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Divorce Shopping on the Internet
It was a cold winter evening. A middle-aged man
could be seen crawling on all fours under a lamppost. After about 30 minutes, a
second man, who had been curiously watching from a distance, approached the
first man and asked him if he needed any help. The middle-aged man looked up at
his inquirer and told him that he had dropped his wallet and had been looking
for it for quite some time. The second man asked the crouching man when he had
first noticed his wallet missing. The middle-aged man pointed down the block and
said, “I dropped it when I was getting out of a cab over there.” “Then why are
you looking for it over here?” asked the second man. “Because there is no light
down there,” he answered.
Assume you are contemplating divorce. Where would
you turn to for help? For many people, it is a lawyer, financial adviser or
therapist with whom you have had a previous positive experience. For others, it
is a family member or trusted friend. Nowadays, many people also go on the
internet.
When people turn to the internet, they are
usually looking for two things, divorce information and divorce professionals.
If they use the internet, they probably first turn to a “divorce superstore”
like Divorce Interactive, where they are more likely to find the information
they are seeking. Unless they have names of specific divorce professionals, it
is unlikely they will begin their research by looking at the web sites of
individual firms. If they take this approach, they will quickly find these sites
primarily have information about the firm itself. They quickly learn that this
is a slow, tedious and impersonal process.
As a divorce professional, you are interested in
getting to know the people who are seeking information, getting them to develop
trust in you as a resource and making them aware of the benefits of hiring you
to work for them. What happens when they enter the Divorce Interactive
“superstore?” Although the store is filled with everything about divorce you
could possibly imagine, you, a professional in their hometown, are at the door
to greet them. They immediately see an article by you, linked to a web page
containing detailed information about you and information about how they can
contact you. You are under the “lamppost,” not a sea of information. You are the
one who can best help them find what they need. What if the information were
under the “lamppost” instead of you? Where would you be? Probably hidden in some
office in the back? Would people be easily able to find you? Your guess is as
good as ours. Don’t you just hate those stores that are so big, have so little
help and are designed in such a way you are forced to search the entire store to
find the things you need?
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