We're going to go over the five essential elements over the next series of videos that make up a really comprehensive marketing say package, if you will, or overall strategy for your business today, we're going to go over the thumb. The thumbs are going to represent our website pages and the five fingers of death. So in the previous video, if you have not watched, and we can put a link to that here, that video is an exploded walkthrough of a high-level campaign has all these five elements today, we're going to deep dive into an ask some of the hard questions about your website and if it's actually working for you. All right. So here we are guys in front of the desktop on a screen share, and we're going to go over the thumb of our five fingers of death, which is our website pages. 

The thumb represents our website pages because it is our strongest finger and you could hang from it. You could do dead lifts with it. Your thumbs are extremely powerful. Your webpages need to be a rock solid, and they are the core. Everything kind of rotates around that element. If that element is weak, you could buy tons of traffic and it's going to be a waste of money. If that element is weak, you can do great emails and they hit those pages. And of course, you know, that effort is going to be wasted. So those, those landing pages, those website pages have got to be strong and done well. So you need, you know, we're going to go through kind of, this is a very rudimentary layout, but it's got some basic ingredients. So the first thing is you've got a homepage or a sales page where you typically land traffic. 

I've done some other videos about how it's tricky to get a homepage, to do both things. And you really need to ask yourself the hard question, you know, do you want this homepage to be, you know, kind of brochure with general information, or do you want the homepage to punch hard and be a sales page? I've over the last probably 12 to 18 months. I think we've probably done more home pages now that are punching hard like sales pages. So they're taking on that long scroller format. They've got a lot of hot engage, engagement up top, and they've got really clear calls to action about what to do next for the user. So they're not home pages that you remember from yesteryear that are kind of this nice sort of ambiguous, you know, area where somebody lands and they've got 40 choices, they've got seven, you know, menu items with dropdowns up top stuff in the left-hand or right-hand column. 

They could click on, scroll down. There's more stuff to click on. So that that's kind of the old homepage. And that's the one that I caution you. If you're living that reality right now, that's not a sales page that is, you know, kind of a, a forest that your buyer can get lost in. And we don't want to do that many of my videos and the way that we think here. And I, and I employ you to take on this mindset is you got to guide your buyer. Don't drop them off in the middle of the forest and expect them to find their way, don't land them on a page that has, you know, 22 choices on it and expect them to understand where to go, what to do to figure it all out, to get engaged with your product or service. I want you to design your page, trim down your menus, make it clear about the next action they need to take. 

So in this example, we're onboarding clients, uh, for medical practice or patients, if you will. And we want to land them on a page that, and this is a question you need to ask. So if you're taking notes, you got to ask yourself is the first thing that they see on the page, show them that they're in the right place to solve their problem. That's the question that you need to test your page again with the page loads, does it immediately let them know they're in the right place for their problem? If you solve that, then we can kind of move to the next thing, the next thing. And I, I like to do these, I, I really think that for a local business, having some sort of welcome video is always been great, but it's even better now after we've all learned to shop and do more from home or more from our devices in order to, you know, go through the social distancing thing. 

So even more now than ever, you need to work on the virtualized version of what somebody would experience had. They come to meet you face and face. So how do you replicate that in a good, you know, short sort of punchy one to three minute video that tells them about how your product or services are going to solve their problem. And they are in the right place and they do need to learn a little bit more and you know, everything is great so far. So keep going. Right? So that video, I think is as much as we thought it was important. Two, three years ago, it's extra important now is you have a lot more virtualized shopping and not even virtual shopping so much, as we could say, now, virtualized visiting or in the, you know, sort of brick and mortar world that was called window shopping. 

So now you have digital window shopping and the best way to engage a window shopper is to show them a great window, right? That makes them want to come to the store. I mean, this is old school retail sales tactics. Like if you looked at Macy's, which was the best example of, you know, cool windows they would do for the holidays and stuff and, and any big department store that used to have street side, window shopping, you know, and they would do these displays and windows and they still do those, you know, you'll see them at gap. Does them, if you go to any of these like outdoor malls and stuff, I always have a nice window thing going on. Coach stores, Marc Jacobs, IC Nike's doing, you know, they got the mannequin and everything, but so you're thinking when you're thinking about this video, it's almost the digital version of window shopping now that people might not necessarily be coming to your store in the volume that they had before. 

