Website Wisdom to Help You Sell With Hank Eder

Hank Eder, who runs a full service digital agency. And today we're going to be talking about digital marketing and websites and who knows what else. And I can't wait to get into this conversation.

[00:00:15] Welcome to Sales Made Easy, a podcast for business and personal growth. Join Harry Spaight, as he hosts sales experts and business owners who share their journeys of personal growth and business success now, here's your host, Harry.

[00:00:32] Harry: Hank Eder, welcome to the Sales Made Easy podcast, sir. What is the

[00:00:37] Hank Eder: good Thank you. Thank you so much, Harry.

[00:00:39] Hank Eder: It's a pleasure to be here with you today, and I like the notion of sales made easy because I think at some point during what we're going to discuss today, we'll talk about how your websites, for example, can be more than just your digital calling card and can actually start drawing some people towards you.

[00:00:58] Hank Eder: Nice. Well,

[00:00:59] Harry: that [00:01:00] is a great place to start. I think probably anyone who has a business probably has a website and they might want to review it periodically. So what are some of the things they should be looking for, Hank?

[00:01:13] Hank Eder: Well, one of the first things that they should be looking for is that way, way up in the beginning of their website.

[00:01:19] Hank Eder: Is it, Reaching out to who their customer is and is it presenting the customer's problem or the main pain point in a solution driven way and in a way that makes customer feel like they would be the hero if they took this approach. You know, so many people so many sites are me, me, me, you know, I help.

[00:01:41] Hank Eder: You've seen that before. I help businesses do blah, blah, blah. People aren't looking for that. They're not looking for features. They're looking for benefits. What's the benefit to your customer if you get their main, your target audience pain point out there in the beginning with a solution driven approach, you're going to [00:02:00] start really getting much more attention paid to website.

[00:02:03] Hank Eder: You've got to, you've got to grab them in the first five seconds when they get on your site. And if you don't, they're off somewhere else. You know, attention spans are very fickle these days.

[00:02:14] Harry: Yeah, I mean, that's amazing. But I heard or read something one time over the past couple of years where you have this really short window when people stumble across your site and if they can't figure out what you do and just really, a couple of winks of your eye they're going to be going elsewhere.

[00:02:35] Harry: So is that what you, is that one of the things that you see is kind of a pretty big problem for people? Yeah.

[00:02:41] Hank Eder: Yes, it is. And not only, getting across what you do very quickly, but this is even more important for the customer. What's in it for me? They need to see that very quickly. What, how will I magically transform if I get involved in this?

[00:02:58] Hank Eder: If you can get that across to them in [00:03:00] the first, you know, 10 seconds of them being on your website, you have a much better chance that they're going to start clicking around and looking for the things that you offer. Yeah,

[00:03:10] Harry: so it's not so maybe years ago. I'm just thinking about older websites, especially in the corporate.

[00:03:19] Harry: Business to business. There is a lot of selling of product where the product or the service was the hero, so to speak. Was that really a thing back then? Was that the way it was supposed to be? Because I still see a lot of that today where people are advertising or promoting what they sell versus how it impacts

[00:03:40] Hank Eder: people.

[00:03:41] Hank Eder: Right. That is definitely more old school. And I think in the earlier days of internet marketing, I mean, some of this stuff goes back to before there was even the internet and people were doing infomercials, you know, and they put that out there and they had all kinds of innovative ways of doing that.

[00:03:57] Hank Eder: Some of them would dress in ridiculous costumes and [00:04:00] jump up and down like crazy people to get your attention. But the bottom line was the ones that succeeded were the ones that really showed a problem. and a solution. And it's the same thing now with websites. I mean, you can't take that old approach.

[00:04:13] Hank Eder: There are sites that specifically are online e commerce shopping sites, and they should be, because, you know, maybe you're a vitamin company, and you know, you have 25 different products you want to get out to the public, but you wouldn't begin with a bang by putting those products in everybody's face you would begin up the top of your website presenting some kind of a health issue that people want to get through and then they'll be compelled to want to see what it is that these products do what are the benefits benefits benefits that's what we're always looking

[00:04:48] Harry: for yes i remember one of the books i've read I'm a big fan of the only sales book you'll ever need by Anthony and Reno.

