Hello Superpower Seekers! I come to you today after a terrible night’s rest. I just couldn’t seem to get my routine to quiet my busy brain.
I wound myself up last night thinking about all the bad guys out there. I couldn’t stop thinking about the Sleeping Bandit and his Sleep Stealing Brigade. Recently, a newer villain has emerged that is causing me to worry.
All of the pesky villains out there have a weakness that we can exploit in order to achieve sleep maximization.
Tyrano-snore-us Rex is defeatable with a game-changer adjustable base, by losing weight, or by CPAP machines that can help us breathe. It’s all about breathing easier, which is why Tyranno-Snore-us Rex gets so bad during allergy season. Sleeping with your head elevated is the quickest way to cull the elemental beast!
And then there’s the Sleeping Bandit, head honcho, and leader of the Sleep Stealing Brigade. He is defeated by doing things like writing down some routines of what time you plan to go to bed and what time you plan to wake up. That way you don’t have to rely on sleeping medication in order to fall asleep quickly.
And the Caffeine Chameleon is defeated by having a caffeine curfew 12 hours before you go to bed or, even better, not drinking caffeine at all. Sounds easy to say but you’re only going to be able to defeat this bad guy if you can see him! Bad habits are hard to see.
However, there is another bad guy out there. No, correction, ad gal: Miss Information.
This lady is a powerhouse of the internet and controls most of what we see and click when researching mattresses. In my opinion, she’s the most dangerous one of them all.
Dangerous to the consumer who wants honest third-party neutral information about the stuff they’re shopping for and dangerous because that information given in such a way could cause consumers to purchase from large franchises that spell out extinction for small independent, family-owned, ma and pa retailers.
Dangerous because a lot of the sleep products she promotes do not live up to the hype compared to the line of bedding you have researched and curated to sell at your stores. She’s the one that is the most deadly and one of the most effective.
Let’s talk about what she actually posts about. So if you go to try to research a mattress or better sleep, oftentimes you’re going to see advertising from nutritional websites and natural product, self-improvement websites.
These websites used to be what they claim to be. But now she buys them and they promote her sleep products. You see, Google charges quite a lot if you want to be a business and be at the top of search results for things like “Best Mattress For Side Sleeping.” But they don’t have the same pay system setup for websites that rate health products.
It’s a flawed system and she takes full advantage! If you see a website claiming to know the “best mattress for such and such” the odds are good it’s offering biased information designed to drive traffic to predetermined products that pay money for that visitor.
Not only that, reviews on Google searches look very confusing nowadays because large chains can pay for their reviews to come through services that display reviews for 50 stores as if it were just the location down the street.
Your local independent retail store may have 50 while the big chain has 500. And shoppers don’t see that the big chain’s 500 reviews are spread across several states and give almost no real information about the shopping experience in their town. Add up all the big chain stores individually and they’re probably much like yourself in the 20 to 50 range.
If you are at 50 reviews or less, you can learn some best practices from the boys at Goodbed.com or text me at 704-706-2436. Honest reviews from your customers make a huge difference in defeating Miss Information!
Miss Information is a really tough bad gal to beat. But that does not mean she is invincible. There’s something you can start doing today that makes most of what she does a waste of money. What is that? What’s that pillow pupper? That’s what I’m trying to say, boy. I was just about to say that—are you serious?
All right, well. I know Pillow Pupper already spilled the beans, but one thing you can do starting right now is have an over-the-top customer experience in your store.
When people go to the internet and research on Google, they’re doing it because they don’t know who has the information or who can give them information, and they’re looking for a place to start.
One of the reasons they’ve gone to Google is because maybe somebody in their close personal network didn’t give them a recommendation. If their close friend had shopped with you and received an over-the-top customer experience, when she finds out about her friend’s experience, the need for Google is significantly reduced. The need for doing as much research is also lessened.
We’re not going to stop there, people! Just that action alone is not quick enough to really make an impact on Miss Information’s stranglehold on the internet.
There’s one more thing you can do! What’s that pillow pupper? You did it again! You’re such a floof! Dude, this guy’s taking all my lines. Seriously? Yeah, I did stay up past my bedtime last night. That doesn’t mean you can take all the fun lines!
Another thing you can do today is give your employees an over-the-top experience! When your team is engaged in your business and inspired by your vision and believes in why you do what you do, there are few things in today’s world that are going to stop you from Miss Information’s disruptive antics.
An over-the-top employee experience means they’re going to come in fired up and ready to do their best! Your team is capable of circumventing the flawed system! Encourage them to reach out to local apartment complexes in the area to introduce themselves and make relationships! Those apartment residents aren’t googling and looking for solutions when they’re getting it from a trusted source like their leasing agent.
If you haven’t caught on yet, the way to defeat Miss Information is to be so good at what you do in your market that word-of-mouth beats the consumer to the punch. Or your store’s reviews are so incredible, convincing, and numerous that it gets noticed no matter how much money the Miss Information team spends.
And just think about how much of that money is spent and then misspent. I’d be more worried if those corporations, those large box stores, spent as much on their employee’s happiness as they do to purchase the first click result on Google.
Most of my followers and listeners are local independent retailers. If you are a larger chain, I’m sorry if I offended you. But facts are facts. If you want to change the world, start with your team. Tell your story! Show your impact on your local community and how you make an over-the-top employee and customer experience.
If you don’t know exactly how to do this or you’re looking for ways to improve, here’s one thing you can do right now. Get the book “Come Back to Bed” and read it. It’s not too terribly long and the investment of time now will more than make up for it. Sounds like you need a creative solution to solve this problem. Well this is it!
In the end, each villain has a weakness. Learning the game and figuring out what’s next is half the battle. Design an exceptional experience for your customers and your employees and you have won.
Don’t make it a goal to get 200 Google reviews. Instead, make it a goal to have the type of customer and employee experience of a store that has 200 reviews. See how that works? Because you’re not only going to get 200 reviews, you’re going to go way beyond 200.
Miss Information will be pulling out her hair and worried about making ends meet next quarter because she’s not getting as much return on her pay-per-click. In fact that’s going to drive her costs higher because she’s more desperate to steal your customers and spread misinformation.
Get a good night’s rest tonight. You’re going to need it! We have a lot to do tomorrow!
