When considering a destination, travellers need to get their bearings. Without them they’re lost – they won’t make a decision, may not even leave home.

One of the first things potential travellers do these days is consult an online map. If they’ve heard about your business, they’ll look you up. Your job is to be easy to find.

Online maps provide instant orientation, both during the decision-making process and once a visitor is on the ground. And it’s no longer only customers who know your name who can locate you this way.

Imagine you’re a hungry New Yorker standing on a street in Hobart. You may not know the name of the street, but you know you need a steak. You pull out your mobile phone, log onto Google Maps for Mobiles, and in seconds you have details of a range of restaurants within walking distance. It’s that easy.

In today’s connected world, customers are leading, not following. If they want your information, they want it on their own terms. They want to request it rather than have it pushed at them. This means you have to be available to them through all sorts of avenues. You have to be at their fingertips.

Associated with a reaction against heavy-handed marketing is an increasing tendency for customers to prefer the recommendations of people who have already eaten at your café, slept in your B&B or taken your tour. Listing your business on Google Maps enables you to take advantage of both of these trends.

Google Maps is the ultimate in word-of-mouth endorsement. Anyone can list a tourism business and write a review. If you haven’t registered your business yourself, go to Google Maps and search for it. If you’ve made an impression on a customer, chances are you’ll be there. By clicking on your listing on the map, you’ll be able to check your address, phone number and website.

The best thing to do if you find you are already listed is to click on ‘Claim your business’. This will enable you to correct any inaccuracies, add further information and ensure that no-one changes your information in future. Customers will still be able to add reviews, though, and it’s in your interests to read them. You need to know what people are saying about you, and reviews are invaluable feedback. Perhaps even encourage visitors who have expressed their satisfaction to you personally to record their praise on the site.

If your search returns no results, click on ‘Add/edit your business’. Detailed instructions are provided to help you create your free listing.

If you’re not on Google Maps, you’re handing a huge advantage to those businesses that are already listed. Conversely, adding your business will greatly increase the appeal of your entire community to potential visitors making holiday decisions all over the world. And, of course, you’ll be making it easy for your customers to find you – a great first impression in any language.

This year, if you are planning to start marketing your business “on line” it is a good idea to start out using the tools that Google have provided. I have made a list of six services that I believe are vital as a first step in promoting a website on the internet.

1. Register a Google account – None of the services that Google offer can be accessed with out creating a Google account. This can be as simple as using one of Googles services, which range from Gmail, iGoogle or any other service that they offer.

2. Register for Google webmaster tools – This tool requires you telling Google that you own a particular website. Google verify this claim by asking you to place a file on your site or some code into your home page. Once this is complete Google provide a lot of hidden information about how they read your website, they also are able to give suggestions of how you can improve your Google rankings.

3. Register for Googles Local search – Local search is when Google have verified that your business is relevant for a specific geographical region. They do this by asking website owners to claim their website and confirm their address. Google will do this confirmation by telephone or letter. Once this is done a business will show up in a search results map if someone searches in your geographical area and uses your keywords. It is a relatively easy way to quickly get to the top of local search result queries.

4. Register for Google analytics – This allows a website owner to track the traffic to a website with a high end sophisticated web tracking tool. The interface is easy to use and the amount of information available is quite enormous.

5. Start a Google adwords campaign – This is Pay-per-click (PPC) and will allow you to have your website appear at the top of search listings for specific targeted keywords. You only pay for the visitor that clicks on your advert and it is probably one of the most cost effective and fastest ways of getting instant traffic.

6. Use the Google RSS reader – This wont drive traffic to your site but is a fantastic way to organize all the information that comes flooding into your email inbox. What happens is you subscribe to a website whose information is interesting using your Google reader, you then unsubscribe from the mail list. This saves your mail box and allows you easy access to view information in a well organized way, with out spam.

So when your google rankings drop, or you don’t get digged, or poked or SEO-ed in the way you want, start laughing, and enjoy the funny side.

A few weeks ago we were on holiday in Sydney.

We took a few hours to enjoy a walk around the Rocks before our flight. It was a beautiful warm Saturday, about 26 degrees, which in early August is very welcome, and there were big crowds wandering around.

