As a kid, I was a huge Green Bay Packers fan. Bart Starr was my hero—he of the single bar face mask. I remember the first couple of Super Bowls. Even more so, I remember Vince Lombardi. He’d stalk up and down the sideline and demand the best from his players. “Winning isn’t everything. It’s the only thing,” he’d say.

It’s another Lombardi quote that serves as the starting point for today’s discussion—one that will probably surprise you as much as it did me:

“It takes months to find a customer … seconds to lose one.”

We’ve been working through this whole concept of digital marketing for a while now, with the ultimate goal of figuring out how to turn traffic (visitors, prospects, etc.) into customers (appointments) using a restaurant analogy.

Last time we determined that an ugly restaurant can turn a potential customer off quickly, with some of that “ugliness” coming from being out of date and in need of a facelift.

Today we want to begin a conversation about the facelift itself.

First, a question: Have you ever been to a restaurant where the mood and ambiance were perfect, the decor pleasing to the eye, and the food terrible? I think we could all conjure up stories about “the time.”

The thing is, in those seconds after the first few bites, no matter how much you liked the way the restaurant looked and was set up, you pretty much made a decision never to return.

You see the restaurant owner spent tons of time getting you into the restaurant and working on that important first visual impression, but not enough time on what the customer came for.

As you can imagine, I get bombarded with offers from digital marketing companies about how they can help. If I choose to check them out, the first thing that I do is go to their website (sort of the “checking the barber’s own haircut” idea).

Visually, most of the sites I visit are exceptional, but unfortunately most lack any good “food.”

I can’t find any indication that Vince Lombardi ever owned or operated a restaurant, but he sure knew the secret to losing a customer fast.

What kind of “food” are your homeowner visitors/prospects looking for? We’ll work through that during our next visit.