Customer Journey 2.0: Humans making a connection through SEO Ep. 585

All right, welcome back to another fun-filled episode of the Unknown Secrets of Internet Marketing. I'm your host, Matt Bertram. Today we're going to be talking about customer journey 2.0. What does that mean? Where are things going? I've started to actually write a number of opinion pieces on our blog, EWRdigital.com. It's called the Digital Disruptor. I'm going to probably roll it out to different social media. I'm kind of playing around with it. You know, I have a lot of opinions. I've stopped writing as much on Forbes, Entrepreneur, Search Engine Journal. They're pretty censored as far as what you can put out. Also, a lot of the stuff that's out there, they actually cut it down. So I put a lot more information, and they just want to bring it down to the bare basics. I see a lot of SEO blogs out there. Even people have been asking me a lot about SEO Local, and I do need to do a podcast about that. There's a lot of things, the basics that are out there that everybody's parodying, but no one's really talking about what are the things that you really need to do to rank, how to do that, those specific things. So we've been starting to go through some of those sort of things in training, SEO training, I guess, SEO consulting. Other things that people were asking me for were SOPs, checklists, accountability charts, packages, when to bring people on, 1099 to full-time. Really a lot about accountability, goals, how to scale, stuff like that. So we're able to go really deep there, and really, I think, bringing it back to the topic of today, there's a lot of things that are happening in the space that's shifting how people are searching. When you talk about the customer journey, when you talk about target personas, a lot of SEOs, a lot of agencies, a lot of freelancers, a lot of companies skip over that. You really, really need to go back to who are you trying to reach? Where are they, right? Fish

where the fish are, that sort of thing. It becomes really clear when you niche down and you say, okay, these are the people we're going to target for this, but you've got to remember there's a different customer journey for each of those people, and you're trying to get inside their head the conversation that's going on, and then trying to, well, come side by side with them, share them some information, and sales, I guess, is professionally helping people buy. That's what I've always been taught. So if you're selling something, you're really helping them select whatever it is that they're looking for or they need, and if you have the right solution for it, you should unapologetically try to convince them that this is what you need, right, to take that next step. That's at least my approach to sales. All right, so I have done this podcast. Usually we don't do more than one take, but I ramble sometimes, and I apologize, and so I did a podcast earlier this week, and there was some great stuff in there, and maybe I'll get the editing team to chop it up and push it out, but I tried to listen to it, and I was like, hard to follow sometimes, so I actually made a list today to go through and knock some things out. So this podcast may be long, it may be short, but hopefully it'll be formatted and structured. All right, so customer journey 2.0, let's jump into it. Right now, I'm finding with my clients, and it'd be, you know, if you're having similar experiences or something different, I'd love to hear your feedback, but I am seeing how people are searching to be different online today. This shift started with COVID. I think that, you know, there's a lot of different factors influencing it. I also think that there's a lot of continued noise in the marketplace. There was a helpful content update by Google that knocked down a lot of people that are generating massive amounts of content with AI, and

I've seen some sites of others that I know got taken down by 30 to 50 percent. So Google did come out and say, hey, we are okay with AI supporting human connection, okay, supporting, helping you say what you're trying to say better, more articulate, more clarity, right? We're trying to communicate points from one to another, and AI can help you to still maybe what you're trying to say, but it needs to be you saying it. I believe we're in an age where we're moving from the attention economy to, well, something that I'm thinking more of like an intimacy economy, and you've heard a lot of different social media people out there, I've heard a lot of people's personal stories, and when people actually open up online and connect with each other, they have a lot of success because I think people are still looking to connect, they're just doing it through a different medium of online. I think that that's why the rise of podcasts has done so well, because you get to know people and kind of long form content, and one static post on Instagram doesn't really show the full picture. Also, who knows if that's real? I think that Will Smith did a post a while back, somebody else shared it, I wish I could give credit to who it was, but basically, Will Smith was like, I'm on vacation, and then he starts taking off stuff, and it's a green screen, and basically, it's all fake because he was like, you just got to keep up with everything that's going on and do social media, and he wasn't even really on vacation. He was like, I can't even go on vacation because of social media. I think it was a parody or a play on kind of what's going on, because a lot of these posts are not real, and now even there's AI influencers out there, and kids are seeing a lot of this stuff, and it's not real, and it's not real life, and if that's what you're trying

