The following is a guest blog post by Doug Smith, WREW Senior Account Executive at Hubbard Interactive.
Shhhhhhhh, I’m about to tell you the secret to looking really smart to your customers. It’s so simple, but I’m quickly finding out that a lot of business professionals do not use it. The secret for which I speak is…..Google Alerts.
Google Alerts gives you a FREE (yes, I said FREE) way to provide your customers value.
If you are unfamiliar with Google Alerts, here’s a short synopsis via Wikipedia: Google Alerts is a content change detection and notification service, offered by the search engine company Google, that automatically notifies users when new content from news, web, blogs, video and/or discussion groups matches a set of search terms selected by the user and stored by the Google Alerts service.
You can set up your alerts based on specific industries, businesses, or categories that are of interest to you or….(wait for it)….YOUR CUSTOMERS. Every day you will have information that pertains specifically to your customers that you can print and deliver in person (nothing like face time with a client where you give them something that could benefit their business) or simply email to them. It’s a great way to stay in front of your customers and differentiate you from your competition. Here’s how you do it:
- Create a Google account
- From the Google homepage, click the “more” tab at the top of the page
- Click “even more” at the bottom of the drop down box
- Scroll down to the Specialized Search section
- Click “Alerts”
- Type in the business category or specific business name into Search Query
- Click “Create Alert”
That’s it…and you can create as many alerts as you like. The information is emailed to you as often as you like and now you are providing your customers information that could benefit their business and you’re seen as a trusted resource and business partner.
Remember, this is our secret.