tower broadcasting out to to for the whatever 20 mile radius anywhere anytime uh by one of this this content will be listened to. So let's talk about so we all, I think we're all familiar with outbound marketing. Let's talk about the concept of inbound marketing. Can you define it for us so that our listeners can understand. Right, I would say that at the heart of inbound marketing is really is really 4 rules that I want to go over and I I kind of hinted at these already, but I want to just mention them to you. One is the idea that people want to find you. They want to research and and and go to Google and do their research and their research is based on their needs and their perceptions. which is, which is a very, very different way of looking at at marketing in the past because you can very much target folks that would really be interested in your, in your products or services. So that's at the heart of inbound marketing is you have to get rid of the idea that you're going to go shake the trees, find people, and knock on doors. That's not happening anymore. People have too many barriers to that. Um, people want to find you, and that's really changed the sales funnel. It's changed the prospecting idea of the salesperson making cold calls. All that is really dying now because of, because of this idea of people wanting to find you. And then what ties into that is that once they do find you, they'll be very, very loyal to you because you make life easy for them. And if you, if you're, if you're very transparent in your content and and people can connect with how you do business, they'll become very loyal to you. Um, and I think that for them to stay loyal you have to have very good stay in touch programs, email marketing programs, follow up programs, and so forth, but that's really at the heart of, of, of inbound marketing. What and what is the driver of all this is content and and how you get content out on the web and how you talk about how you meet the needs of of your customers. Um, this is really, really what's driving inbound marketing. It's really what's driving success in Google and Google searches, and it's, it's driving what's shareable in social media and how people connect with you and, and, and really the bottom line is that companies that understand this and are doing this are seeing. Revenue increases. They're seeing more leads and they're seeing growth in their company. Businesses that don't do this well are struggling, and this is data coming from HubSpot. HubSpot's the largest provider of inbound marketing services. They have a whole system for doing inbound marketing and, and because they're so heavily in this, they track thousands of companies and they've seen it. They see, they see the results. The companies that are on board and do this grow and thrive. Those that don't. And and and rely more on old fashioned sales and marketing techniques really struggle. OK, so you said that uh from inbound marketing we need to they need to find you based on their needs and perceptions and to and for that to happen you have to get inside their head as far as what are they likely going to be putting into these little bars and the Google search engines uh when they're looking so you have to be really cognitive about what terms and phrases your customer is gonna be using there, right? Absolutely keyword research is really important. Understanding how Google operates is really important. I think a way for the business owner to think about this is what do you do in your company that that you do really well that you know is your niche, is your focus, is your competitive advantage, and that your customers tell you that that's the reason they hire you, it's the reason they buy from you. What is it that you do really well? Your challenge then is to translate that. To the web starting with very brief taglines on your homepage, very, you know, brief taglines that are to the point, and then expanding into volumes and volumes of content that go into the details of your business. And the better you can do that, the better you'll get listed in Google for search terms that are relevant to your business and the better you'll convert people because they'll connect. With what they just read on your home page and they'll say yes, this is the firm I was looking for I'm gonna proceed and move forward and interact with them in some way and that would be called a website conversion, right? It's either a lead or a direct sale. And, and so, so, you know, in working with my my visitsage groups that I work with, that's what I try to tell them, you know, you as a business leader, how can you get your arms around this idea of inbound marketing? And I really think it starts with that translation of what your business does well and keeping in mind, you know, how are we're going to make that work within these new rules of inbound marketing. Great, great stuff great stuff and so and then we move to the corner of uh uh you know, making it easy for them and then they'll become loyal because you made it easy. So what's one of the primary things people do wrong that make it difficult? Do they, do they offer too much? Do they, uh, word it incorrectly, use too many words? What are some of the problems? Well, I think that there's several problems. I think the biggest problem is not being aware of this, not having an understanding of inbound marketing, um, assuming that what has worked in the past will continue to work. I think that's the first thing. The second thing is that the business leader needs to be educated, um, you know, our website is loaded with content information we have. Um, all different types of content out there and the internet's loaded with ways for you to learn about inbound marketing. The business leader needs to understand this and start implementing a team that can move them toward action. I think that the business leader needs to build a culture of marketing around this idea of we have to put information out so people find us and needs to be simple and easy to use. Another major mistake that these folks make is they don't speak in the language of their users. They, they're so internally focused that they're not talking in the language of their users, and I think that to way, a way to understand how to do that is to actually go ahead and talk to your customers and ask them to review your website and give them feedback on your content and you know and how well it's doing it communicating what it is you do well. Um, one real tangible thing business owners can do. It sounds really simple, but it has a lot of power, and that is have have a regular web marketing meeting where you get with your team and talk about inbound marketing and content and then develop a plan of regular content updates on the website, whether that be a blog or a video or an article or product information. Just get the ball rolling and then from then from that you can expand into so many different areas because content on the web now is consumed. In dozens of different formats and the better you understand how your customers want to consume this content, the better results you'll see. So there's there's a lot to it, but it really starts with with this simple idea of understanding um how this all works and and getting your team moving in the direction of making this happen because it doesn't happen overnight it's it's gonna take really a cultural change in the company and the marketing of the company to make it work. That's great, great, uh, information for our listeners and tell us about uh what's going on, um, Tom with with mobile technology now what everybody's saying, OK, if you're not mobile, you're not you you're not here you're you're invisible so how important is that now and what do you see the trends for the future with mobile? Well, mobile is is really interesting. We've been watching it for years, of course, and the trend that's happening now is that about half of the website