
If only more people knew about me.
A common answer on my survey of what barriers people feel there are to business growth is ‘awareness’.
The logic goes: More awareness = more customers.
Let me tell you a story..
A friend built a new site some months ago. It’s a new concept for the New Zealand marketplace and he’s spent some time trying to get traction. Every new customer and sale is a win.
So when he was featured in a prominent article on stuff.co.nz about this new trend, he was delighted. I saw it and knew that he would likely get a few thousand people going to the site over the weekend to check it out.
PR isn’t the magic bullet you might think but you will get some traffic from it.
I messaged him:
“Nice PR. Ride the wave”
“Thanks!” he replied
“Lots of new people on your pixel and signing up to your email list”
“ummm. I don’t have either of them setup”
“Dude…”
The raw facts are at least 98% of people who visit your site will leave and never come back. If you don’t have at least the basic plumbing in place to leverage these visitors when these opportunities come along they pas you by and you capture very little of the benefit.
You don’t have many chances to grab someone’s attention and you better be ready when the opportunity arises as you never know when it’s going to. The history of many great businesses often contains one moment or inflection point that got them closer to that all important critical mass.
Be ready to grow.