[00:04:57] Harry: And then he talks about, you are [00:05:00] not selling your product. You're not selling your service. You're selling the outcome. So after I read that, it was like, Oh, you know, people are not buying sales coaching. They're not buying websites, right? They're buying. The outcome, which is additional business, right? They want more business.

[00:05:18] Harry: They don't want to just to have a website for the sake of having a website. They want that website to do something, which may be generate leads or generate business for them. And so a lot of websites are like really beautiful. You know, when someone says that about my websites, it's all, it's a really nice website.

[00:05:36] Harry: And I've heard people say this over the years and I kind of get a little red flag that goes up. Is that it's got to be more than just really nice. It's got to be more than just nice looking, right?

[00:05:47] Hank Eder: That's right. I'm still amazed. At people, you know, come to me with with issues with their websites, or they want a new website, and I'm still amazed at how many people they [00:06:00] spend so much money on a website that's all bells and whistles, whistles all flash, you know, substance. And it's like we said a moment ago, you know, not only do you not know what they do.

[00:06:11] Hank Eder: But you don't know what the transformation is like business coaches. You mentioned a minute ago. They're not selling business coaching. They're selling transformation, whether it's sales transformation or personal transformation, or, you know, some kind of customer relationship transformation. They're selling transformation.

[00:06:31] Hank Eder: They're selling the outcome. So, yeah, you're definitely right on that. Yeah. So

[00:06:35] Harry: what, what goes into, what are some of the things that go into having a good website? Do you need like a ton of pages or maybe someone that's starting out? What should they be thinking about?

[00:06:49] Hank Eder: Well, I think again, as I mentioned earlier, the most important thing to get across right up front is what is the transformation that you're offering, you know, and it should be related to your [00:07:00] target audience's pain point.

[00:07:01] Hank Eder: Then you might have a little bit of background information about, you know, Who you are and what you've done, or how you, not how you do it, but, but the type of transformation that you're really offering, you know, at first you've got your, your appeal, then you've got to explain it somewhat, then there can be an about section, you really, if you're just starting out.

[00:07:22] Hank Eder: You really don't need about more than about four or five pages, depending on what it is that you're looking to do, and you don't need super hard. So you just need to reach these customers pain point, but you'd need your home page with the pain points with the transformation with a call to action right up there at the top.

[00:07:42] Hank Eder: Your call to action has to be there. Then some on the, on the homepage, some information about the transformation, you know, a little bit more details. You'll need an about page so you can talk a little bit about your background, but don't get too heavy into that. [00:08:00] People don't want to know about all your fancy degrees and, you know, all the companies you've worked for.

[00:08:05] Hank Eder: They just, again, want to know what you'll do for them. But you do skirt, you don't skirt it, you do touch on it a little bit. You know, I have a background in, in, I'm giving you my, my scenario here. I have a background in journalism, public relations, and communications. I have a degree in journalism. I've been a news reporter and editor.

[00:08:24] Hank Eder: I've worked for PR firms, etc., etc. But people don't want to know that as much as they want to know, what are you going to do for me? But you have to get a little bit of this out so that they know that you've got the expertise. But then another thing that comes, Is your social cred and testimonials look really good on a website.

[00:08:43] Hank Eder: You've got some happy customers. Ask them for testimonials. Get the testimonials with their name, their company, even their picture, if possible, so that people know that this is real. And of course, you need a contact page. And if you have anything at all that you're [00:09:00] selling, you need some kind of a shop page.

[00:09:04] Hank Eder: You know, maybe you only have one product, but if you have one product, you could probably get it somewhere else on your site rather than a dedicated shop page. But at the same time, if you intend to to grow it. You'll need a shop page, and some people like to have a blog page, and I recommend strongly that people have a blog page.

[00:09:26] Hank Eder: And if you're building in WordPress, it's really easy to set up a blog page. You just set up the shell of the blog page, designate it as the posts page, and every time you post, a new post will go there. The one thing There's one main advantage to having a blog, and that is that one of the things that Google really likes, and the algorithms, I'm going to issue a caveat here, if anybody ever tells you, They totally, they know, they understand, they have a full grasp on the Google algorithms.

