I own a piece of real estate where the blacktop parking lot sank noticeably once the weather cooled this past fall. Like anyone else, I researched the problem on Google and couldn’t believe what I found. The most relevant page-one search result wouldn’t have survived the red pen of my 5th grade English teacher! Why was this article on the first page of a two-word search phrase (blacktop sinking?) If you have any apprehension whatsoever about teaching customers on your website, this article will provide proof you need to use Teaching-Based Marketing.
Don’t overthink your website articles or blog posts
Have you ever heard of analysis paralysis? Overthinking a situation is one of the biggest enemies of execution, and execution is what gets great things done. I see this happen all the time with businesses when it comes to implementing Teaching-Based Marketing. Instead of teaching their customers through their website, people find a reason to delay.
Back to my example of the sinking parking lot – here’s the first portion of the article I found on page one of Google. Notice the first sentence all in red, “…Why It That Happening and What Can I do?” Whoever wrote this article didn’t proofread that sentence, nor the following entire first paragraph. If you Google “blacktop sinking” or “sinking blacktop,” this article will appear somewhere between 4th-7th, depending on the day. Not first, but the initial search results don’t apply to me and my problem. The first searches are for the do-it-yourself homeowner. In this case, we were talking about an entire parking lot. Not exactly a DIY job.
Why is this website on the first page of “blacktop sinking?”
The answer is going to sound much too simple, but here it goes – they wrote the article. If you browse to the site and read the rest of their post, you’ll see it’s actually very informative. It’s obvious these guys know what they’re doing. The article goes on to describe the symptoms, potential problems and best ways to fix them. I learned it’s usually not the blacktop itself, but the compacting material underneath.
Google has one job – to give you the most relevant answer to your question. So what can we learn from this? Whoever writes the most relevant articles wins. If you’re not taking the time to answer your customers’ questions on your website, someone else will. This article proves it doesn’t even need to be well-written. It just needs to be written.
Does it cost them anything for me to read their article?
So you’re probably thinking I hired this company to repair my parking lot, right? Nope. Why not? Check out this graphic of their service area –
This property is in Wisconsin, over 800 miles away. “So what’s the point of this article if they didn’t get your business?” you might be asking. Great question! Here’s another answer that’s much too simple – If I found their business via a Google search in Wisconsin, do you suppose their potential customers within their service area are finding them this way too?
Of course.
Here’s one of the best things about digital media – once it’s done, that’s it. You can copy it an infinite amount of times and it doesn’t lose quality. Before the Internet, it would have taken a phone call, letter, or in-person meeting to learn this same information from this company. Since it’s on their website, though, I can learn from them on my own without taking any of their time. It literally cost them nothing for me to learn from them. It’s costing them that same amount to teach their potential customers too.