to make your life, where there's no downtime, like my kids watch a trip to Disney or a trip to Legoland or whatever, there's no downtime. That's not real life. See, I'm going off on a tangent, so I'll bring it back, but here's the deal. People are searching differently online, and you have to open up, and you have to connect with people, and the economy in certain areas and a lot of areas is certainly a lot weaker. I am seeing for some clients that are offering money, subprime stuff, they're getting 20 leads a day, and then I've seen other clients that are offering traditional mortgages, it's crickets, right? And so consumer spending is slowing down. If you're selling products or services, whether it be online, whether it be in person and you're trying to leverage online, you're going to have to present yourself, your unique selling proposition different than what everybody else has. I've looked at a couple of websites, and a lot of my feedback in our consulting sessions is how are you differentiating yourself between everybody else that's out there? How is your digital showroom reflective of your in-person showroom? You can certainly connect with more people. You can widen your service area, people knowing about your brand. However, you're going to have to rely online for people to find the information they have about you. So 75%, I can't cite this, I know it. 75% of the people online are, well, it's not 75% of the people online. The majority of people online are going 75% of the way through the customer journey before they raise their hand and want to talk to somebody. I mean, people don't want to talk to anybody to buy a pizza online. People want to be able to buy stuff at their own pace with no pressure. They want to make their own decision. This kind of goes back to the 1-800 numbers you could call and you could listen to more information before the internet, before you picked up the phone to talk to a salesperson

to maybe buy something. So online is extremely important. I'm finding out also too, a lot of clients have not looked at their website in years and years and years. And they're like, where does this information come from? And it's like, that is what has been on your website. And so we've been going through helping clients refresh their portfolios, update their testimonials. Hey, Google has started to, and I think some of these other platforms are going to follow along just kind of like the blue check mark is start to pull some of the reviews and they are looking at current relevant reviews that people have left to help people make a buying decision. If someone left you a review 20 years ago or 10 years ago, or even five years ago or a year ago, your product or service might be different. Um, in some way, or, uh, they're trying to provide the most accurate information to help someone make a purchasing decision online. And that also should be your goal of what you're trying to do. Uh, going back to this helpful content update, all this AI generate content. I mean, it's raising the bar for sure. Um, but like some of the information, a good example of this that I was hearing about, um, was like travel blogs. For example, people talking about all kinds of unnecessary stuff. You know, I think Google's looking at what are the key factors that help people make a decision. And they're looking at those metrics and they're disregarding everything else. And I think if you're generating too much of non-helpful stuff in their eyes, it could hurt you. Maybe they just disregard it, but it could hurt you at a certain standard deviation over. So, you know, it's sifting through, it's looking for certain key factors in, in the content. Um, you know, certainly with semantic, uh, SEO, people are looking at the positive and negativity and they're kind of rating. What's the overall sentiment of, of what you're putting out there. Uh, really interesting stuff. So,

okay. Personalization, right? The customer during 2.0 opening up, connecting with people. And certainly you can do that at scale with automation. We'll even get into AI, but I think the crux of my goal with this podcast, as well as a lot of the opinion pieces, I'm looking at it right here on another screen. So I apologize. People say my sound, it's when I turn my head, I have a directional mic. So gotta be, be, uh, careful to stay in front of that. Mike here is, uh, the digital disruptor. I'm talking a lot about human connection and AI. Um, now I think that SEO is that stepping stone and that's what I really want to talk about today is how to connect with the search engines is by connecting with people and opening up. And some people can do that through, uh, video or audio, maybe like this podcast. Uh, so others can do it through writing. Uh, I know people personally that can communicate way better through text message than they can in person. Cause they can think about what they're going to say and put it out there. And certainly Google's a lot more robust in text than they are in anything else right now. And I think that blogs are a really great way to get, uh, involved in the national conversation or your sector, uh, or what you're doing. I think, um, you know, Facebook or LinkedIn groups or chat, um, forums are really a great way to connect with people, not a marketing ploy to spam. Okay. Uh, but a great way to actually interact and connect with people. Um, blogs are maybe one step removed that you're not responding to someone specifically, but you're putting a topic out there. And really that first page of Google, maybe first two pages of Google, uh, Google looks for diversity in what people are sharing. Um, it talks about whatever that topic is. And if you're adding something new to the topic, you're going to rank. And so I really think that SEO

