Together: AI, your website and the “Confirmation Process.”

Artificial Intelligence has your entire website in its pocket, plus nearly everything you’ve ever published online or discussed on a recorded webinar or podcast.

Think of it as a giant buffet.

When someone is looking for a service like yours, they may ask an AI tool to search the virtual Internet banquet for information and resources.

Your hope is that the request for information about you will deliver a rich snippet or short summary.

Your further wish is that it is meaty enough to pique the prospect’s interest.

Let’s call this an appe-teaser.

Tasty as it is, that paragraph is not sufficient to make an appointment to speak with you. It will not convince the person with purchasing authority or justify a buy decision to oneself. To get the full flavor, the potential buyer visits your website to learn more.

As discussed in The Confirmation Process vs. the Buyer’s Journey, your website is key to confirm:

• You are the person they heard about/saw/read about.
• You are the professional they seek/need because you have the skills to solve their problem.
• You have the respect of colleagues in your field and your clients.

It’s been documented that B2B buyers in a complex sale actively engage with materials online, and do not passively receive a company’s communiqués.

In fact, companies that capture an email address and nurture the relationship along the buyer’s journey are, in my view, shoving food down the prospect’s throat.

Accordingly, potential clients may be loathe to submit an email address, fearing a deluge of promotional emails.

What’s to be done?

I recommend that you actively produce content on the appropriate platforms of interest to your potential clients, marketing your business and driving viewers to the website via external activity:

• Being quoted in the news
• Publishing articles
• Appearing on podcasts
• Giving workshops and webinars
• Producing newsletters
• Writing posts on industry blogs
• Creating videos

All these information-laden works are promoted on social media; they are linked to and housed on your website.

Your website no longer is the first point of contact with prospective clients.

Still, that does not diminish its essential role in the confirmation process and as the repository of all your content.

Follow an omni-channel approach for your insights to be aggregated by AI tools and also be found by more prospects and referral sources.

This Month’s Tip

Play the content multiplication game.

• A podcast guest appearance becomes an article
• A newsletter becomes an e-book
• A blog post becomes a video
• A LinkedIn post becomes a webinar
• And so on and so forth.

To test the content multiplication approach, I asked Perplexity, an AI tool, the same question several times:

Is Janet Falk a Public Relations professional for ____?

I used different audiences: business owners, consultants, attorneys and nonprofits.

Each time, Perplexity delivered a rich snippet with variations that corresponded to the multiple sources it tapped to compose the summary: articles, my website, my LinkedIn profile, podcast appearances and a directory profile.

Contact

What does AI serve up about you? Contact me at Janet@JanetLFalk.com, book an appointment here or call me at 212.677.5770. Let’s review your website and digital presence to ensure you provide a full meal of content that confirms you are a master chef with a five-star buffet.

This newsletter was inspired by a recent interview with marketer Jay Baer.

 Your digital presence must confirm your professionalism.

You’ve probably heard of the Buyer’s Journey, which has several stages:

• Awareness: a buyer becomes aware of a problem
• Consideration: a buyer defines their problem and considers options to solve it
• Decision: a buyer evaluates these options and decides on the right provider to address the solution.

When someone lands on your website or LinkedIn profile, you don’t know where they are in their buyer’s journey. Accordingly, your website’s content must address the visitor at each stage in their buying process.

Let’s flip this journey around to give you the leading role. I call it the Confirmation Process.

Its objective is to confirm for the buyer that she has located the appropriate resource.

Through a yet-to-be-determined channel, a visitor comes to your website or LinkedIn profile, starting the journey or process:

• Awareness: a buyer learns about you
• Consideration: a buyer conducts research about you
• Decision: a buyer contracts with you.

A prospective client arrives at your website in several ways:

1. They met you at an event, heard you speak on a panel or podcast, or read what you wrote in an article or newsletter
2. They were referred to you by a mutual contact
3. They searched on the internet for a professional like you.

Now that they found you, they want to confirm:

• You are the person they heard about/saw/read about
• You are the professional they seek/need because you have the skills to solve their problem
• You have the respect of colleagues in your field and your clients.

Here’s how your website operates in the Confirmation Process:

Are you the one they heard about?
Yes. Your photo matches the image of the professional they met or saw speak. When the person talked with you at an event or attended your panel, they had an opportunity to connect with you. Perhaps you exchanged business cards.

Speaker bios, podcast show notes and articles usually include a photo and the URL of the professional’s website, email address and/or phone number, precisely so that listeners and readers can contact the individual for further information.

Are you the professional they seek/need and do you have the skills to solve their problem?
Yes. State your services, cite your education, note your certifications and licenses. Your case studies of client successes, newsletters and articles are additional proof of your skills. List your clients by name, when permitted, or by industry.

All these describe your background and demonstrate that you operate from a solid knowledge base, with proven experience to address the potential client’s particular situation, although you do not yet know what their problem may be.

Do you have the respect of others in your field and your clients?
Yes. Your workshops and podcast appearances show that others in the sector value your insights. Your testimonials prove you made your clients look good to whoever mattered to them: a partner, business owner, supervisor or investor.

Congratulations! You’ve checked all the boxes of their confirmation search.

This Month’s Tip

Review your website and LinkedIn profile see how they correspond to the Confirmation Process with a current photo, lists of services and clients, plus publications, newsletters, workshops and case studies.

Contact

Show the world you are the professional who can solve a certain problem. Confirm you are the person you say you are. Contact me at Janet@JanetLFalk.com , set an appointment here or call me at 212.677.5770. Let’s compare your digital presence to the confirmation process. Together, we’ll help potential clients check the boxes of their confirmation search so they may connect with you to resolve their issue.

Click here to read prior issues of this newsletter.

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Thanks to Andrew Schulkind, digital strategist, for partial inspiration. He asked, “How aware of you [and] where in the buying process, or your sales funnel, is the person who’s just come to your website?”

This discussion has been lightly edited for clarity.

Image credit: kalhh (Pixabay)