[00:09:58] Hank Eder: Just turn around and [00:10:00] run screaming into the night because they're lying to you. But one thing that they do really like, and everybody knows this one, is they like new content. New content keeps your website fresh. And the best way to have new content is to have a blog page and regularly put in a blog. If you can blog even once a week.

[00:10:21] Hank Eder: That's a good thing. If not, try to blog twice a month, you know, it tells the algorithms that this is an active website. It's not just sitting there dormant.

[00:10:30] Harry: Wow. That's really good. So trying to figure out how Google rates your website and You know, there's a lot probably like trying to figure out how LinkedIn works with your views and everything else, right?

[00:10:46] Harry: Like, so yeah, they, they're keeping these things a mystery from us. So I wonder why that is.

[00:10:53] Hank Eder: I guess everybody would do it. Yeah.

[00:10:55] Harry: So Hank, when it comes to. Like working with [00:11:00] you and someone says, I've already got a website and you're having a conversation with them.

[00:11:06] Harry: Are there things that you see, I guess where I'm coming from is how do you bring up that their website isn't really any good or that they've got issues? How do you bring that up tactfully?

[00:11:21] Hank Eder: Well, one of the things, you know, I, I. I research the people that are going to have a meeting with me, unless they come on real suddenly, you know, I don't know.

[00:11:30] Hank Eder: Sometimes somebody will call me on the phone and I still do take phone calls and look for potential customers. But if someone, you know, books my calendar, because they've met me at a, at a networking meeting, let's say, I will research them, I'll see who they are, what they do, I'll look at their website, and if their website is terrible, I'm not going to come right out and say, Hey, you know, man, that's one of the worst pieces of junk I've ever seen because that's going to turn them off.

[00:11:56] Hank Eder: But, you know, we have a mutual friend and in [00:12:00] some ways, a mentor who tells us, you know, don't give unsolicited advice. But if you ask somebody in a call, may I make some suggestions? Nine out of 10 times, they're going to say yes. And now you're not giving unsolicited advice. So I would tell them things like, you know.

[00:12:18] Hank Eder: I've looked over your website. I looked over it for 15 minutes, and I still can't really figure out the core of what you do, so we need to get that up to front. And, you know, this website is old and kind of antiquated, and I would recommend we either do a redo of it with the shell, or we just start from scratch and build you a good, effective, modern website, you know, with built in SEO and all of those things.

[00:12:49] Hank Eder: And with what I talked about before, the branded messaging, because that's a package that comes in a package. And when you can get that package all in one place, you know, [00:13:00] people have to go to a copywriter to get their copy. Yeah, you have to go to a logo designer to get their logo, they go somewhere else, maybe to have it all tied together into a brand book, then they hire a web designer to do the website, and then they have to try to pull all those elements together.

[00:13:17] Hank Eder: And what I offer is that when you come to me as a full service digital agency, I have all those things under one roof, and I will coordinate all that for you, I have a team of experts who does all of these things.

[00:13:31] Harry: Yeah, I mean, there's some, you know, if you want your website, I mean, when I say stand out when what makes it stand out in your eyes where someone isn't breaking the bank.

[00:13:44] Hank Eder: You mean like, like substance over style kind of thing.

[00:13:47] Harry: Yeah, I mean so. Everyone wants their website to stand out, right? To capture attention. So I'm kind of viewing it as the billboard on the highway that captures your attention,[00:14:00] okay? And I used to drive south from Virginia to Florida a lot and there was like a hundred billboards for south of the border and those things, oh, they just drove me crazy.

[00:14:10] Harry: But anyway let's What goes into should a website stand out, so to speak, or by even using the wrong term

[00:14:20] Hank Eder: here, it should be beautiful. Like you say, your website's beautiful, it should be beautiful. But again, like we mentioned earlier, the first thing that grabs them by the stones, so to speak, is That appeal to their emotion.

[00:14:35] Hank Eder: People buy based on emotional reasons. They don't buy because you've outlined a whole bunch of features that you're trying to convince them that yours is better than somebody else's. You reach them through emotions. You reach them through promising an outcome, but make sure you can deliver that outcome.

