Great Product, No Sales – Need Help with Conversion Strategy

[thundrrrka]

Hi everyone! I'd love to get some advice or ideas.
I have a "Business Directory" website with 1.3K Facebook Likes (mostly from bots, though). In my country, it's honestly the best and most complex platform of its kind (not just my opinion — it really is better than the competition).


But I'm facing a problem: sales just aren’t happening.


My sales strategy is:
Cold call > invitation email > sales page (with purchase option).
Out of 100 calls, about 40-50% actually open the email and click through to the sales page — but then no one buys.


I'm using Stripe for payments, and offering a $88 deal for 2 years + 1 year free (so basically 3 years total).
Competitors charge similar prices on a monthly basis, so overall I’m cheaper.


Still, people aren’t buying, and I can’t figure out why.


Currently I have about 25 businesses listed on the site, but they were added for free about a year ago just to make it look populated (dummy listings).


My next plan is to redesign the sales page and include a video explaining all the benefits — at least that’s what I’m thinking now.


Do you have any better ideas?
I don't have much budget for ads, but I’m open to guerrilla marketing or any low-cost client acquisition strategies. Any advice would be really appreciated!

 

[SirTop]

Maybe you should change your strategy and make adding a listing free for all, with something else like an add-on, that they can pay for and subscribe to.

Use the free listing strategy to attract real businesses to start using your directory
Bet you will find some that will be willing to try on a paid add-on on your directory if they've already gotten value from what they already have with the free listing.

 

[Venusaur]

if your competitors are making money, they are better than your website, let's accept the sad reality for now, be more humble and work to improve your platform, for now you only have botted likes and dummy listings (according to yourself)

and change this strategy, it's not working and you will need different approaches to reach and convince people to use your directory

 

[Proxy Cake]

I would also contact the customers that opened but didn't purchase and ask them the hard questions. You are guessing which is never good, you should be going off of real data

 

[Starblazer]

You should start thinking from customer's perspective. What would they do? You offered them a listing on a site for $88. They'll visit the site and find that there are no real businesses listed. They'll check social media and find that there is no engagement. They search on Google and probably won't find your business. It obviously looks like a scam. Why would anyone fall for it? You should completely change your strategy.

 

[knightm]

The price is great, but maybe users don’t see why they need it. A short demo video and real success stories could help show the real value.

 

[badasscoder]

Sounds promising! Maybe business owners need to see real value first. Consider a freemium model, followed by upselling. A good explainer video and clearer benefits could help a lot.

 

[glennmillerspace]

sales just aren’t happening.

Sales are happening where there's a demand. Businesses have a demand for increasing revenue. How does your "Business Directory" help them with that?

 

[Krestovnikova]

You should have something free that let the potential customers try and see if they like what you have to offer and offer an add on that is paid .

 

[hostingco]

Try using something like posthog for analytics, it lets you do session replay which allows you to see what users are actually doing when they visit your site, you basically see their browser and cursor, perhaps that will give you further insights about why they're bouncing?

 

[Faery]

M

Hi everyone! I'd love to get some advice or ideas.
I have a "Business Directory" website with 1.3K Facebook Likes (mostly from bots, though). In my country, it's honestly the best and most complex platform of its kind (not just my opinion — it really is better than the competition).


But I'm facing a problem: sales just aren’t happening.


My sales strategy is:
Cold call > invitation email > sales page (with purchase option).
Out of 100 calls, about 40-50% actually open the email and click through to the sales page — but then no one buys.


I'm using Stripe for payments, and offering a $88 deal for 2 years + 1 year free (so basically 3 years total).
Competitors charge similar prices on a monthly basis, so overall I’m cheaper.


Still, people aren’t buying, and I can’t figure out why.


Currently I have about 25 businesses listed on the site, but they were added for free about a year ago just to make it look populated (dummy listings).


My next plan is to redesign the sales page and include a video explaining all the benefits — at least that’s what I’m thinking now.


Do you have any better ideas?
I don't have much budget for ads, but I’m open to guerrilla marketing or any low-cost client acquisition strategies. Any advice would be really appreciated!

Maybe change your marketing strategy, look for other cold outreach methods.

 

[PROXYWARS]

Try using something like posthog for analytics, it lets you do session replay which allows you to see what users are actually doing when they visit your site, you basically see their browser and cursor, perhaps that will give you further insights about why they're bouncing?

Now this...This is golden.

 

[hostingco]

Now this...This is golden.

It's great, you even get full logs from their console, and overall heat maps for cursor activity. The session replay alone has made my landing page a conversion machine, for seeing what works and what doesn't.