is very tailored and very customized. And it's moving more and more in that direction because there's nothing that you can do at scale that's personal, like connection, unless you're creating, well, very, very unique content. If you're just doing SEO, quote unquote, you're not connecting with people. Um, AI can connect with people, right? Um, chat bots, uh, are indistinguishable from humans with the Turing test. And, uh, seen different things about, uh, influencers online that pay people to talk to them, have built their own, uh, chat bots. And you can't tell that they're not a human and people are paying to talk to these people. Right? So, uh, I think that that's where it's going. I think people are, uh, extremely lonely. Uh, I was at a dinner last night that Tim Tebow was speaking at. Um, and it was amazing. He started off his talk, um, about, well, some of the statistics from Harvard and Yale and how, you know, everybody's pushed to do so well that a lot of these people are pretty depressed and sad. I don't have the exact statistics in front of me. Um, but, but loneliness is a big issue. I think in other areas of the world outside the U S uh, that's an issue. I think it's an issue here. And so people are well hungry. And I think COVID has made it worse with a desire to connect with people and to engage with people. And I think taking that away, uh, of the in-person left the online and not a lot of people are as well versed, especially, well, maybe, um, you know, I'm not going to particularly put any different graphic on it, but there's a bell curve with technology and things continue to change. And if you're not staying up with it, it's hard to get left by. I mean, people are not using their phones, uh, in any range of capacity of what the ability, uh, that it can do is I have to actually read a book on how to use the iPhone,

uh, and, and find out all the stuff that it does. And, and I know I'm not maxing out my, my use there, but, um, okay. So a lot of this is philosophical again. See, I, I tend to ramble on, on this subject in particular, and that's why I like writing blogs about it because I can get my thoughts together. All right. So let me give you kind of the punchline here or the, you know, we talked about, I guess, a lot of potatoes. Let's talk about the meat and let me try to deliver a really solid message for you as far as customer journey goes. All right. So we talked about target persona. Again, we have a workshop on this and we help a lot of clients with it. Um, but you can do it on your own. We're in the information age. You can find everything online. You gotta know where to search though. Cause a lot of stuff out there's not so great as I said before, but all right. Um, customer journey, what I'm seeing, uh, what to do about it. People are going like attribution, right? What is causing the conversion? What is causing someone to take action and buy? People are a lot more sensitive. The economy is not doing well. People, it seems like are really leaning on reviews. And again, that's where a big focus is. Um, testimonials, reviews, personal references. That's huge, right? Personal references and utilizing Facebook. And, um, you know, also people are buried, right? People are buried with work and time kids and everything else. Technology was supposed to, I think, relieve a lot of that, but I think the productivity level has just gone way, way up. And so everybody's as underwater as possible because you have the ability to get all this work done. And if you're not doing it, it's like credit cards running sort of thing. Um, and so you have to really think about what people want to find out about whatever it is and what is that conversation

and what are the questions and decisions that they make in their head? There was two big graphs that I saw when I was at a and M uh, marketing program fellows that really at the beginning of the internet was true. I think it's still true today. Um, I also think that there's probably a lot more of these models out there, but it showed how people buy cars or how people buy big screen TVs and when they search for very broad terms, uh, like, you know, best big screen TVs, right? And then there's maybe some hub pages and some comparisons and then people pick a brand maybe, right? Like, cause there's reviews of a brand that are really good and then they start looking at features and then they start looking at model number and then they start looking at price and then they buy, well, you need to create content every step of the way and you need to evaluate your funnel of where you have content and where you don't. And, and your goal is to try to put content that they can find at the top of the search engines and social media on your site everywhere else. Um, and address that quote unquote, lanky funnel so that more people flow to the next stage of your customer journey all the way until they buy. And then also there's even client nurture that's super important once they buy to maintain those customers and not have a customer churn and upsells and referrals. I mean, there's a lot of value in this, but understanding, okay, what are the things that a lot of people are also jumping around from different platforms. Um, people are going online to offline. I'm seeing mailers work really, really well. Um, you know, people search differently. There's different type of people, uh, a ID, a attention, interest, decision action. There's also the dis profile of the different type of people and, and really building out these models and understanding what that is. You don't need a thousand pieces of