[00:14:52] Hank Eder: Right. And that's what's going to make your website stand out from the rest. They might look at the websites of 100 [00:15:00] coaches. Even sales coaches, the websites of 100 sales coaches, but if your website says you're going to get them so comfortable with the prop with the prospect of selling in this particular way that it will erase all of their fear of selling.

[00:15:18] Hank Eder: I think you're going to win a lot of converts there.

[00:15:22] Harry: Yeah, nice. I mean, just replay what you just said, because I like how that sounded. It was very nice. There you

[00:15:29] Hank Eder: go.

[00:15:29] Harry: Yeah, good stuff, Hank. What else? So you mentioned like the blogging and that has value to it because it keeps the website fresh.

[00:15:40] Harry: How much of an expert does somebody need to be an SEO? Would you say who is, you know, kind of starting out in business? Is that? Where's the level of importance

[00:15:51] Hank Eder: on that? Well, they don't have to be total experts on it. They should learn how to find their, their keywords in their industry. They should know how to do [00:16:00] a keyword search.

[00:16:00] Hank Eder: There's their search tools right at the top of my head. I'm not remembering the names of them, but if you looked up free keyword search tools, you would find that on the internet and you can look up your industry and find those things. It's a balancing act, you know, just because you have. 10, you know, keyword terms for your industry.

[00:16:20] Hank Eder: You can't like write. in a way that it looks like you're just trying to drop that in there as often as possible. It has to be an organic process. Another thing is that, you know, we talk about wearing all the hats. I wear a lot of hats and my wife says I look funny and most of them, but you can't wear all the hats.

[00:16:38] Hank Eder: So when it comes to things like blogging, you know, there are business owners that are incredible, brilliant business owners. They do their business. They know it inside out. They they It's like, you know, second nature to them, but the idea of writing a blog. It might be terrifying to them because, you know, I know a guy who's very, very successful in [00:17:00] business, but his reading and writing skills are not that great.

[00:17:03] Hank Eder: He can get by enough to read things and assimilate them, but he's not going to write a book. There's just no way. So that brings me to one of the services of my full service agency. Here's a shameless promotion. I do blogs for customers. I do blogs across a number of industries. And my early experience as a general assignment newspaper reporter gave me the ability to go look into things.

[00:17:30] Hank Eder: gather the information and put it out in my own words. And today for me, it's easier than it's ever been because of course the research on it is all right there online. Do some research, get it together and write a blog. I have, for example, a home inspector. I've been writing his blog monthly. And I think I just finished at the end of October, I just finished doing.

[00:17:56] Hank Eder: Blog number 76, that's 76 months [00:18:00] of continuous blogs for this customer. So, you know, he's getting, you know, he's getting something out of it or he wouldn't be paying for it.

[00:18:07] Harry: So, right. Yeah. So yeah, so there's definitely value there. So yeah, thank you for sharing that. I was thinking earlier too, is that.

[00:18:17] Harry: You know, business owners, I know you're doing something that's helping business owners, the, the ones who are maybe don't have someone to talk to and kind of run these ideas by, because we could talk to three different web developers or three different agencies. And we may get three different opinions what we need to do first.

[00:18:40] Harry: So how are you helping small businesses kind of sift through the shiny object syndrome that seems to permeate this group of people?

[00:18:51] Hank Eder: You definitely will. You definitely will get all those opinions. And it just. Put something into my mind and I have to get this out before I answer your question.

[00:18:59] Hank Eder: I'll do it very [00:19:00] quickly. It's that silly old joke. The guy goes to the doctor and the doctor says, I've got bad news. You've only got six months to live. So, Oh no, doc, I need a second opinion. The doctor says, okay, you're ugly. So anyway, anyway, going back. You asked me about how we help small businesses. I have an online membership support community called the home business success community.

[00:19:26] Hank Eder: And. We have your back. You know, one of the biggest complaints I get from home business owners is that they feel alone. Not only, you know, because of the fact that they're on Zoom all day and they're really not getting out and mixing with people, although sometimes they go to one on one client meetings in the local area and stuff like that.

[00:19:45] Hank Eder: But when I say they feel alone, they tell me they really don't have anybody to share ideas with or to bring, you know, to, to act as a springboard for certain things. You know, there's decisions that home business owners have to make just like any [00:20:00] business owners. Some of them are inconsequential decisions like, should I go to should I go to Office Depot and buy that, that 50 special chair, you know, or should I buy the chair that's designed by the American Chiropractic Association since I'm going to be Sitting on my butt in it for so many hours.

