Arghhh new to the game!

Moved this to beginner section - and here are my comments.

If you are salesman, shouldn't you tell site visitors what you are selling? No clue.

The page is huge - font too large - it's 'in your face' without telling what you do or what service you are trying to sell.

Add to that the title here (is that the way you talk to prospects when selling?) - you need to do some forum searches and some reading abut site building etc.

Ask specific questions and, for the most psrt, don't include a link in your posts or they may be viewed as 'promotional' and deleted.

Gotta figure on the SPACE between YOU & yr intended buyer.

Whatever advertizin' portal you summon to become that space is a kinda LENS.

Buyer looks in; you showcase.

Don't want nowan steppin' back or squintin' to see what you got.

You wanna WINDOW -- preferably without any glass in the f*cker, so buyers can jus' reach on through.

Yep I agreee I stuffed up there with that tinyurl however if you click on the link below it all makes sense and is readable (i feel a dick for posting this now)

Good on you for coming here for feedback buddy; shows you're doing the right thing early on.

The page looked blurry here; could be my Chromebook with not great res, but worth exploring.

Focus and learn 1-2 methods at a time . Yes you are new and have lots to learn but the good news is that we are all students. Neither if us know everything.

On another note , read the warrior forum rules about promitional links .

Everything looks a bit blurry and low quality to me. It's certainly missing quite a bit, but that all depends on your marketing strategy, too.

Benjamin Ehinger

Hey matesrates - Phil?
I'll be honest with you, hope you appreaciate a straight shooter.

I looked at your DD website, past your promo landing page (which is blurry and all that - needs work for a few other reasons as well)
Took me a while to work this out as a first time website visitor, so this means it's not clear right from the start.

It seems you're essentially selling a B2B discount card. But there are 4 of them. (confusing)
The benefits of your card service are only available to Business owners, right? not the general public.
That only becomes clear after a bit of reading...

Essentially DD is the middle man to get mates rates from business mates you don't know yet. A bit like a groupon for B2B. In NZ we have something called "grabone" which helps business owners promote their biz to the public with speial, time or stock size limited offers.

About the online thing:

All in all, let me commend you on the big effort it must have taken to put this site (and probably the whole card service and membership idea) together this far. I bet you've spent a bit of dough on the website design etc as well.

So now it's time to launch online, right? Get some business to sign up so you have deals to offer, yes?

Well, there are a few things I would consider before going flat tack online. Specially, your current landing page, which is the page you send people to if and when they click on some ad somewhere or on a link in an email perhaps. I suppose you're gonna have your "dealmakers" go round and do some cold calling or whatever other way you're marketing this.

On your current page design (after you hit the "will it work for my business" button, there are quite a number of distractions (geeky image stuff) and also it's unclear what's on offer. Since DD is a middleman type of offering, it would seem prudent to design landing pages that allow the page visitor to distinguish herself as a deal buyer or as a deal provider or both perhaps. I know you say DD is for "everyone" but I caution you about that type of thinking. It should be 100% clear what your target customer is. And all your pages should speak only to them.

And here is why:

Trying to please "everyone" can end up serving no-one. You're not Amazon (yet) Spreading yourself too thin in the beginning might just be a big ask on your resources.

On the internet you've got about 3-4 seconds before someone loses interest and clicks away. In those 3 seconds you gotta:
Capture their interest & make them take some action (click a button, watch a video, read a paragraph, subscribe to something, get a free gift etc ... etc...
If your landing page loses them before 3 seconds is over ... you've lost them for a long time if not forever.

One of the weak points on your website in general is that it's far too wordy inmy opinion. I had to skim through a few pages and click around until I got what this is all about. Mind you, I'm not even your target market, I just did it as a Warrior favour

Copywriting itself is already an art and copywriting for the web is a martial art

Visual first impressions... Please don't take this personal, ok?

I bet you have quite a bit of emotional investment in how this thing looks. And your web developer has done a fab job with all the graphics and the geeky bits and the gold effects. (reminds one a little about certain binary "investment" websites though, but that's just as an aside)

But if the site does not make you money it's useless in cyberspace. Dead duck. People don't have the TIME to go trough everything - there seems to be soooo much of it!

So the main challenge is to have things 100% clear without having to read a whole book. That's what good web copywriting will deliver you. Since it's the web and you're offering money saving benefits - it's gotta be punchy.

DD really in effect seems to be a simple proposal: example:
"Hey mate, You're a business director? You gotta get this CARD! With it, you gonna get mates rates only directors get. You know what I mean ... click here for more info!

Next question:
"What do you mean by that?" read: what kind of deals are you talking about? (WIIFM)

Then you list the deals ... or you ask them to download a pdf ... or ...

Then tell them what they have to do to get the deals... etc. like sign up as a card holding member etc...


My feeling is that there is heaps of local B2B potential in DD but being in the launch phase (you only seem to have 4 testimonials on there currently) it looks to me a bit overloaded for what it really is.



So you're new to the online world, Phil and that's fair enough. In my opinion what you need is someone to consult with you who is in fact an (online) marketer, understands advertising and copywriting and possibly has some off-line experience too.

