Evan Carmichael reviews Burn the Couch, a community competition club, and suggests reframing the pitch from "engaging the community" to "getting to know your neighbors through fun competition." He recommends clearer calls-to-action, photos of people having fun, and treating the website as a local flyer rather than the main way to attract members.
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Hi, I'm Evan Carmichael. Welcome to another edition of Ask Evan. Today I'm answering a question from one of my readers, Michael, who knew my sister and brother-in-law and has a website called Burn the Couch and wanted my advice on what to do about it. So let's load up the website here and see what kind of advice we can give for, for Michael. So we've got it here. There's the website. Okay. So Great Brews Competitions Club or Competitors Club, engaging the community through competition. So he specifically wrote in saying, I don't know if I have a proper call to action or if I don't have a clearly defined why. So looking at this website, engaging the community through competition. So by looking at this, my thought is you're trying to get people together, have some fun, have some competition. I would think about what is the why. So you're talking about the why, engaging the community. It explains what you do, but there's no heart behind it, right? It may be something like get to know your neighbors, right? That may be a better way to explain what it is that you do. So get to know your neighbors through competition. It just is more friendly and inviting, then engaging the community sounds like a corporate slogan that a big company would have, and it doesn't have any heart to it. So you might want to switch that up a little bit. And looking at this, you know, value proposition here, what is a Competitors Club? Can be summed up in one simple phrase: reality shows portray reality, we create it. That I think could definitely use some work. Have you ever watched reality shows and said to yourself, I wish I could do that? Or sit on a panel of judges. I'm not sure this is your— this is the value proposition. I don't think too many people look at a reality show and say, "I could do that." I think the benefit of doing, joining up with your community here is to get to know your neighbors, to do something active, which ties into your website, Burn the Couch, right? Why are we called Burn the Couch? Because you're gonna get off your feet and go go do something. Hopefully that's why the name is Burn the Couch. You want to have fun and maybe not spend a lot of money, right? If you're entering these kind of challenges, then it's something fun to do with your community, get to know your neighbors, and not have to spend a lot of money doing it. I think if you had those points more front and center, you'd attract a lot more people and be able to quickly explain the benefits of joining up. Than this, where I'm not sure people would really twig to this kind of stuff. The next thing I want to look at is a slightly better design on the site. It's okay, you know, I like the borders and stuff around the pictures here, but you could, if you're on a WordPress theme, you could easily get a slightly better WordPress design or look at places like 99designs just to spruce up the website a little bit. Maybe show something about the community, like a big picture of people having fun. That's why they're going to sign up for this, is they want to have fun and get to know their neighbors. So have a big picture of people having fun. Like, what is it like to do one of these competitions? And those pictures with emotion and people, you know, expressing how much fun they're having will make people want to sign up, right? Where if you're just selling it through text, it's a lot harder to convey the same message. So let's look at your events. 90-Day Weight Loss Challenge. Let's see what this one is all about as it slowly loads. So contestants for the 90-Day Weight Loss Challenge. So this is great that we can see who's involved here. I would want to see where people are starting. So like, what do you win for, for doing it? What are the starting weights of people? What are they at now? And see who's kind of on the leaderboard. It's great to see the people involved. This is what I think is the whole point, is to get to know the people around your community a little bit better. But there's no updates on how they're doing, so I definitely want to include that information in there. But I'd also want to see pictures of people having fun on every page and contest that you have. I think you could do a lot of work mostly though on that homepage and that value proposition like we already talked about. Honestly though, I think your best bet is going to be local. This is a local campaign, and as much as I love the web and as much as people will visit your website, I'd see it more as an online flyer. So people who you talk to locally would then go to your website and hopefully sign up. But I would design specific campaigns, so maybe it's this Easter egg drop challenge or it's a weight loss challenge, and go local and make partnerships and do flyer drops around your area. And it's also you getting to know your neighbors, right? You go and knock on doors. Meet people, tell them about what you're doing, show them pictures of people having fun, and try to get them signed up. And the website can complement that, but I don't think it's gonna be your main marketing tool, at least not yet, at least at the beginning. Do a local campaign, get people signed up, email them with updates on whatever the next competition is. I wasn't clear on what your business model is here, or if there is a business model. Maybe this is just something to do to have fun. Maybe you're gonna get sponsors from companies who wanna market to local people. Maybe you're gonna charge for the membership. I know right now it's free. Maybe you're still trying to figure it out, or maybe there is no model. You just want to do it to help your community. But that was a little unclear from looking at the website. So I hope that helps, Michael. Really interesting initiative. I think there's a lot of value here. I almost wish there was something like this where I lived, I would probably sign up and get involved. So I think you have something strong. I think people don't know their neighbors enough. We're so, you know, tied up in what we're doing in our day-to-day lives that we often don't take the time to get to know our community. And doing something like this could be a fun way to do it. And so, you know, if I see a need for it in my community, I'm sure other people will around where you are as well. But just explaining it better, you know, I wouldn't want to sign up because I wish I could be part of a reality show or I wish I could judge one. I sign up to do something fun on the weekend that's not going to cost me a lot of money, you know, get out of the house, get off my couch, and get to meet some of the people who I live with. So a lot of opportunity. I hope you can make some of those changes and keep us posted on how you're doing. So thanks for the question, Michael. For those of you watching, if you like the video, please give it a thumbs up below. Makes me want to do more for you. And if you have a comment about this video or a question for your own business, feel free to leave it in the comment section, uh, on YouTube. I always check those. I love seeing them. It always makes my day when new comments come in. So thank you, and I'll see you on the next episode.