And if you're a medical practice, you know, there was no window shopping before then, but now people around the internet kind of checking stuff out and they are shopping you. So if you're a services provider and you're not in the product game, it doesn't mean that you are immune to needing to provide that initial window shopping opportunity. And that's done very well with video. So my recommendations is just try to figure out how your first interaction with a new prospect goes, what needs to be in that video and, you know, keep it short, keep it punchy. And the point of that video is to prove that they're in the right place and to prove that you're a viable candidate to solving their problem, whether they need to buy a thing or they need a service, they need to, that video needs to raise their confidence that they can need to keep going. 

Right. So the other way to express that if you want to do another metaphor here, if you will, or I guess it would be an analogy it's analogous to the opening paragraph of a story. It needs to engage the reader to the point that they want to read more. They want to learn more. So there sorta needs to be a cliffhanger or that sense that they need to continue to scroll or whatever the call to action is, you know, read more, learn more, go here, sign up, get enrolled, you know, get our free information packet, download this analysis tool, you know, go to our checker and make sure, you know, that you're a candidate for this. You know, that would be like solar services, mortgages, you know, any of those things, they have cool tools that kind of start to filter and pre-screen whether everybody's a good fit. 

So whatever the next step is, the video is just like the first paragraph of a story and that it needs to take them to the next step, the folks that are in the right spot. All right. And then we get into FAQ's a lot of times people have more questions and again, you're not there to answer them. So you kind of got a cover, you know, a little bit of a wider bandwidth this this way, and make sure that if they have questions that are easily answered and all of those Effie FAQ's and each, you know, if you do a video for that, or you have questions, they all need to continue to circle them back into that funnel line and get them to the next step, which is hopefully, you know, setting an appointment, buying, taking them to a shopping cart page, whatever. 

But I like that. If you're an e-com person you may welcome and then shop, you might not need FAQ's. Although a lot of people have questions like, will I pay for shipping? How long will it take to get here? You know, w do you custom make it, you know, yada yada yada. And because people are again, shopping, virtually try to front run your most common top 10 or top five questions and make sure that those are there and easy to, uh, you know, watch or read and get answers for. And again, raise the confidence of them so that you're dealing with objections. Like, oh, it will arrive on time. Or this is going to work out. My, my issues with this are answered right here. So again, those are objections overcoming objections and getting them to move along. And then how do they get started? 

Right. So this is kind of, I mean, if you go back to our basics, it's like, yeah, you're in the right spot. Don't worry. Here's what you do to get started. I mean, those are the, those are the simplified versions of this. You're in the right spot. Here's all the stuff we can do for you and the benefits and why this is a good match. Here's, you know, if you're having some issues, these are our answers to that. And here's how to get started and get the thing going. Right. And that needs to be clear. So if your website is not clear about how people can get started with buying from you, from, with shopping at your place, or with getting your service or, or how to pick a product, if it's not clear, you need to circle back and do that work, which is what this video is about. 

These are core elements you cannot fail in before you get wound up and all this other BS, like spending money on traffic and PPC, and getting all excited about social media and taking a million pictures for Instagram. Like we got to do that. We got to do that. All this stuff doesn't mean none doesn't mean anything. If this stuff is weak, right? You can drive people in here and this is a mess and confusing. They don't really know if it's the right place. There's not a lot of, you know, confidence and questions and resources for them. So they feel good about working with you and your company or buying your product. And then they don't even know how to necessarily get started or what, what the deal is with that. You know, if you don't handle this stuff, all these other things that are on this layout, you know, that a lot of people just get jacked up on. 

Cause they think that's where the priority just falls on its face. And then you start blaming these things like, oh, Facebook ads suck. And Instagram ads are really hard and nobody responds to those. And those were expensive and I'm sick of social posting, but really the failures here, you know, you might just be not doing a good job with these pages. So I always tell everybody this stuff's gotta be thumb strong and the five fingers of death. Once it gets started, you're going to take them through. And of course you on here, we watch video, we watch video, we're moving people on, but you got to make sure again, that you got some of the technology backbones on these pages, you want to be hitting pixeling your audience. So you're capturing a hundred percent of your visitors and you're able to send them into retargeting. And we'll do that on another one of our videos about how to set that up and what that structure should look like. And, uh, you know, and so, you know, you got to have some safety nets in here, but these are the gore things. All right. So that's it for the thumb on the five fingers of death. We'll see you on the next one where we're going to continue to teach you how to strangle competition.