What are your prospects searching for?

For some time now, winning new business has been less about going out and finding potential clients and more about being visible when they decide to look for you. And the vast majority of the time, they’re looking on a search engine. 

So any practice goals pertaining to capturing more leads or onboarding more clients are inherently tied to this question: What is my ideal client searching for and will I be the one they find?

It’s always been smart to have a competitive edge like a specialized service or a niche market, but in the search engine era it’s essential to think of that edge in the context of online activity. 

For example: if someone searches for “wealth management services,” it would be great if they came across your website. But especially if you’re in a big city, it’d be a miracle to end up on the third or fourth page, and we know that almost no one ventures past the first. 

What if they searched “wealth management services near me”? Then you’re competing only with those firms in a certain geographical radius. There might be fewer users submitting that search, but there are fewer results, too.

And what if your prospect was searching for “Retirement income services for doctors”? All of a sudden that pool becomes much, much smaller, and the chances of getting noticed have flipped in your favour.

So you may not be able to control the results, but you can, in a sense, control the search. You can decide what kinds of searches align with your practice’s specialties and differentiators, and optimize your online brand to move up the rankings.

Instead of trying to outrank the biggest names in the broadest searches, you can focus on claiming your spot in the field of view of a specific type of prospect. That’s what standing apart from the competition means today.