content and you don't need to be on every platform to have people buy from you online and convert. And, but you do need to be visible for when they search for that particular thing. Good news is long tail queue phrases. Um, Google says, what is it? Like 70, 80% of people, uh, are still, are, are, they're seeing new searches every day, every month because people are finding out how to use search engines differently. Um, people, you know, voice talk or asking questions and, you know, the core or, um, um, seed or, uh, what is it called? Like the, the, the core keywords, right. That people are searching for. Yeah. You might not be able to rank for that, but if you understand what that customer journey is, you may be even actually able to slide into the conversation a little bit further down the funnel, a lot lower, lower, lower down, closer to the conversion, which might even be better. And so, yes, you're competing with some big companies. You're competing with a lot of people, but what you're selling is unique. There's things that you can do with, like if you're selling e-commerce products, man, these product pages I'm seeing, they're taking stock photograph from, you know, whoever the actual manufacturer is, uh, stock, um, specs. They're not adding testimonials. They're not adding their own customer experience. I mean, we've got to remember eat. They added the eat, the experience to it. And that's, what's big. That's what people want to see. That's what people are looking at. Um, either they're looking at the number of reviews and, and they're just so buried that they're going to move on or they'll look at the best reviews and the worst reviews, but they certainly want to see recent reviews by someone maybe that is like-minded or geographically located to their area, depending on what you're selling, um, that had a good experience. And, and they're going to assume that if they don't already have a direct referral. So what do you want to be doing?

You want to be enhancing the ability for existing and past customers to share their experiences easily, um, and to find their reviews, comments, testimonials, um, like, like easily, I guess I need a different word for easily, but, um, accessibly. And so you're, you're trying to have people understand what that experience is going to be like. And you're trying to map out their sales process, uh, in person online, the absolute best salesperson, and then you're looking to scale it. So what I like to do is I try to figure out what is the perfect sales experience, right? For a new customer of this type of what they're trying to do. What are the pieces of content, whether it be video images, infographics, text, blogs, reviews, whatever that I hope that they would see and in what order. And then, okay, you can control what's happening on your website. Can't always control what's happening on social media or these other platforms again. Hey, you got a review 20 years ago, put it on your main website. Cause you know, Google is going to say, Hey, I don't, I don't, I've decided to change it. Right. And you're going to abide by those rules. Also with Google, the reason why I think you want to follow, um, like white hat tactics is because guess what? If you get banned from Google, it will take your business. Okay. If you are generating any kind of business for people finding you, if they delist you and guess what? They have immense power. It's not a public utility. It's a private company. So if they decide that they deem you not to be on it, or I mean, like it's their prerogative, that's a lot of these platforms. So you gotta kind of understand that. Um, and certainly that's a hot debate and, and, and maybe I'll bring somebody on and talk about that. I have actually a number of people lined up that I want to bring on. Uh, I am going to start ramping up production of the podcast.

I just want to make sure that I get back to the consistency of once a week so that, um, everybody can rely on it. I am trying to push it out either Sunday night or Monday morning. Um, this is Monday morning. I'm going to start wrapping up this podcast here, uh, and get it out to you. But, um, I want, I want y'all to be able to connect with that. A quick reminder as we kind of transition is, uh, am starting to do some small business coaching, um, as well as agency coaching, uh, where I can get into the specifics. You can ask specific questions on what's going on with this website, uh, have been able to pretty effectively in an hour, um, untangle or at least, uh, address what the problems might be, uh, with some of these websites. Um, it's just something that our team here is really capable of doing. It's something I've been doing for a long time and we do have a one-on-one coaching sessions, uh, or one-on-one consulting sessions on both bestseceo.com as well as ewrdigital.com that you can, you can, uh, purchase a paid consulting and we can get into it. I think it's a great way, uh, to start a relationship, uh, to start a conversation, to get questions answered. You can always send them in as well. Um, and, uh, you know, again, we're going to be rolling out some webinars and some group coaching. And, uh, that's really the focus for this quarter for us is to, to, to really, uh, enhance what we're doing in that area. Um, that's, that's what, uh, that's, what's on our, uh, roadmap. So, uh, stay tuned for more. Hopefully you found this helpful. I had a couple articles I was going to get into, but again, we ran out of time. So, um, I guess just stay tuned if you're interested for that, uh, or you're welcome to go, uh, check out some of our blogs, uh, digital disruptor, the digital, the digital disruptor, I guess I'll shorten

it like Facebook, right? Just not the Facebook, but Facebook. Um, but yeah, so thank you so much for listening. If you're still there, please leave a review, let me know your comments. Hopefully I didn't ramble too much and we'll see you next time. Uh, if you're looking to grow your business, your brand, your anything with, well, the most powerful tool on the planet, I would use the internet. I would use, well, Google and being, I would use the search engines and I would learn how to understand the algorithms of the social media channels, because I believe it's one of the most powerful tools you could ever use. So stay tuned. Talk to you next time.