We wandered first through the Saturday market, we looked at chilli sauces and then, at the end of the market, was a fascinating stall – it was a gourmet chocolate shop. And they had taste testers. They had a chilli chocolate one, that was eye catching and very nice. They had an amazing lemon myrtle (I think it was) white chocolate, that was also beautiful.

Their prices were fairly reasonable – $4 – $6 for a fair sized bar of chocolate. But I was fascinated when he told me that his chocolate was free from added sugar. No way! Chocolate, especially dark chocolate, is meant to be quite good for you itself, it is the things they add to it, such as sugar, that bring it down. But I would also say that these things help it taste good. So, yummy sugar free chocolate? We ended up buying some, and kept going.

Down by the steps above the harbour was a young lady who had a big crowd gathered around her. She was about to put herself in a glass box. A small one too. It looked to be about 40 cm square, give or take 10 cm. So we paused to watch.

She got herself a volunteer from the crowd who was to shut the lid on her and then help her out again. Then she put one leg in the box. Then she stopped and hopped out of the box. Her next words went something like this:

‘This is a pretty difficult thing I am about to do. I am about to put myself in a small glass box. I am one of the only female contortionists in the world. I am not paid to be here, I earn my living from doing this, because kind people donate. So after this performance I am going to pass around my bag and I am going to ask you to put something into it. Now you might be wondering how much is a good amount to give. $50 is standard. Just kidding. Five dollars is standard and ten is great. But even if you only have a gold coin please throw it in. Thank you. And thank you for being such a great crowd. Now I am going to put myself in this box.’

Which she proceeded to do.

But it was her speech that fascinated me. As soon as she started it, people began to walk away, with this certain look on their faces. I am pretty sure you know the look I mean. It is a kind of resigned, uncomfortable look and it basically means, “I knew there was going to be a catch, let’s get out of here”. Why do we respond to street theatre people like this? Because most street artists I have seen recently do this same speech. What is it about the money speech that makes us uncomfortable? We stopped to watch, we were entertained. And I imagine that they all ask because they get more money if they do. And she was especially careful to establish the price of her product.

Her speech incorporated elements that we are told are good sales practice in business and especially on a website – establish the reason for the price of your product (“I am the only female contortionist”) and then ask for the sale! Issue a call to action. But although these principles are held up as good sales practice, do they work? A lot of people walked away having enjoyed her product for free.

Now back to Mr Sugar Free Chocolate. He also established his price, and although I said it was reasonable earlier, I could have bought two Cadbury’s blocks for the price of his stick of rocky road. So where was the value in it? He had established his value well by giving his customers something they wanted – chocolate that tastes fabulous and is hand made and sugar free! Wow. Healthy and decadent all at once. What’s in it for me? A taste I love with less than usual health ramifications.

What was in it for me with the street theater girl? Well, I’d already seen her show. I was going to get nothing out of paying but the feeling that I had shown my appreciation for her effort. She was in a sense relying on our altruism but I think that her possible problem was that we had already received the product, and there is a fairly strong perception in Australia that you can see street theatre for free and pay if you feel like it. It is almost a sense of ‘they’re doing it because they want to’ and payment is a bonus, if we thought it was really excellent and we felt like dropping in a buck. In fact, I think sometimes we feel that we have been set up by street theatre artists. It is a public walk way, they have gone out of their way to deliberately attract our attention and then they tell us that we have to pay for that distraction. (I am not anti street theatre by the way, my personal favourite are young people playing the violin REALLY well)

How does all of this translate across into something useful for our websites?

A successful website should

Ask for the sale,

It should establish the reason for the price, by letting the customer know what’s in it for them. And this ‘what’s in it for me’ element should be as powerful as possible, linked to emotions if it can be (like chocolate and health).

If possible it should remove customer risk – Mr Chocolate offered us samples before we bought, you can offer a guarantee on your product, you can also offer samples – preferably something that costs you little and helps establish the value of your product. For example a free ebook in your area of specialty.

A successful website does not endeavour to sell something that is easily available for free unless it has a really good USP. Water is an example of this. Water is available for very little in most western countries, but millions of dollars of water are sold by people who have established to our satisfaction that bottled water or a water filter is better for us. Good USP on a readily available product. This was partly the contortionist’s problem – we felt somehow that her product really was available for free and she was trying to charge. We don’t think twice about paying to see someone do the same tricks in a circus or theatre, so it was not her product, but where and how it was delivered that devalued it.