I want to talk to you about why your digital brand is so important and it’s becoming more and more important.
The first reason really starts when you look at how do people go about researching and selecting a service provider.
At the very top of the funnel, when people are trying to figure out, is this a problem I should be concerned about? Do I really need to talk to someone or not? You know, they’re doing that front end research on business issues. Almost 70% of their effort is focused on
the digital channel. That is like search engine optimization, webinars, those kinds of digital assets, 70% of their effort when they’re checking out.
But it doesn’t stop there. When you start to look down further down the funnel in how do they go about identifying service providers, well, the fact of the matter is in the last couple of years, the amount of referrals have gone down by 15% and that’s because people are not asking for referrals.
Not you asking your client for a referral, that’s their friends asking them for a referral. Why are they not asking? Well, here’s what’s happening. They’re going online to look for potential service providers. That’s gone up by 65% in the last few years, 65% increase. So, referrals are going down, online looking is going up.
And the really key thing is going when… how do they make that final evaluation? Once they’ve heard about you, they’ve been referred, they found you online. How do they make that evaluation? This is really important. Almost 87% of people will rule out a service provider before they’ve even talked to them.
That means they’re doing it by, not talking to you, by looking at most likely your digital assets. And how do they do that? The final evaluation, 70% of people are doing that. So, what you’re finding when you
think about your brand and to really impact where the action is is digital.
About 70% of the activity throughout the pipeline is driven by digital brand. That’s plenty of reason of why you ought to be paying attention to it. So, how do you do that? Well, my recommendation is go to Hinge University and check out the Visible Firm Course. You could not get a course that’s better tailored to helping you develop that strong digital brand.
Related:
The Cost and Benefits of Market Research
