Primary web site:
Sabahradioshows.com

Situation: Joe has been selling “How to Get on Radio Talk Shows Across America without leaving your Home or Office” for decades. This is a package consisting of a book, a database of nearly 1,000 radio shows and contact information, and an audio CD. Up until a year ago, he had sold about 2,000 at $199 apiece; a year ago, he dropped the price in half. He sales have been driven by referral from the live workshops he gives, mainly on how to speak professionally. Customers have not been discovering the site on the web and buying.

Joe’s goals:

1. Identify keywords and wording to improve visibility, targeted clients, and conversion to sales.
2. Improve and add to the content of the web site to attract and retain visitors.
3. Establish optimal pricing for the product.

Recommendations:

1. Becky recommended posting a brief article on wikihow.com . I reviewed wikihow for restrictions on posting links to your site. In a nutshell, you can include a link if you are legitimately citing a source, but the link will have a “nofollow” tag. Your article will still get visibility and could drive traffic to your site. (For more on this see Keys to Visibility.)

2. Major area needing improvement is the wording “above the fold” (i.e., the visible part of the page when you first go to the site). The fact that it is about getting free radio publicity is buried in small text. The visitor’s first impression is that the site is about how authors can sell their books.

3. Doug pointed out that the main page only has one main header (H1 tag) and no subheader (H2) tags., thereby reducing apparent importance in Google’s view.

4. There should be a blog on the site and the blog should be promoted to Joe’s email list. He has an email list of about 9,000 subscribers.

5. One of Joe’s main competitors offers a free giveaway – a report on the top 10 radio shows. Joe pointed out that these are worthless anyway – the top 10 do not do interviews. The idea is still valid, though; it could be a report on the 10 most popular topics, or success stories.

6. Joe has many recordings of his past interviews. These could be turned into podcasts or offered as products or freebies for subscribing.

 

7. Increase the price to about $249.  Dropping the price did not increase sales volume, and the product was already priced well below the competition.  In addition, the inclusion of the database easily makes it worth the higher price.

8. The database of nearly 1000 radio shows and contacts is updated yearly. This could be turned into a subscription service with an auto-renewal. Consensus was that if the renewal was priced modestly, perhaps $50 a year, many would not cancel; hence this could become a source of ongoing revenue. Additional near-term revenue could be brought in by offering a 5-year subscription discount, perhaps $150. Some felt subscriptions would increase if offered both on CD and online.

9. Joe has written over 500 articles, many of them evergreen. He could run publicity campaigns by publishing these articles online, in ezines and on article directory sites.

10. Joe’s primary revenue comes from his live workshops on “How to Speak for Fun and Profit.” He does not offer it as a product. We suggested videoing it and sell it on DVD. Portions could also be posted on U-Tube.

11. Joe could get tremendous visibility by setting up a presence on Facebook, Myspace, and U-Tube

Priority Action Items:

1. Reword the main page to put keywords in headers above the fold and testimonials at the top of the page.

2. Post an article on Wikihow.

3. Take the most profitable product, “How to Speak for Fun and Profit”, video it, and sell it to workshop attendees at a discount, plus offer it online. This can be done with minor effort. Joe’s other site, joesabah.com can be rewritten to focus on this workshop; it currently refers to many products and lacks focus.