The wait is finally over, Troon have launched a new web site for Black Diamond Ranch after a six month wait, here it is…
http://www.blackdiamondranch.com/
Great pictures, nice layout but unfortunately for the growth of the membership or real estate sales, it’s a typical amateur effort on the marketing side!
Here are just a few of the sales and marketing issues I have with the site…
Little or no copy on the home page this makes getting great search engine placement a real problem, without spending thousands more to manipulate the rankings. The more content the easier it is to be number one. You need at least 200-400 words on your home page or you have to spend a lot of money in other ways to get rankings!
Visitor pages, the most important for SALES have no headlines and of course, no calls to action at the bottom of each page. There is no hover ad or any banner ad effort made to get visitors to register for more information. Hover ads increase response by over 300%! On the wedding pages they could offer a free downloadable guide to collect leads. On the real estate page a free video tour of selected homes IF you register. A free guides to Citrus County living or 101 other things to get people registering. If you don’t get them to register you can’t follow up with them and stay in touch!
NO DATA COLLECTION, let me repeat that, NO data collection effort on all but ONE page. For example when you click on click here for more info which should send you to a registration page to collect valuable data you are asked instead to e-mail or call without so much as asking for your name, location or phone number, I mean how dumb can you be? TIP- LINK this page to the real estate data collection form, visitors will not necessarily go there first! In fact LINK every request to a data collection point and give visitors a reason to register on every page!
There is no effort at social media, guys, maybe you missed it but we are on web 2.0, (see previous blog entry). Where are your blogs, the Twitter or Face book accounts? Based on Troon’s response speed so far, check back in 2015!
The real estate pages are SUPER WEAK, poor photos that don’t blow up to full size and there is not much of a sales pitch.
There should be testimonials on every page from happy members and residents (we do have some) instead we have a great one from golf writer, Dan Jenkins and another that I feel is rather obnoxious. They use a picture and quote from Tommy Bolt, who is dead, and left black Diamond on poor terms after a bust up with the developer, he is pictured standing next too, smiling, very poor taste!
I could go on with a list of twenty more ways to improve the marketing response to the site .. but I won’t, what good would it do?
While the pictures do go a long way to selling the courses (and the courses are great) it makes no sense to ignore the basic rules of good marketing by failing to offer compelling headlines, testimonials and calls to action. Nor does it make sense not to FOCUS your efforts on providing various ways to have visitors register their interest!
I guess that’s what you get when you hire a company like Troon, that’s BIG on BRAND and short on sales and marketing skill!
