In our last article, we broke down a consultant’s website towards the good and the bad. So in today’s article, I went and found another EdTech consultant’s website to show you just an apples and oranges example of some of the things that people do when it comes to positioning themselves for getting new clients.
By the end of this article, you’re going to have even more takeaways that you can keep in mind when you’re building your own consultancy website, as well as some general tips and tricks that you may find helpful, regardless of whether or not you run a consulting business.
Digging into the homepage
In this article, we’re going to be looking at Gerard Dawson’s website. This can be accessed at gerarddawson.com. And so right off the bat, what you can tell is that Gerard positions himself as the real teacher helping you build your education business. I really liked this compared to the last example, because it really focuses on the person and the prospect, as opposed to just a generic statement.
So just comparing this, we have the real teacher helping you build your education business, as opposed to helping EdTech speak to educators. That just isn’t as inspiring in terms of a hero section. So right off the bat, Gerard is off to a great start. What you can also see is that the subtitle is “Ever wonder if the marketing for your education company sounds “off”?”
And then what I love about this is that as quickly as he opens up the funnel in terms of what the problems might be in terms of sounding off for your company, he solves that by saying, “Stop worrying and try the five-day copy fix.” So this is a great tactic because essentially in just three key sections, Gerard has positioned himself as an authority figure.
He’s clearly resonated with his prospect in that he understands their problems and he’s presented a solution to those problems that gets them less than number one. So this is great because this is an opt-in and this is a lot more powerful than the last example in the other article when we went over Erika’s website because it’s giving people an actual reason why they should convert on this page right off the bat in the top section.
Just comparing these two side by side, the only thing that there was here was a redirection to services whereas, in this example, we’re giving people clear value right up front at the top.
The next section follows very similarly on Erika’s website, you can see that Gerard takes a similar tactic where he uses all the logos of people that he served. And then from here, he is talking about specifically the value prop. So here’s why marking for education companies is different.
And then he talks about the need, right? And so this is really great because essentially, he’s already talked about the problem at the top of the page. Now he’s digging into the need and why the potential prospect needs this. And then you’ll notice that everything is highly skimmable. He does bold what he needs the person to look at in terms of outcomes. So more leads, increase awareness and telling better stories. And you’ll also see the exact things that he does and kind of like a resume format. He does web copy landing pages, emails, paid ad copy, case studies, things like that along with general strategies.
So this is a really nice layout for him because it delivers information in a really succinct way. I already had pretty much liked Erika’s overall page layout, but I had given some feedback to her in that when looking at this side by side, Eric had a lot more text on page where it was a lot harder to actually get at the value points of what she was communicating. So right off the bat, I think Gerard’s done a great job there. You can see that he pulls out from the quote something that is important in his opinion to potential prospects.
Digging into the testimonial page
And then he has the testimonial along with a face. And then from here, you can see that he’s converting them in terms of what he wants them to do next. So talking soon. And then these five powerful lessons take little time. So you’ll notice that even when he is not converting them.
So in other words, even when he’s not telling them to go ahead and sign up for a call with him for a consultation, he’s telling them, “Hey, if you’re not quite ready, I want to still help you out”. And this is great positioning because it essentially reiterates the top of the page offer while also providing value to the prospect. This is so effective. This is so much more powerful than the other example that we saw with Erika, where her call-to-action at the end is just work with Erika. That’s not inspiring. It’s not motivating me to want to actually engage with her as much whereas in this situation, Gerard is telling me about the things that I’ll get in these five powerful lessons of this freebie that he’s created.
So right off the bat, we’re off to a good start. Gerard’s done a great job of having a clear value proposition really quickly writing for the prospect, presenting a problem that the prospect has as well as providing an immediate fix for the prospect. So this is a great homepage and Gerard deserves props here.
And there’s a few takeaways that you can really takeaway from here, which is it’s important for you to deliver your value quickly. It’s important for you to present value to prospects upfront with some sort of lead magnet or conversion. And it’s important for you to demonstrate your social proof as to why people should trust you, whether that’s through logos, coupled by your past work and testimonials or other ways in terms of this page.
Digging into the services page
From here, I can go ahead and go to the services page. And when I go here, I can see that Gerard is really good at optimizing for conversion, especially on his consulting page, because right off the bat, he’s trying to get you to book a strategy call. This is a much more clear, direct call-to-action that emulates what his clients would probably want to see too on their pages when he’s creating landing pages for them. Because he’s got something where you can book a free strategy call here.
And so from here, he’s got some more testimonials. I like how he uses a different testimonial than what he did on the other page. That’s great. And then what you can also see is that he provides a few different services. So you can see here, he’s got a done for you copywriting project.
I love his positioning here. I think it’s a little bit more robust than the example of Erika we had, which was when we looked at her services page, she just had them generically labeled as email sequence audit, email strategy audit, and email sequence whereas Gerard has something that’s a little bit more productized, which I really enjoy.
Here, you can see that he is also making clear what the pricing is going to be. So this is one of the pieces of feedback I gave to Erika in my last article In this situation, it’d be great for you to just give a general range or a starting price points that people know whether or not they should even spend time in reaching out to you.
So, this is good. Overall, I like that. And I also love how he continues this “done with you” philosophy or a thematic in his services. So he has got a done for you day rate. I like how he includes again, the pricing, and then he details what he’s doing. So he’s detailing exactly what you’re getting for that. In this situation, it looks like he offers an eight-hour full workday in terms of going over some strategy. What I overall like about this page is that A: it’s really quick to the point in terms of conversion, that you can book a strategy call there. You can also book a strategy call here in the middle, and pretty much you can book a strategy call at the end of the page as well.
