Shark Tank Critique: Traffic Storm
Today’s critique is Dennis G’s Traffic Storm sales page. As usual, I’m not doing an “overall” critique. Instead, we’re just going to focus in on one tiny part. And today’s lesson is this: How to NOT create an instant “disconnect” for your readers.
Here’s the snippet I want you to look at:
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“SEO experts won’t like me saying this one bit, but…
A lot of people, especially those in the SEO industry, make search engine optimization out to be some big mystery. I was fooled by their “aura of expertise” for a while, but I “solved the mystery” myself because I couldn’t afford the services they were trying to sell.
And you know what? Search engine optimization and link popularity really isn’t that difficult! Don’t get me wrong—figuring it out took work, but putting the techniques and strategies to use is simple—once you know what they are.”
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Click, click, click, click, click – there’s the symphony of mouse clicks as people hit their back button. If it doesn’t happen at this point, it will soon… because the two paragraphs above created a nearly instant disconnect.
Now, we all know what Dennis is trying to do. He’s trying to set his product apart from the SEO experts who sell their services at much higher prices. But he’s not as clear as he can be in this distinction. And that ends up creating a big problem here…
In the first paragraph, he talks about how these SEO experts tried to make SEO a big mystery and how he was fooled by their “aura of expertise.”
Now look at the second paragraph – Dennis positions himself as the expert. As the one with the answers. The one with the secrets.
And if the prospect keeps reading this sales page, they’ll see even more examples of Dennis explaining how his book will eliminate the mystery of SEO.
Let me give you a few quotes from the Traffic Storm sales page:
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“Understanding the why behind the how erases the mystery of search engine optimization.”
“Get it right and you’ll have an edge over nearly all of your competition.”
“If you’re realistic, you’ll admit you can’t compete effectively against such overwhelming odds . . . unless you have AN EDGE that most of those other site owners don’t have!”
“I reveal my secret strategy for finding out what the search engines are going to be up to in the future.”
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That’s all fine and dandy… except previously Dennis tried to set himself apart from folks who tried to create “mystery” around SEO in order to charge money for their services. And now Dennis is doing the same thing – he’s creating mystery around SEO in order to sell a product.
Do you think a few prospects will notice this? I do. And I think it will create an instant disconnect.
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You see, you can’t “train” or convince your prospects to dislike something… and then try to spoon feed them the exact same thing later and hope they’ll like it.
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So what can Dennis do to fix this problem? If he’s going to create an “us versus them” split, he needs to make the distinction more clear. He needs to clearly separate himself from the “thems,” or risk losing prospects when they realize he’s a “them.”
In this case, it might be easier to just cut out the part about how those who provide SEO services try to make SEO “mysterious.”
Instead, Dennis can just tell prospects why they don’t need to hire someone to do the SEO for them. He can tell prospects that it’s cheaper if they do it themselves. And he can tell them that it’s not hard, so they WILL get results.
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Now having said that, here’s another question…
Who ARE the prospects for this product?
You see, right now the Traffic Storm sales letter has a heavy slant towards those who might be considering hiring someone to do their SEO. Not only does Dennis mention SEO services in the paragraph I quoted at the top of this critique, he also compares the price of his product (currently $147) to the cost of hiring someone to do the work for you.
That might work if Dennis is indeed targeting people who want to learn how to do it themselves rather than hire an expert. For example, maybe a “mom and pop” offline business owner wants to learn a little SEO. Or maybe someone owns an online dog clothing store… and he’s trying to get higher rankings.
But if that’s the case, then the sales letter doesn’t really fit those folks.
You see, the sales letter look like it’s targeted at people who already know a bit about online marketing. That’s because the sales letter talks about things like “keyword research” and “off page optimization.”
Trust me, if you throw those words in front of someone who doesn’t know a thing about SEO, he’s going to just look at you and say “huh? what? huh?” So a sales letter like this might be a touch over his head.
So who WOULD understand this sales letter, easily?
Someone who:
- Is an Internet marketer.
- Studies and regularly applies what they learn about online marketing.
- Has studied enough have an understanding of terms like “link popularity” and “social bookmarking.”
Who is this person? This person is a do-it-yourselfer. This person writes their own copy, does their own SEO, creates their own PPC campaigns, etc. This person has an idea of how to do this stuff — which is why they understand terms like “link popularity — but he or she wants to know MORE.
Now let’s connect the dots so you can see where I’m heading with this…
Because of the “jargon” on the page, currently the sales page only makes sense to do-it-yourselfers who have an overall understanding of online marketing and, specifically, SEO. It only “speaks” to those folks.
However, the sales page is also written to appeal to those who don’t know a damn thing about SEO – they think it’s a mystery – which is why they’d rather hire someone to do it for them.
Whoops. Those are two different groups.
It’s kind of like trying to write a sales page for a political book so that the page appeals to both Republicans and Democrats. It’s doable but difficult.
Instead, it’s MUCH easier to choose one target market, learn everything you can about the prospects… and then (re)write your letter with one perfect prospect in mind.
OK?
