How well do prospects understand what you do?

[Eric Rohrback]

I'm having an internal debate with other team members about the true knowledge of our industry by people not directly involved. What we are debating is whether someone who comes to an agency website really understands what SEO, PPC, Social Media marketing really is...

So that I don't skew the responses in one favor or another, I'll leave it open ended for the community. Do you believe prospects understand what they need when the come to your site? What do you believe the best way to structure your site is? If we only look at helping people understand our services, how do you think the best way to outline them on your site is... and most importantly, WHY?

 

[Linda Buquet]

Awesome question and such a hard one too Eric!
Can't wait to read the replies!

 

[JoshuaMackens]

I'm having an internal debate with other team members about the true knowledge of our industry by people not directly involved. What we are debating is whether someone who comes to an agency website really understands what SEO, PPC, Social Media marketing really is...

So that I don't skew the responses in one favor or another, I'll leave it open ended for the community. Do you believe prospects understand what they need when the come to your site? What do you believe the best way to structure your site is? If we only look at helping people understand our services, how do you think the best way to outline them on your site is... and most importantly, WHY?

Great question.

Depends on the prospect. If we're talking just typical local business owners? No, most do not. But the well researched ones do (those are typically the ones that are difficult to work with though). Are we talking about bigger enterprise clients? Well, actually no, I still don't believe they do. If they did, they wouldn't be calling us, they would just do it themselves since SEO is relatively knowledge based and not budget based.

I'd say no. On average, they don't know what they need. At least our inbound leads don't. Outbound I would think is even worse.

Honestly, I think keeping your site as simple as possible at the top is the way to go. As people scroll, I would give them all the details they need. But I would K.I.S.S. at the top.

The reason to me is simple. As I've done this over the years, getting into the weeds in sales with a local business owner actually drives down sales.

The first thing I tell them is "I'm going to help you rank better on Google." That's it. 99% of them ask, "How?" But they don't really want to know how. They just want to know you're the real deal. They want to know their money is in good hands. The real question they're asking is, "Am I wasting my money with you?" So when they ask that question, I give them a very simple, quick overview of our services and why they work. I have a 4 step process I lay out, answering that question in 2-3 sentences. If after that, if they want more detail, I let them ask questions and give them quick, powerful and concise answers. I also let them know I'll send a full proposal later on. Do they ever read it? Doubtful. I imagine they skim the 1st few pages and that's it. Again, they just want to know their money is in good hands.

Why did I just go through how I pitch offline?

As you know your website is your sales tool. Your website should reflect your best sales process. From top to bottom it should reflect the offline conversation you're going to have with a prospect.

KISS at the top, give more details for those who want it as they go down.

That's just one man's opinion.

And obviously tailor to your sales strategy. If you're trying to get them to call, maybe you don't answer every question on the block and be even more concise. Just tailor your approach to what I wrote above.

At the end of the day, your customers may be different than mine, but I rarely get someone who knows what they need. They wouldn't call me if they did I suppose. They would just do it themselves. I mean, there are over 200+ SEO factors alone according to Google. That kind of lends itself to people who aren't engaged in our arena having almost no clue what they need, even if they've done a lot of research.

Also, you could always just do an internal study on your own leads and their knowledge level for a few months just to be sure.

I hope I didn't completely miss the mark on what you were looking for on this. I just kind of sat down and spit some stuff out. If it's not helpful, just ignore but feel free to ask any follow up questions.

 

[Linda Buquet]

Thanks for all the thought and effort you put into that Josh.
Good points all!

Who else wants to share their thoughts? (I'll Tweet this tomorrow to try to get some more insights too!)