traffic, or half the traffic you see from websites, is coming from mobile devices. So people are starting to use their mobile devices more and more in place of their laptops, and you have to be ready for that. Now the, the thing about about mobile is that mobile fits perfectly with all of the concepts we've just talked about simplicity, direct to the point, and all of that and keeping in mind that people will read your content on their mobile device and if it connects with them, they will take action. They'll either call you right from their cell phone or they'll complete a simple form and send it in. And so we recommend. That anyone who has a website or is doing any kind of web marketing has what's called responsive design on their website so that the site will adapt itself to the screen size, because when you think about mobile marketing, you know, we know about the iPhone and everything, but what we think about is screen size. We think about what are the different screens that people are using to review your content and those screen size screen sizes can vary from a tiny little phone in someone's hand to a projector that's displaying. In front of 1000 people in an auditorium, so you have to be aware of screen size. You can see it in your Google data and you can see how many people visit you from mobile devices and then of course adapt your website through a responsive design. And I think if you keep it more simple, then, you know, you understand that for the mobile user their experience is right now what they're experiencing is I need something pretty quick. I'm on my cell phone. If I can't get an answer in just a few seconds here, I'm going to go on to something else. But hey, if I found what I needed and it's right there and I can make a quick call, then boom, I'm going to respond. So yes, mobile is is a very important component when you figure that in many cases half of your visitors will be on a mobile device. So it's a very good point. Yeah, that's and it's, it's growing of course rapidly as mobile devices like my, my giant iPhone 6, they get bigger and they kind of bridge the gap between where they're too small to read from and they're and they're just an all in one kind of a device. Are mobile devices bound to get bigger still, do you think? Well, they're and they're getting smaller. I mean they're going in both directions because we have, we have the Apple Watch now which my wife has purchased the Apple Watch, so we're I'm having a chance to see what that's like. People are consuming some content through their Apple Watch, which is kind of mind blowing, but the initial results are that it's not taking off like wildfire, and when I've seen it. It wasn't enough to hook me yet, but we'll see that. But the Apple Watch is, is, it seems to be first and foremost a watch to tell time, and then second, a notification of reminders or updates, you know, you just got a text, you just got an email, that kind of thing. And then third, people are using the Apple Watch and I think they're going to use it for personalized reminders like exercise reminders, diet reminders, notifications that a meeting starts in a few minutes, that sort of thing. But anyway, the answer to your question is they're going to be as small as a watch and they're going to be as large as a projector. But for handheld devices, um, the iPhone 6 has been a tremendous success for Apple, and I think they really hit the nail on the head in that that size of, of, of screen is big enough to hold in your phone and put in your pocket, but not as big as a tablet where it's cumbersome, certainly not as big as a laptop, so that I think that screen size is here to stay. And you're gonna see millions more iPhones sold. Your website content needs to be consumed on an iPhone, no question. So for those that are developing new sites or new content, it needs to look really good uh primarily on those on sizes of screen where people can identify and read through it and and make decisions and take the next step, get to the next step with that company. How do your listeners implement all these ideas we're talking about? what what's the process that they go through to with you to to implement some of these things, Tom? Well, I mean we we work with our clients on on retainer based programs because we realize that unless they stay in touch with us on a regular basis and we implement things for them on a regular basis, you're not gonna see results so that's that's what works for us. It really depends. I mean if the business leader wants to work with. External team were available if they want to build their own external team, I would say, you know, get their knowledge base up. My, my book is called Winning the Website War. That's a great start to learn the the principles, the basic principles that we've talked about here, and to lead a team to get these things going. But I really think most business leaders will really catch on to this if they just make it part of their consciousness and start learning, start training a team, having regular meetings and building their culture around it. I think they can make it happen and if they keep pushing their team, you know, keep it simple, do things like include our phone number in our blog post so that someone reading it on a on a cell phone can quickly call us, include headers on blocks of texts so people can scan the headers and see if it's it's content they want to read before they have to go read, you know, 400, 600 words of content to get what they need. Those kind of things are really important and You know, we're we're happy to help help our readers or or your listeners with with content we had, and they can of course get in touch with me if they'd like as well. And your website is www.intuitivewebsites.com and is that the best place for them to go first for you? Yes, IntuitiveWebsites.com and the book website is winninghewebsitewar.com, but you know, winning IntuitWebsites.com is the best place. There's contact information all over the website. So you know, again, listeners, think of your website as a battleground and it, and you need to win that war and turn yourselves from, if you look at your, your website and it looks like a brochure from the past, then you owe yourself a favor, call Tom Young at Intuitive websites. And learn about how you can make it intuitive and and turn the corner to inbound marketing. Tom, thanks a lot for joining us again, great job and um, always a pleasure to talk with you. I'd love to connect with you again sometime in the future and we'll go into some other going a different direction. How's that? That sounds great thanks thanks for having me once again, alright, thanks again we're gonna take a short break we'll be right back with another guest. Please stay tuned. You're listening to Exit Coachradio.com, the information station for age 50 plus business owners, where we're interviewing top advisors for their best tips, ideas, and precautions so you can be well planned. We upload new one minute tips every day. Exitcoachradio.com. Come listen for a minute. Business owners, if you came back from lunch and there was a resignation letter on your desk, which employee would you really, really not want it to be from? What are you doing to prevent this from happening? At Exit and Retirement Strategies, we design plans that attract, motivate, and retain key employees. For a free consultation, called Bill Black, the exit coach at 866-370-3774. Call today. Thank you for listening to Exit Coach Radio. Men, if you're ready to reclaim your edge, listen up. I used to be held back by constant bathroom trips with multiple wake-ups during my sleep and looking for restrooms whenever I was out. Then I discovered better man. After just two months, I started experiencing fewer trips to the bathroom, less urge to go, and I even slept through some nights. I feel a noticeable boost in my overall well-being. 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