Cloud Wise Joe : You’re listening to the Being Found Show. We are here to help more buying customers find you. The best hour in radio for business. Andrea and Hannah, our incredible team, cut up all the segments and get them transcribed and put them up here so you could read us instead of listening to us which I’m sure is more enjoyable. We’re going to start something this week, and we will do it every single week unless I forget. We are going to start sharing a “Tip for the Day”

 Chauncey:  The tip for the day is “Google like your customers Google.”

Joe:  Yes. Google yourself and Google your business as your customers would and that is not just Googling your name. That is not only googling a product. There’s more to it.

Chauncey:  You have to google like your people. So basically if you’re a business owner, most of your clients are not business owners. You can’t think like a business owner. You have to look like you’re a regular old Joe.

Joe: It’s not about what you want, it’s about what your customers want. This Tip of the Week is coming from my frustrations in my own business. I am trying to do business here in my new town because I don’t know anybody. So if I go to get my son’s car worked on, that’s a whole new adventure for me. I grew up in Shasta County, so I know everything and everybody, and if I didn’t know, I wouldn’t ask somebody who didn’t know anybody.
So, I’m trying to find a place to work on my son’s car, I’m trying to find a fence company or propane, and there are things that I need to know to buy that. They are not telling me, for instance, the propane company, if there is a delivery fee. When can they deliver? What are your customers saying about your delivery? It’s nonexistent, and so you know what I do? I keep looking. I think a lot of businesses think well, if they can’t find the answer to their questions online, they will call you. You know what I do? I just keep looking and what I noticed I do is I lower my bar at some point. I’m like crud, just who’s got the most reviews? So at least I can get some information from customers. That may only mean that the business put time into reviews. It doesn’t even prove they’re the better business to buy from.

Chauncey: Before you go on with what you’re saying here, it turned on a light for me. And you’re right. When I go shopping for something online or especially to look for service, I have a specific question in my head, and that question will vary from day to day from service to service. But like in your case I want to know how much it is sometimes. Other times I want to know what time they can deliver because that pertains to my situation. I tend to go into it with a single question, and if that question isn’t answered, I move on.

Joe: Here’s a fascinating set of stats that I wasn’t prepared to talk about. You know that there’s that snippet or whatever it’s called, on Google that you can get where one particular website is considered such an authority that Google will display some of the content at the top right.

When I say, Google like your customers would. Don’t Google like they already know the answer. Don’t Google just buy a camper shell, don’t google is there a camper dealer near me? They may not even know. You know they might be trying to figure out how do I know what the best way to transport my dog when I travel to Sacramento? It may not be a camper shell, or it may be.

So what you are doing is you have to start asking Google the questions your customers ask when they’re trying to be inspired. When they’re trying to figure out specific details, when they’re trying to compare brands and products, don’t be afraid to realize that your customers are going to ask, “Are you better than somebody else or are you worse than somebody else?” What’s the best choice for a camper shell? That’s a term right there. So act like your customer, not like you. Chauncey will be sitting with the business, and we’re going over what content creator, what’s on their website, and they’re talking like their customers already know everything.

Chauncey: What is the business owners excuse for not putting information out there? Cost? You know other than that I can’t think of any other reason why you wouldn’t share as much information about your business as possible.

Joe: Well in my experience I think it’s a few things. I think it’s cost. I think that if you talk to a web developer, content creator, or anything like that, they still try to get as much money as they can for me. It’s just the point that we’re still in the business model of trying to get as much money as we can. That’s not my model, but that’s the model that the web development is in. So I think part of it is every time you talk to a web developer, they want you to build a new website right instead of just doing an FAQ page or write a blog post. I think they don’t know where to look for those questions to answer on the website. If you asked me I probably would not have very good questions off the top of my head for my own business because I know what the answers are and I know what questions they should be asking but that doesn’t mean that’s questions they really are asking.

Chauncey:  So I think if they knew what questions they should be asking, they probably wouldn’t be asking any questions.

Joe: My research shows that a lot of what they’re asking are things like, what’s the best choice? What’s an idea? What are ideas to have customers find me online? What’s an idea for the best website? What are website ideas? Those are the type of things that our customers would be looking for beforehand so if we could get to how you do this.

So I’ll explain. There are things like Google AdWords Keyword Planner , which is a free tool for ads. It will tell you some of the terms people are looking for. Or you could even just ask random people, friends, family, and customers to tell you a little bit about how you came to buy this. What are your ideas? What were its challenges and what were the roadblocks? What do you wish websites would have had on it on your way to buying this thing?

Chauncey:  Asking your friends and family via social media is a great way to find out how people shop. How would you look for this? Even ask them, hey can you go check out my new website? Is there anything that you think we’re missing? Questions like that.

Joe:  Well that’s interesting you mention that. Kristin Zhivago , one of the founders of Cloud Potential and Cloud Wise Academy. She’s since moved on and is doing her own thing. She wrote a book called a “ Roadmap to Revenue, how to sell the way your customers want to buy.” It’s a book on how to figure out those questions and get them answered. So I’ve read it and anyone that I have talked to who has read, it says it is dead on.

So, if you want to know how to answer the questions your customers are asking, get Kristin Zhivago’s book, the bottom line is, if your customers aren’t buying from you, they’re buying from a business who knows what they want.

We’re coming to the end of this segment. Thanks for listening to the Being Found Show, listen to the full show here: Being Found Show Episode #40