[00:20:21] Hank Eder: That's a no brainer. But there's other there's other decisions that that home business owners have to make. It can cost them. thousands or tens of thousands of dollars, or can suck away dozens or hundreds of hours of their time if they don't make the right decision. And that's part of what we do in the home business success community.

[00:20:43] Hank Eder: We bounce things off of each other. And it's a trusted environment, you know, if you have an idea for a business, you know, you say, I'm running my business like this, but now I want to approach this market. And I've got this great idea. They're not worried that somebody is going to steal [00:21:00] that idea and become their instant competition.

[00:21:02] Hank Eder: Not that not that it's impossible that it could happen. But the reality is Harry. People really aren't doing that, you know, people guard very carefully what they think it is they do because somebody's going to steal it, but nobody's going to steal it because the chances are good, whatever idea you got, there's probably already 100 or more people on the web that are doing that very thing.

[00:21:24] Hank Eder: But that doesn't mean that there's not room for you. Because you're going to do it in your own unique way. So, yeah, we're, we're all for one, one for all. We also have, starting back again in January, we have monthly Zoom workshops for members that approach the things that home business Entrepreneurs need to know in a workshop kind of environment and questions and answers.

[00:21:52] Hank Eder: And a lot of that is also geared to what is, what is it that our members want the next workshop to be? What's on your mind? What would you [00:22:00] like us to address? And if I can't address it myself, then I find somebody who can address it because in our membership and even outside our membership, people that I know who are experts in various fields, most would be very happy to come on for, for an hour.

[00:22:16] Hank Eder: And share something nice.

[00:22:18] Harry: Yeah, that's

[00:22:19] Hank Eder: super helpful.

[00:22:20] Harry: So on this, idea what would be something that somebody would say. Potentially, they're wasting way too much money on what comes to mind for you on that.

[00:22:30] Hank Eder: Well, for example, somebody thinks that they need fancy SEO to get their stuff out there and to do, I mean, they do need SEO. Everybody needs SEO.

[00:22:42] Hank Eder: But there's SEO people who will charge you, you know, four or 500 a month for whatever it is that they're doing. They're giving you some backlinks. They're checking out your, your keywords there, you know. Doing confirmations that your keywords are getting you the results you want. But at [00:23:00] the same time, there's a lot of that you can learn to do yourself.

[00:23:04] Hank Eder: And one thing that I do recommend for home business owners is use the. incredible free resource of Google My Business because once you get that going, you've got something that really puts you at an advantage in the Google search engines because why it's a Google product, Google My Business, it puts you on Google Maps, it gives you a page where you can share things and just like other things like your site, you need to make changes to your Google business.

[00:23:36] Hank Eder: And you can do that by posting photographs. With captions, you know, that are little gems. That are jewels, you know, for your, for your target audience, you can get so much traction out of Google. My business. I, I highly recommend doing that and learning how to do it right before you start spending a whole lot of money with SEO experts.

[00:23:59] Harry: Okay. [00:24:00] Yeah, so there you go. So there's a simple tip that could save a lot of money. I heard of someone in the recent past that's spent their last 3, 000 on SEO and, you know, their business. It's not going to happen that fast, right? If you're on your last dollar, that's probably, I mean, buy groceries or something.

[00:24:23] Harry: Be careful where you spend the thousands of dollars and having a community where you can bounce an idea off of somebody may help you because we get. You know, we get caught up by the advertisement, you know, someone making a promise on video saying this is exactly what you need. We get bombarded by with those as wherever we turn on social media and we can fall for it.

[00:24:47] Harry: Right? I've fallen for it. And You can't get the money back. I mean, you can get the, you can earn it, but it doesn't, it doesn't come back. There's not like a really return policy on programs and

[00:24:58] Hank Eder: software, right? That's right. [00:25:00] You know, I just want to bring up, I know, I know some folks locally, one guy started this whole idea and it's mostly in Western North Carolina and Tennessee, and now it's moving into Virginia.