I'm in NZ, been a signwriter for a number of years, copywriter, graphic designer like Biz cards, ads, brochures and other biz materials etc... I've studied the online marketing world for a number of years too.

Whaaat? Why haven't I got one of these DD cards yet???? Let me email Phil on the spot! Or better still - where is his phone number, I don't wanna miss out on these amazing deals! ... click.

You know it as well as I do that - in the end - it all boils down to this: customers getting what they want, when they want it, at the best price in their minds and for them to be blown off their feet by the value they're getting. Which makes them come back and buy again and again

My very best wishes for your enterprise!

Dimitri from New Zealand

... PS, feel free to PM me if you've got questions.
Cheers, D

Well let's go through some stuff so you can get situated, and have an idea of where you're at and where you need to go.

First, I say play to your strengths.

You know how to sell to people in person? Great. Do that! Use the internet as a means to bring you qualified leads. Then have them book a call with you! Free booking calendar apps abound and they easily integrate with your site.

Second, play a game that makes sense.

Most newbies are desperately trying to scratch out an existence selling sub-$10 items. You know how many of those things you have to sell to hit your money target??! Terrible.

You know how to sell. Play a game that rewards you for your time investment. Many, many products and services are available to sell with you as an affiliate: that means you get paid a commission when you sell.

When you bring highly qualified clients to a business, do they reward you better than someone who brings them poorly qualified customers who get buyers remorse? Yeah. You can earn a lot if you can sell effectively.

Third, you need to understand the internet. It is NOT "I put up a site and...GOLDMINE!!" A site is nothing by itself. It is a conversion tool.

You need two elements to make money:

Traffic

and

Conversion.

Just like in real life, you need prospects, and then you need to have a meeting with them to make a sale. Can't do one without the other and expect to make money.

You will find much of your real world sales experience transfers over well to IM.

You are using the internet here to automate the Traffic Generation & Qualification phases, saving you time because you won't have to personally do those things.

Trust yourself. If you see something and it looks to be stupid, it probably is. There are many people doing many ineffective things out there, and they repeat that same bad advice like parrots around and around to each other. That's how they start believing "it must be done this way."

Now where are you going to get your traffic from?

Organic = slow.

Paid = fast.

Traffic should go to your website. There, it should be qualified. And then qualified prospects should be given a chance to book a call with you.

I would not do anything for under a $500 commission to you.

Once you understand this process, you can work on replicating it completely online...and it'll be much easier because you understand it in real world terms. A sales letter, copywriting, works much the same as a live face to face sales conversation. You don't get the feedback, it's all one-way communication, but you can do the same things in copy that you do in live conversation.

So:

Traffic Source >> Lead Capture Page >> Qualification Content >> Opportunity to Book Call with You.

Pretty simple.

You want to capture that lead in an email system aka autoresponder. Why? Because you spent a lot of effort getting that person over to your virtual real estate...do you want them vanishing forever after one look? What a waste of resources...and many people do that every day, waste the leads.

To get people to do that, you'll need some kind of bait. It has to give them a solution to their problem. That's called "match of message to market." If your message is wrong, no one will opt in.

Then have some videos or some written content delivered by email series. This content both qualifies the lead "Do you have this problem?" "Do you value it enough to pay for a solution?" and educates the viewer around to your point of view about it. That second part is called differentiation. It creates value.

Nowadays autoresponders have wonderful tracking mechanisms where you can set tags depending on what a user does. If they watch a video, if they click a link ("Click here if this is important to you"). Imagine what qualification you can do with that power.

Then those who are indicated as qualified...those are the people who get to book a call with you. They admit they have the serious problem that you fix; they are aware it costs an investment, and around what figure; and they want to solve that problem, not just pick your brain or get free stuff.

But you need a decent sample size, 100 visitors at least, to determine how things are going. People change things after 10 visitors don't do what they want, and they screw the experiment up.

Which reminds me:

Fourth, treat this like an experiment. A game. Remove your emotions as much as possible from the outcome. Care, but not that much. Treat it like a Facebook timewaster game. Sure, you want to do well...but the numbers are just numbers on a screen. IDK if you remember back in '08 when Mafia Wars came out on Facebook (wow that takes me back...to my early 30s)...if you lost a fight in Mafia Wars, did you really care that much? No. But you could, over time, amass big numbers and good results in the game.

If you live and die by what you think you see going on in IM, what every individual visitor does or doesn't do on your site, you'll exhaust yourself and quit. You're already at a certain level of frustration. This is an experiment. Change one variable at a time, and give things a chance to germinate.

Now as to your specific site: you have a hurdle to overcome. First, you have to get the right people visiting. Second, the credibility hurdle must be dealt with. These business owners (and I imagine some salespeople) have been ticking along without your assistance for all this time. Also, they don't know you. You have to get them past those barriers, and a live call could be a good way to do that.

I would find a better font, that's a bit bigger and doesn't irritate... yes it irritated me lol

Would it surprise you to know, that over 68% of business owners generally ask around for a recommendation or get referred before they buy?


I love Rockingham

good luck

cheers

Welcome to the world wide web! First of all, if you are a skilled sales person, you have a gift most marketers would pay for. Don't take that for granted. When you combine the web and and your sales skills together you can really do very, very well. Focus and good luck my friend!