Canadian Music Trade - December/January 2018

FROM THE FLOOR... W hen someone enters your store’s name into Google, what do they see? What do you want them to see? And how do you ensure that’s what they see? Scott Dailey of Single Throw Marketing is presenting a NAMM University double session entitled “What Google Wants” at The 2018 NAMM Show and wants to help you get to page one on Google – and stay there. Here, he graciously offers a few tips you can put into practice right away, though check out his Idea Center session at 11 a.m. on Friday, Jan. 26 th for more on maximizing your SEO efforts. CMT: Terms like “Google rankings” and “SEO” have been pretty much ubiqui- tous over the past several years, and yet it seems that many MI retailers have been slow to recognize their impor- tance and take action. Any ideas as to why that’s been the case? Scott Dailey: In my experience, the slow- ness to adopt isn’t that people don’t rec- ognize the importance of optimizing their online presence, but rather that they don’t know where to start with coming up with a plan and getting it correctly implemented. In a lot of cases, too, they may have hired someone to handle it that just wasn’t effec- tive. The shame is you’ve got an industry that’s great at talking about tone and sound and quality and presentation, but often isn’t great at marketing itself, so people are often susceptible to someone saying, “I can optimize your Facebook page,” or “I can get you on [Google’s] page one.” But really, I talk to small business owners all the time, and in a lot of cases, they just don’t know where to start in getting this right. CMT: Why is it so important that they do get it right? How do Google rankings affect retail operations like those of the music store owners and managers you’re presenting for at The NA MM Show? SD: Well, put simply, if you’re number one on page one [in a Google search], you’re getting one in three clicks. If you’re last on that same page, it’s one in 40. So just think of what that means over the course of 1,000 searches. You’ve got a lot of online retailers looking to swallow you up, and the compe- What Google Wants Q&A with Scott Dailey of Single Throw Marketing tition from brick-and-mortar stores selling online is increasing. Now, what’s important to know is that when you are looking at page one, it’s not uncommon to be looking at the best of the worst. Sometimes, it doesn’t take much to outrank someone, which you might do because your site’s hygiene is better or accountability is better in some way, so that means that while there are a lot of consistencies, there’s sometimes a discrep- ancy between what Google wants and what your customer wants, and you need to navigate that. It’s what I call the principle of buyer assumption. The most effective way to get someone to buy is to provide them an experience that’s totally in line with what they expect – what they want to see. You need to be consistent with the consumer’s buying expectations, which is sometimes inconsistent with what Google is going to recognize. When you narrow that gap between what the buyer expects and what you’re offering, they stop searching and do the thing they’re supposed to do – which is buy from you. CMT: What are a few key takeaways from your presentation that readers can put into practice right away? SD: I’ll throw a few things at you that I think are important. First, know that the sellers on page one are there for surgical reasons. There’s nothing there that’s an accident. There are hundreds of signals that have in- formed Google about why your competitor should be on page one. Everything Google does is methodical, tested and tested again, so if you’re on page one, it’s because you belong there until someone dethrones you. If you want to be optimized for Google, that involves being totally engaging to your buyer. So I’m telling you what your buyer is expecting to see – what they want to see – and then how to apply that technically to have Google recognize it. I talk with so many small business owners, and know that about 40 per cent of their sleepless nights come from trying to acquire customers – better customers or more customers. That’s done by narrowing the gap between your buyer’s assumptions and expectations and what you’re actually providing to them. I’ll explain what your buyer wants and what Google is looking for, which differs in some cases. I’m going to talk about how many times a buyer should have to click before purchasing, or how you can engage them after they’ve purchased, but bottom line, it’s about meeting your buyer’s expec- tations – what they want and how they want it served to them. CMT: Is there anything you’ve noticed about the MI retail sector specifically when it comes to their approach or effectiveness in this area? SD: The thing I’ve encountered with the music industry is that they’re great with personal engagement and know how to make the buyer feel like the only buyer on the planet. If they can get the buyer in the sales funnel, they won’t likely lose [the sale] because they’re so good at taking care of people. What’s so strange is that this rarely translates digitally. They know what to do when they encounter the buyer, but are of- ten bad at communicating digitally the fact that they’re so empathetic to the buyer’s needs and what they expect outside of the physical store environment. I’ve talked to hundreds of music retailers – hundreds of them – and they often have these beautiful stories about the business. They really care about the journey and want to share it with the buyer and use it to communicate to the buyer that they understand what and how they want to be sold; they just seem to have the hardest time translating that digitally, so that’s where we’re trying to help. CANADIAN MUSIC TRADE 9

Canadian Music Trade - December/January 2018 | Page 9