[00:25:11] Hank Eder: Eventually you have it in a lot of place. But he calls it Incredible Towns and on Incredible Towns, he sells different packages and they tell you that, you know, 90 percent or more of their, of their customers do end up on, on page one of, of Google search engines. Do they promise it? No. And they go out and say, we're not going to promise, you know, if you read it, if you, someone comes to you and said, I'm going to get you on page one of Google in one month.

[00:25:43] Hank Eder: He's lying to you because there's no way that he can or she can yeah, they can't guarantee that But but this this group has a really good plan that gets people on On page one of the Google search engines, but it's not strictly [00:26:00] SEO. It's also a directory where people can go and see your services. And, you know, you have a cow, you can get on their calendars.

[00:26:08] Hank Eder: You can, you can do announcements and stuff through them. They have business networking meetings in their area. It's a good place. Yeah. What up? The reason I brought it up is because. They're the first ones to tell you, I'm not going to promise you that you're going to be on page one of Google in a month and six months.

[00:26:27] Hank Eder: You know, you probably will, but I can't promise that if someone promises it to you. Run from them. Yeah, because yeah, they're going to charge you a lot of money and they're probably not telling you the truth.

[00:26:38] Harry: Yeah, interesting. All right, Hank. So you, provide a ton of value here today in a short 30 minutes.

[00:26:46] Harry: It's a. I love the idea of your community helping us with the website and, you know, making sure that we're solving somebody's problem and we're showing the transformation from where they are to where they're going to be and talking to [00:27:00] that person. I gotta ask there's one other question that came to mind and when you mentioned about carrying your brand throughout your messaging on social media as well.

[00:27:12] Harry: And I'm curious. What, what did you mean by that as far as taking your brand on social media and having a consistent from website and throughout,

[00:27:22] Hank Eder: well, whatever is your Emotional appeal, whatever is your, your promise of transformation, that's your customers pain point that has to be first and foremost across all of your social networks, for example, and that's the first thing that's first and foremost on your website, and it's first and foremost on any writing that you do.

[00:27:44] Hank Eder: Yeah. So it all has to be coordinated. And then, you know, your brand needs to be consistent in your, in your descriptions on social media, for example, basically use the same description across each platform. Use the [00:28:00] same picture, use your logo, use your, your brand colors. Usually, you know, if you have a A carefully designed brand.

[00:28:07] Hank Eder: You have more than just a logo. You've got brand colors that go along with that and be consistent across everywhere that you go. Because whenever anybody sees you, you want them to have that same impression and never say on social media, like on LinkedIn, never say that dreaded. I help business blah blah blah don't just don't and what's

[00:28:31] Harry: what's so wrong with the help word why why is that just because it's overused

[00:28:36] Hank Eder: well it is overused but it's also focusing the first thing they're seeing is focusing On me.

[00:28:42] Hank Eder: Yeah. Okay.

[00:28:43] Harry: The I word.

[00:28:44] Hank Eder: Yeah. Yeah. Rather than focusing on the customer and solving the problem. So the transformation. Yeah.

[00:28:50] Harry: So good. Outstanding. And so Hank, is this URL, is it easy to remember or is it something that we were going to write down in the show notes as well?

[00:28:59] Hank Eder: You mean for [00:29:00] the home business success community?

[00:29:01] Hank Eder: Yeah. That's just tinyurl. com.

[00:29:04] Hank Eder: Tinyurl. com slash home hyphen biz, B I Z. Okay. Put it in the show notes anyway. Beautiful. And you'll put my other contact information. Yeah, of course.

[00:29:17] Harry: Very good. Find Hank. He is a gem, salt of the earth type of guy, and I highly recommend him that the conversation will be valuable.

[00:29:28] Harry: So great stuff, Hank Eater. Thanks for joining me on the Sales Made Easy

[00:29:31] Hank Eder: podcast, my friend. Thank you, Harry.

[00:29:34] Thank you for listening to Sales Made Easy. If you found value in our conversations, please subscribe and leave a review. Our goal is to provide practical strategies for growing your business while staying true to your values. Remember, six. Success in sales is about serving your clients. Serve first and the selling will follow.

[00:29:58] We'll be back soon with more [00:30:00] insights and inspiration. Until then, keep serving and providing value to others. Good things will happen