2 Things Google Can Teach You About Business Success
November 29th, 2009 @ MsMedia // No Comments
Not many years ago, Google was trailing hopelessly behind Overture in the Search Engine business. (Overture was later acquired by Yahoo.)
Overture had a 3-4 year head start on Google, and Google had all odds stacked against them, to say the least.
So how did they manage the “impossible” and remove Overture as “King of the Search Engine Mountain”. The answer can be put into two words: Superior Quality.
Google figured out a formula for how to index web sites in a way that satisfied the searcher looking for information on a certain topic. The Overture searcher didn’t get the same quality results returned, and the word started to spread about Google.
We know the rest of the story, but what can you as a business owner learn from Google overtaking Overture? Below are 2 vitally important things you can take away from this real life success story.
1) Do whatever you can to become the king of your “mountain”
Why should customers buy from you and not your competition? You need to be able to answer this question. You need a USP (Unique Selling Proposition).
But here’s the good news: You don’t necessarily need your product or service to be superior in and of itself.
It can actually be enough that you come up with a Guarantee that your competition does not give to their customers.
Just take a look at Domino’s pizza. Domino’s never claimed that their pizza tasted better than everyone else’s pizza, but they came up with a clever guarantee that made them the dominant player in the pizza market.
Here’s the guarantee Domino’s developed: “Fresh, hot pizza in 30 minutes or less…or it’s free!”
Let me give you another real life example:
Perry Marshall mentioned the following interesting story a while back:
ASEPCO is a Company that makes $4000 valves that go into super-expensive tanks that manufacture bio-active medicines. A few years ago, CEO Tom Hoobyar developed the following ballsy guarantee, which is still there today:
Lifetime Free Replacement Of Any ASEPCO Tank Valve, No Matter Who Breaks It! Sometimes a tank is dropped – sometimes a valve gets hit by a forklift. No matter how a valve is broken, or who’s at fault, we will replace it free! No arguments. No excuses. Just a free replacement valve as fast as we can make it.
ASEPCO used that guarantee as a benchmark for their products and achieved 90% market share.
Did you hear that? 90% market share thanks to a solid guarantee!
I’m convinced that any product or service owner can come up with some type of sales boosting guarantee. Think seriously about this, and don’t give yourself rest until you have come up with a guarantee that your competition does not give to their customers.
Just don’t be stupid and promise things that will threaten your business financially. Bit don’t worry. there are lots of ways of coming up with a guarantee, without risking your business.
Let’s look at one more thing we can learn from Google:
Lately lots of Pay Per Click advertisers have become increasingly frustrated by all the “Google Slaps” (meaning Google refuses to run their ads, because the advertiser has got a popup on their site, or perhaps the site is “too thin on content”.
What a lot of PPC advertisers have failed to understand is that all Google is really doing is protecting one vital thing that their business hinges on: Trust.
If Google’s quality starts to deteriorate, people will stop using them because they’re not happy with the results they get back when doing a Google search.
You should learn from this as well.
We all know we’re in turbulent financial times, but there is another recession that very few talk about. We can call it: “The Recession of Trust”.
Because a lot of marketers have been dishonest, or at the very least have exaggerated the benefits of their products, the result has been a general skepticism against everyone who tries to sell anything.
2) You need to create trust to get more customers.
You need to be aware of this, because there are some very simple things you can do to overcome this “trust problem”.
Information marketers can give out a free sample of the first two chapters of their ebook for example, to prove to the buyer that he/she knows their stuff.
Dan Kennedy tells about a restaurant owner he consulted with, and the conclusion was this:
“If your food is as great as you tell me, give away one free meal to business people in your area, instead of running ads in the newspaper!”
The restaurant owner followed Kennedy’s advice and built a thriving business in record time, because people did come back to eat there again, thanks to the quality of the food.
You can learn from this. Whatever you do: Get people to trust you. You need that trust to secure the sale.
About The Author:
Charles Jahren is an expert in PPC, faculty member, and content manager for AdClickMedia.com. Watch this video where Charles reveals how Simple it is to Monetize your current Website Traffic starting now. http://adclickmedia.com/m/pub.cgi/article
Category : Charles Jahren &Strategies
