Are You Easy for Your Customers to Find?

I am road tripping this week with one of my kiddos (from my home in Texas, out to San Diego, then up to Portland, OR), and I wanted to talk to you today about making sure your business gets found.

In the old (pre-Internet) days, when I would drive across the country, I would have to plan ahead, get my maps printed by The Automobile Association of America, go to the library and find phone books (usually yellow pages) to find the hotels I wanted to stay at, call ahead and make reservations, etc., then stick with that plan. No flexibility.

Last night, as we were traveling along the highway, we decided that we could probably make it to Flagstaff. So I pulled up the hotels.com app and the HotelTonight app. I checked availability and prices. Super Easy. A couple hours later, we decided we would definitely stop in Flagstaff. I got out my iPhone again and booked a room for the night. I didn’t have to call information and ask for the number, call the hotel and ask about availability or rates, etc. I clicked a few times and we were booked. An almost frictionless transaction.

Do you have something similar in your business? Is there a place on the internet where your audience/potential customers are looking for your service?

If so, are you there?

In one of my marketing classes at the University of Texas, I learned about the 4P’s of marketing: Product, Place, Price, and Promotion. Everyone talks about “location, location, location” as the key to success in business, and it often is, but have you considered that “place” is also where you can be found on the internet? On my road trip, the physical location of the hotel was important only after I found it on the internet.

It would have been irrelevant if I hadn’t first found the hotel on the internet.

If someone was looking on the internet for any company that could meet their needs (e.g. “hotel in Flagstaff” instead of “Embassy Suites Flagstaff”), would they find your company?

Action for today: Go search for your industry or type of business (not your company name) on the Internet. Are there directories, aggregator sites, etc. where you could be found? If so, are you being found there? And if not, send an email or make a call today to see what it would take to get your company on that website.

If you have other specific ideas or strategies about how to get found on the Internet, please comment and share.