The old saying that, ‘if I had a penny for every time...‘ does not start to cover this excuse. You see after the courteousy and pleasantries when meeting new people it’s almost inevitable to talk about what we do in life. It’s as if we do not see the human being until we see the proffession then we judge them, and come out with the lamest excuse to run from someone or something that's not even chasing us in the first place!
You see in my circles, after I give my shpill about 'helping local businesses get on Google and other search engines…‘ another almost inevitable happens, they quickly say... you guessed it, ‘ ...But My Customers Are Not Online At All…’ again almost inevitably with that whiney voice tone that Homer Simpson uses when he really wants to say something stupid and whimpy. Now I have a lot of years in the sales and marketing industry and know how to counter all of this obscure-excuse-language but once you have deciphered it past the usual translations to mean one of the following :

• oh, what you do or sell sounds expensive and I don’t think I can afford it so let me make a quick polite exit
• OR  we do our search engine marketing in-house (and that’s our story and we’re sticking with it!)
• OR  you look like a good sales-man trying to sell me something so let me stop you right there

OR my personal favourite:   Them: I’m happy with what I’ve got!

                                                         Me:  Great, what have you got?

                                                         Them:  huh..?        well..?    Ah... I mean...

You see it’s all excuses without even actually thinking about anything at all in the first place. Here's the reality about this particular excuse:

FACT:  Google’s customers are ordinary people looking for information online in the best possible format to use in making purchase decisions, educational research , recreational purposes and so on and so on. Google’s own mission statement attests to this very fact, albeit in more detail. These people make Google and flood their website looking for info everyday, heck google (the verb) has even made it in the dictionary now, yep the good old Oxford Dictionary. It means almost EVERYONE is using Google and your customers are bound to be on it.
FACT: Google have realised that they need more relevancy in their search results and have introduced Google maps, Geo targeting and Google Local search. No point showing you the Dominos Pizza in Swaziland when you are in that place in Iceland that spewed all the volcanic ash that got half of Britain stranded abroad, I hear some are still making their way home as you read this!  So if people are in your neighbourhood they will probably get local results in their searches which may include your business.
FACT: More and more people are using the Internet (Google) to look up local businesses then walk right up to them and buy whatever it is they need that day.

I could spin out a few more facts about this but my point here is that every business can do very well by getting themselves online in the search engines and don’t get me started on the social networks like Facebook, MySpace, Twitter etc.

Back to my point, as long as people that patronize your business, do a walk-by search on your High Street to find your business, or whatever it is they want to buy, guaranteed they will look for it online. It may just be for directions but it is a search nonetheless. Google have a lot of tools that the local businessperson can use to really get visible and most of them are free. There really is no excuse not to get involved at all. You see, if your business and all the other billions of businesses worldwide did not put information online, Google would not exist as we know it today. There would be no search, no relevant information, no SEO and other related businesses thriving today, and they know this! They are actually dying for you or that extra business to include their information online so they can have  an index that represents all information possible. This is also in their mission statement, about being the goto place for information sources on anything.

What does this mean for you? It means while your last customer may have found you on the High Street, Google have done so much work and pulled ALL your prospects to their website and now you can just do a few things and literally farm for business from that one place. This is excellent for you. You can switch between watching TV and your lead generation or follow-ups all in the comfort of your lazyboy chair these days. We have certainly come a long way from the days of hunting your dinner everyday and hoping against hope that you kill it before it kills you! I’m sorry but I am laughing hysterically as I write this.

Of course there will be some work to do to take advantage of all this but that is why search engine marketers exist and we are all here to help you get to that person, you know, the one with a fist full of cash and searching for the very same product that you sell!  

Trust me, if your customers look for you on the High Street or even at the breakers yard, if you are in that business, they are online as well. talk to me about how to connect with them and stop making excuses and start making connections!

