Sean D'Souza: Learn from customers, not Google ratings

Sean D'Souza.

I was sitting with the manager of a boutique hotel in Buenos Aires, Argentina. And she showed me the hotel's website. "We need to change that website," she said, "but I'm afraid that we'll lose our place on Google. Who knows, maybe we'll go down in the ranking."

And my answer was: "Why do you care about Google?"

It's my question to you as well: Why do you care about Google?

You care about Google (and all other search engines) because someone told you to care, right? But why does it matter? In the case of the hotel, it didn't matter at all.

I'll tell you why. Think of what you do when you're visiting a place. You go to Google and type "Hotels Buenos Aires" or "Hotels San Francisco". And guess what comes up? Yes, a list of hotels. And yes, those are bigshot hotels.

But wait, there's something else: Tripadvisor.

And like the average tourist, I totally ignore those bigshot hotels and head straight to the links on Tripadvisor. And of course, I look at the ratings. Those 35 million folks on Tripadvisor help me make up my mind.

And no matter what I (as a hotel owner) do to shake Tripadvisor off its perch, I can't.

All I can do is get to the top of Tripadvisor.

Ah, now there's an idea. If my hotel is really good, then all I have to do to get to the top of Tripadvisor is get a whole bunch of testimonials (800 are better than 20). I have to get a whole bunch of high-rated testimonials.

And I have to get the folks who stayed at the hotel to write their experience on Tripadvisor.

But where does your Google strategy come into this? It doesn't. And you shouldn't care. Because as long as you're at the top of Tripadvisor (and other travel sites such as Venere.com, etc) you'll get a steady stream of traffic to your hotel.

In this case, the hotel was doing pretty well.

They had an occupancy rate of about 80 per cent. But that means they were empty 20 per cent of the time. It was a really small hotel (just seven rooms) but even that 20 per cent was costing them more than $60,000 a year.

They were so fussed over the whole Google thing that they were effectively walking away from $60,000 a year. And the biggest reason they were making this mistake is that they weren't visualising their customer's journey.

So what's the journey of your customer?

It's more than possible that you get a lot of customers from Google and other search engines. But it's also possible that you pay too much homage to the search engine gods. For example at Psychotactics.com (that's our site) we get a truckload of folks from Google.

But that's just traffic. And there's a difference between traffic and customers. And our best-paying customers generally don't come from Google. We have our own "Tripadvisor": we call them strategic alliances.

They may send us more or fewer customers than Google, but the majority of those customers buy our products, come to our courses and stay with us for many years.

This game of tracking the customer's route should be your top priority Let's say you're a consultant. Now you can play with search engines all year long - or you can write a book. Look around and you'll see several dozen new names who have been published.

Now, with their books on Amazon and in bookstores, they get lucrative contracts, speaking engagements and customers - from Amazon, not from the search engines.

Of course the skeptics may have their daggers out. Not every author becomes famous. Websites can't always find alliances easily. Not every hotel can climb to the top three (or even the top 10) in their city. And yet, it's being done.

The best strategy you can have is:

* Track where your best customers are coming from.

* If you're unsure, try and work out how your customers find your competition.

* Books, Alliances, Reports etc. They all work very, very well. You just haven't been paying attention.

Most of all, step into the shoes of your customer for a change.

Think like they do. Act like they do. And find out where they're coming from. You may well be surprised. They may even be coming from Google after all.

Sean D'Souza is chief executive of Psychotactics and an international author and trainer. He is the author of The Brain Audit - Why Customers Buy (And Why They Don't).

* psychotactics.com