[Show/Ask IH] Launched a new product. What are your thoughts on how I should sell?

I like the idea.

One obvious way of monetising this is via daily / weekly emails or push Notifications so you deliver to me. I see you also sell a physical version of your models.

This is essentially brain food to help to open people's minds and help them to remain curious about the world so I would push that message.

Landing Page Comments

Your landing page has to look as beautiful as that Instagram page you linked to. At the moment, it looks very dry and academic. It needs to look seductive, desirable, digestible. Right now, it looks technical, boring and "hard".

Marketing copy:

Your sentences are far too long and unfocused. First section:

Mental models are big ideas from big disciplines, like business, psychology, science, & engineering. An understanding of the key concepts from these multi-disciplinary topics will teach you to be an independent thinker.

Be wise, be like Charlie.

That may all be technically accurate - but it isn't selling copy. The first thing that needs to change is your sentence length. Each sentence must have a specific purpose. You must then write it to deliver that purpose as compellingly as possible. You must write it in as few words as possible.

You're not explaining mental models. You are selling mental models. The two things are very, very different. You need to appeal to the emotions first. You must make visitors to your site decide emotionally that they want more of this whatever-it-is-it-sounds-interesting thing.

Once you have grabbed the visitor emotionally, all your copy must be crisp and concise. No more than one sentiment per sentence.

Your first sentence is far too long and "explainy". without inviting me to explore further. If I were writing this copy, I would appeal to your target customer's ambition, vanity and self-esteem in some way. Make the first third of your landing page an attack on the emotions first.

I assume you know who your target customer is in terms of his/her age, life stage, education level and so on. So write to that person in such a way that they are curious enough to stay with you.

I suspect your intended audience is a lot younger than I am. I was an old fogey even in my youth so I am not the best person to ask about the right words, languages and phrases to use in order to resonate with your target audience. There are others here who can do that ... and might like the practice for their own projects!

Change your fonts. Instagram page = right. Landing page = wrong. You're selling not delivering an academic paper, even if what you are offering is high quality professional / degree level information. I don't have to buy from you so you need to make me want to buy.

How wedded are you to the term "mental model"? I ask only because using a term like "brain food" might make your product come across as more attractive. Again, others may have better suggestions but you are trying to get across a sense of professionalism together with friendly, attractive content.

Your Instagram page understands this. Your landing page needs to learn this.

Short term: physical sales at events at colleges. Try to give a talk about mental models and give $100 worth of the cards away for free to meetup attendees.

Medium term: start a meetup. This will probably end up more valuable than the cards!

Long term: I'd start writing a blog about mental models and syndicate every post to medium. This will generate highly targeted traffic from SEO.

This is a cool project and you've got some really beautiful designs!

To build a community, you have to give your customers a reason to join and a reason to come back over time.

One problem I would like to get solved is to learn about a mental model (in abstract), and then be able to read concrete examples of that being applied in different walks of life.

So maybe for each mental model you have, there should be a unique page where your community shares examples / insights how they did it, what the results were, etc?

The graphic design looks great!

It seems a great fit for a Kickstarter campaign, have you considered it?

I think you only have to work a little on explaining/convincing people how the cards can/should be used in a more practical way. As I see it, it seems something neat and well designed that I would buy and keep in a drawer, regreting that I bought it on impulse months later.

Beautiful design work and excellent concept!

Random thought: with your stellar web design skills, I might suggest building a completely digital version of your cards using something like:

https://github.com/gajus/swing

And then use that as a marketing channel to sell the physical cards.

You could also try an email list and send out the "card" of the week or something similar.

I'm sure you're already on top of it, but I would suggest looking at how Cards Against Humanity handles their experimental marketing and community building.

Good luck!