“If you build it, they will come.”

This advice works when it comes to fictional baseball fields for ghosts.

Maybe also for birdhouse and bee hives.

It does NOT work for events, products, or services you’d like to sell to humans.

People need to know about your offer.

And they need to know about it a bunch of times, in a bunch of different ways.

According to a study by Google called the “Zero Moment of Truth,” it takes about 7 hours, 11 interactions, and 4 separate locations of connection for a person to make a big decision to trust you.

I’ll let Daniel Priestly explain. (This is roughly an excerpt from his awesome book, Oversubscribed. I’ve taken liberties to leave chunks out and present things in a different order. Go read the book to see the full picture.)

““Your goal is to clock up 7 hours with as many people as possible using your tools of entertainment and education.

You want to send thoughtful emails that have relevant information, you want videos people can watch, podcasts people can listen to, events people can attend and anything else that makes the 7-11-4 journey easy.

The true test of whether your business is [ready to scale] is the ability for someone to [freely] binge on your online content for the full 7 hours, 11 interactions, and 4 locations.

It sounds exhausting but I urge you to try out the 7-11-4 rule in your own business and see if life gets easier.”

If you’re just getting started, don’t let these numbers scare you.

It’s not like you have to get there all at once.

But do let them give you a sense of scale.

One Facebook post about your new course? Not gonna cut it.

Expect to need to meet people over time, in many ways, before they know, like, and trust you enough to buy in.

Persistently yours,

Rachel

PS – A good way to buy yourself time for all these interactions is a sales funnel or product ladder. But that’s a topic for another day…

This post was originally sent as an email to the Magic Words of the Week newsletter list. Every week, I share reflections on a word, quote, or phrase I think will help you thrive in your life’s work.