need a remodel or disasterDon’s Contracting is in steady demand. The local market is tight, supply is low and demand is high. Don will tell you he makes his living off of word of mouth. He doesn’t worry much about online experience. He has a personal edge over many other contractors, because of how he makes his customers feel and the quality of his work.

Don doesn’t think about the experience of the people referred to him. He knows this level of demand may not continue forever so he has to to make hay while the sun shines. Today his potential customers happily take the personal recommendation. Yet, they will likely start their journey to hiring him online. Let’s think about the buyer legend from Samantha’s point of view.

Don is a talented remodeler and contractor. He has been working with the Keller family (all names have been changed to protect the innocent) for the past year on remodeling several parts of their home. They love Don and recommend him to friends all the time.

Samantha was referred to Don by the Keller family. Samantha has never done any significant remodeling in her home. She is looking to remodel her kitchen. She has tried speaking with a couple of contractors already. Those experiences left her with even more questions, and less confidence, than when she first started out. She is so grateful that the Keller’s told her about Don.

The first thing she does is Google his name and/or his business name.

kitchen remodeler austin searchWhat would happen if she could not find anything under his name? What do you think might happen if she found all kinds of negative reviews for Don? She might start a broader search for “kitchen remodelers in Austin” to see who and what show up?

To build a buyer legend for search you must perform a pre-mortem. We begin by having your team imagine that the customer has completed her (or his) buying journey and either didn’t buy at all, didn’t buy what you sell (in favor of an alternative solution), or bought from a competitor.

Now ask yourselves:

  • What went wrong that led to these outcomes? Think of Murphy’s law. Now think up fixes, resolutions, and workarounds for each failure point.

We can assume from what we know of Don that if people hire him, they will love him and tell others and that will drive people to go back online and search for him after the recommendation and continue this positive circle of business. The part that is not clear is:

What questions do you think Samantha might have before she even calls or completes an online form for a contractor to come to her house? Might she not call if she does not get some critical ones answered? It’s possible.

Now we start to outline our experience from the end moving forward, step by step, to the first step. You should be doing this for all your high value campaigns.

For this post let’s focus on just one part. In the comments below, list all the possible questions Samantha might want answered from the website if she landed on it before she contacts Don.

In our follow up post we will tell you exactly what we put together for Don based on our research. We will also share some of the screen shots of competitors so we can evaluate how well they did at helping the customers through the experience and building confidence.

Please share if you think others would benefit.