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I know about trade secrets but Accountants ‘take the buscuit’ as my friend in Forres, Scotland would say. You see, I meet all kinds and sorts of business people and they ask for help with search engine optimization.  I am not one of your High Street agencies that charge a blanket fee for everything and do not disclose what they do for you in the fear that some methods are so simple the client may opt/ choose to do them DIY and cut them out. I like to tell people what we are doing and teach them how to do it as well. They understand it better and can judge their results better. The whole philosophy of my business is that you know your own business best (If I knew more than you, I’d probably be your biggest competitor!) but since I’m not, my services are designed to be part by me and part by you, using my expert instructions. This naturally involves the business-owner coming up with a certain to-do list.
Briefly, for SEO we look at things like (among other things):

• Keywords
• Link popularity
• Competition

As part of my link building strategies (or link popularity) I am an avid fan of  articles. These serve a few purposes some of which are:

1. You get to showcase or advertise your knowledge upfront. Unless you are selling to your mother and a few people in your backyard, the average prospect does not know you from a can of paint! So it is imperative that they get an idea of your expertise. You already are an expert, that’s why your business has survived offline for 20-odd years! Simply show it to the world.
2. As a direct-sales fan, I like articles because they give you the added advantage of selling your business while you sleep, to people that are directly interested in your chosen topic. There is no better prospecting method than that! Cost-wise anyway.
3. Google loves people like this! You see Google want to give information from legit people that will benefit Google’s customers. They want more of this. There is also some sort of mental trigger associated to Google Page 1 no. 1. People assume you must be worth your salt, if they see your name at that address; G1 P1. No that’s not some mis-spelt Glasgow post code but Google Page 1 Position 1 for your search phrase or keyword.
4. I have seen countless people that get their business online and totally forget the usual business fundamentals,like the old 'feed the market what they are hungry for' or the sensible ‘make a presentation, get some interest and make a call to action‘. Instead they turn into the even older ‘once you build it they will come’ mentality. I may forgive a few chancers that start a business online from scratch but the entrepreneur that’s been in business on the High Street for 18years should surely know better! You see whether you are online or offline never forget who your customer is and who you are talking to, your audience. Feed them what they want, something useful and something that will get your name in their minds and hopefully get you some sales while you are at it. Use your articles to communicate useful information not just a mere  ‘I’m just happy to be here’ attitude or the much much worse ‘I am rich you are not and therefore stupid’ attitude. Use your articles wisely and attract people to your business in an above board and respectful kinda way. Despite all kinds of gizmos and i-this and i-that instruments, research has shown that people are even busier that ever before in the history of mankind ! So, please respect that 3 minute timeslot they afford you.

Now, back to the accountants. It first happened almost two years ago now, I sat across from a very well known accountant and we were talking about getting articles out and enhancing his expertise and knowledge to his market online. He sat there and nodded like the Churchill bulldog and looked like he understood the reasons and what he would get from it. Now, flip that picture in your mind like they do in those old movies and you now see me sitting in the same position a whole six (6!) months later asking why I had not received anything yet! You see I understand busy, but he had some of this info already on his brochures and had assistants upon assistants that could churn a dozen of these out everyday! No excuse in my mind.
A while later I got another accountant and… you guessed it, same story! I wont bore you with the details here but you get the picture.

WHAT ???? Just this morning I got an email in my mailbox, no joke people, but the heading was 'WHAT I GAVE YOU LAST WEEK WAS ENOUGH !!!’ It came with capitals and exclamation points no less. I wont get into what is good online etiquette or not but… really? What did they give me you ask? They gave me a list of their services such as VAT returns and company formations and all the other boring stuff that made me major in Corporate Finance (Stocks and Bonds) and not Financial Accounting (Bean Counting) in university at CMU.
You see, people have seen your brochure, they know what you sell but all they see is really one of many middle-aged men (probably balding, no offense to baldies out there, I happen to be one and proud of it!) that probably had a hand in  the credit-crunch and is now desperate to make something back from THEM. The extra  step required to beat everybody else is a reasonable carpet bombing of articles to your market (OR primetime advertising at the FA Cup Final or the Superbowl if you have a spare £3 – 7 million to blow in 30 seconds. Frankly I would much rather leave that to Budweiser and the like). For the rest of us, to show that you truly are above the rest and deserve your prospects’ business, you need to show your value upfront and this so-called web 2.0 is the best thing going for this. Take advantage of it.

As far as accountants go, I sincerely hope it was just my luck and the coincidence has no real bearing on any particular proffession or any other stereotypes for that matter.
Moral of the story? Get your articles out, share some knowledge and let people know you know what you are doing and as one of my good friends would say, ‘it does what it says on the tin'.

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