So three places at the beginning, middle, and end. Great for conversion. The second thing I really like about this page is that it’s really simple. There are just two offers on the page, and it’s really clear that these are the main offerings for his product ties. The next thing we’re going to look at is the blog.
So what I can see here is that it looks like Gerard essentially does a big podcast of sorts, and they’ve got some content backlogged here. I love this. I think this is a great way for a consultant to really make them stand out from the rest of the pack is positioning themselves as an authoritative figure as well as a moderator for insightful conversations in the space of his prospects.
So in this situation, it looks like what he does is he essentially interviews these different founders as well as interesting people in the EdTech space to learn a little bit more about their work and why it’s important. And this is great because again all of this kind of goes back into his overall lead funnel.
And so these are all pretty much opportunities for him to get new customers because they might listen to this podcast through the grapevine or through the networks of the person that he’s interviewing. So this is a great way for him to build his network while also killing two birds with one stone because he creates valuable content for his prospects, which he’s then able to package into content for future prospects as well.
So overall, I like what he’s doing here, and I’m not sure if he’s still doing it just based off the timestamping where I’m seeing that most of these efforts were in 2020. Overall, I see that he didn’t really get a huge amount of traction in terms of his YouTube channel. I can click into his YouTube channel just to double check, but yeah, it looks like he overall kind of curved this effort.
So maybe he’s finding his lead some other way, but I do like how he’s being much more conscientious about building out his overall backlog of content and giving different ways for his prospects to get to know him as a person than Erika did in which it was just about her pages. And then from there, you kind of had to just take her word for it.
Looking at the media page
Gerard done an overall good job there. What I’m going to look at next is his media page. So you can see here, he’s got the podcasts that we just went over, and then he looks like he’s been doing some tours too, in which he’s gotten on some other podcasts as well. That’s great for backlinking as well as building up his authority as well as his existing network.
And then he’s also doing guest articles. So this is great for somebody, especially in his world where he’s providing copywriting and things like that because it really provides people more than one perspective as to the sort of value that he can add to their business. So overall, what I’d say is drives doing all the core things that I would be doing if I were trying to build my consulting business. I would really just focus on these sorts of things. And you can see here with this newsletter, it’s a little buggy overall when I click into this page. That being said, though, it is clear that this is learning about all the best things from the best in EdTech and it’s the business of learning letter each week.
So it looks like this is a weekly newsletter that he uses to engage prospects and continue to nurture conversations as well as relationships with people that he’s already previously spoken to as well as people that might just stumble on his website.
What I love about Gerard’s website
So what I love about your Gerard’s business? Well, the first thing is I love how simple his website is. Right off the bat, when I land on the page, there’s a clear problem, clear solution, and clear quick fix that he gets me into in terms of his email marketing. So it’s really clear that he understands funnels. And if I’m an EdTech company looking to hire him, then from there, I have a pretty good feeling about this potentially working out right off the bat. And then the other thing I really like about this page is that he makes it clear exactly how much this investment is going to start at, as opposed to Erika’s page where that wasn’t abundantly clear.
The last thing I like about Gerard’s website is that he provides two avenues for people to still engage with him even if they’re not ready to fill out an inquiry today. He has the blog and media section, which are pretty similar in that they essentially have a podcast series created as well as some different guests interviews and articles that he has provided to other potential shows and podcasts and things like that as well.
And the last thing that he does is he has that business of learning section in which he’s building up a weekly newsletter to continue nurturing his prospects every single week with different insights from the people that he’s interviewed, as well as the people that he’s helped through his services. Overall, I would rate Gerard’s marketing efforts, especially as a one-man shop it appears as very, very good. I think that he’s doing the right things in terms of making conversion of priority for the people that land on his website. However, the only other thing that I think about for him specifically is how to optimize for the lead channel that’s leading to the most traffic and leads.
It’s clear that he clearly stretched himself a little bit too thin. And I can tell that because he has a blog section where he hasn’t posted in pretty much six months or so. So he probably found that that wasn’t a viable channel, or maybe he didn’t focus enough on the distribution of that podcast for it to actually be meaningful. But what I’d focus on is one specific channel, make that abundantly clear what that channel is going to be.
If, for example, it’s the business of learning, then I would love to see him actually make all of the call to actions and all the conversion boxes the same uniform conversion across this website. But as of right now, there are a ton of different conversions on a site. Some of them are booking a strategy call.
Some of them are getting the freebie for the quick fix. And then some of them are businesses of learning insights. And so make it really clear and simplify the offers just like he simplified the services. Other than that. My other piece of feedback for Gerard is the same piece of feedback I had for Erika, which is in the case where you’re a consultant, it’s really important for you to show your work.
And so whether that means creating a template or sample template of what exactly one of the done for you packages might look like. It just makes it so much more visual and clear exactly how you can really the business that you’re going to be working with. And that’s something that both of these websites lapped.
So if you can make some sort of clear before and after situation, that would be fantastic. That said, though, what I do like is that we didn’t explore it earlier, but he does have a case study here. And this is exactly what I’m talking about. It’s I really like how he has a project summary. He talks about the business and he talks about the challenge they were solving as well as the solution, how he solved that.
The only thing that I would potentially look at. Is having some sort of numerical output in terms of what his outcomes were. This is not clear enough in terms of having clear quantitative impact from the things that he worked on. It’s also not clear exactly what some of these emails look like. So that’s something that I think, you know, it might be client sensitive and whatnot, but if you can come up with some sort of generic examples, it could be a good way for you to really demonstrate your value to your process.
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