Without website traffic it's same as building an expensive billboard and, instead of placing it alongside a busy highway, you hide it in your basement where nobody can see it.

Upon realizing they need traffic, most website owners run out and start blowing chunks of money and time trying to get "hits" to their sites, but they fail to realize that all "hits" are not created equal.

In their quest to get eyeballs to their websites, most online operators don't realize there's a big difference between driving "general" traffic to your website and driving "targeted" traffic. Just getting any traffic is same technique TV advertisers use. They flash ads on screen in front of people who can't afford or don't need advertised product. Since general advertising can't hit specific targets, they hit everyone and hope that someone in their target audience is actually watching at that moment. Spam, banner ads, "safe-lists" and similar traffic techniques fall into this "general" category. "Targeted" traffic is made up of people who are genuinely interested in what you have to say or sell online. These people either share same interests or have an immediate need or problem they are trying to solve.

Business owners should be more like doctors.

Forget selling and start asking your customers where they hurt. Broken leg? Ulcer? Empty wallet?

Don't sell, diagnose. And what are you as a doctor looking for? Well, of course: that ever-illusive, yet ever- profitable disease called Dropped Jaw Syndrome.

OK, it may not be in any medical book. But Dropped Jaw Syndrome, however rare, is known to anyone who’s ever tried to sell something. The customer walks into your store, listens to your pitch and falls into an awestruck trance. "I'll take three of them."

Joking aside, dropped jaw, or at least its symptoms, are fuel behind every sale. When a customer is persuaded to buy, their reaction isn’t logical. You’ve connected with part of their brain that decides if you and your product are believable, limbic system. Sure, you still need to persuade with facts, but logic is a distant second to their desire to buy, their reflexive dropping jaw.

Diagnosing Dropped Jaw

The key is finding dropped jaw, tracking symptoms back to their source. But it’s there. And it’s quite easy to find once you stop thinking about your product for a moment and focus on customer... I mean, patient.

Don’t believe me? Well, put on a white coat, hang a stethoscope around your neck and do some market tests of your own. But this is a test you have to do face to face. Forget demographic studies, sales plans and benchmark reports, and get in front of a customer.

Now, take his temperature, make your pitch. And follow it through customer’s reaction.

Did his jaw drop? Hmm. You must have done something wrong. Try again, but listen like a doctor searching for a heart murmur. Ask a question, offer information, and then hear subtleties of his response. And when you’re diagnosing a customer, instead of trying to sell your product, something changes.