Do you have a favorite business? A place you love going to and look forward to visiting? One you feel great about supporting? I do. It's an ancient tire shop at the edge of town.

I would never have guessed it. As someone who knows absolutely nothing about cars and drives an aging Honda Civic (the mechanized equivalent of low-fat vanilla), I'm not exactly drawn to automobile businesses. I'm not looking to tweak my engine or customize my ride-height, in fact, as long as the car gets me from one coffee shop to the next, I couldn't care less about it.

 

But, I love that tire shop. Why? Because they make me feel like a champ every time I walk through the door.

Whenever I come in to change out my snow-tires for the season, or to patch up a puncture, I'm always greeted with a smiling face and excellent service. The waiting room is spotless, like some kind of a clean-room laboratory instead of a garage. As far as creature comforts go, the coffee is always fresh and there is a surprisingly recent collection of books and magazines to leaf through, but it's not like I'm ever waiting long. They always get the job done in a shockingly short amount of time. The bill is usually smaller than I assume it will be too.

There's no trick to it, no fugazi or marketing ploy. They deliver a great value and I love them for it. It's not that complicated.

In the online marketing world, it's so easy to mistake the forest for the trees. To become fixated on things like creating the perfect black hole of a customer funnel - one that will catch visitors, suck them into your sales tunnel, and by some magical alchemy, turn those eyeballs into dollars. Or you can get lost cooking up ways to pester and badger your visitors into signing up for your mailing list or your membership offer, putting every visitor through the grinder.

Now, there is nothing wrong with optimizing your site for success. You want to make an attractive website that turns visitors into customers. You want people to subscribe to your newsletter and other resources so you can reach them more easily. These are goals you should be working towards - but, you have to build to them off a strong foundation. You have to offer your visitors value before all else.

What does that mean? It means be generous. Deliver more than what is expected. Offer resources and content for free (guides, blogs, advice), and do it with your own unique and enthusiastic voice – not with the electronic whirr and hiss of a marketing robot bent on world domination.

Basically, don't make your website a place you trick people into visiting, make it a place they want to visit. Make it the online equivalent of the old tire shop on the edge of town that people get excited to visit.

 

Once you offer people value, once you make them fall in love with you, you don't need to rely on tricks. Eyeballs will convert to money because they trust you. People will sign-up to your newsletter even if the link is small and off to the side because they'll want to hear what you have to say.

Focus on value, and everything else will fall into place.