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QuoteSo, I had the pleasure of speaking with John today during the coaching call, and I didn't think my case was anything special, but John suggested I post here to document the process and progress of my case.
So, to bring everyone up to speed, I've gone through MMM 3.0 and done everything by the book. I even started a website called FolkRockBlog.com to generate some organic subscribers.
I've gone through two facebook campaigns to see if this stuff really works, and it seems that the numbers I'm seeing are very much up to what John says they should be, except for the buying part. After spending a couple hundred dollars on the campaigns, I only have 4 sales.
My campaigns have yielded me one subscriber for an average of around $1.30 each, and the squeeze page is converting at around 28% (first campaign averaged 32%, second campaign at 24%)
The problem is - 2 people bought from each campaign, so a total of 4 sales. At this point, I have 146 subscribers, and I just feel in my bones that this can work. All I need is for this to break even, and we're golden, because we're actively writing and recording (and have been for 6 years).
If I can actively grow my subscriber base and break even, this program will have been a success for me and my band.
For those curious, my band is called Tiny Boats, and we do folk-rock. http://www.tinyboatsmusic.com is my squeeze page - and don't worry about my squeeze page stats there... I already have recorded what I need, so feel free to click and investigate if you wish.
During the call today, John suggested I do a survey to see if I can find a pattern as to why people aren't buying, and I'm in the process of doing that.
I'll keep ya updated. Any suggestions / comments / feedback are welcomed.
Thanks!
5:29 am
June 7, 2011
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Thanks for posting this Jason. Once you get some answers on the survey then please post them here. We'll start by seeing if there is any obvious hole and then take it from there.
Good talking with you on the call yesterday as well.
Having trouble with your marketing? Wish you could have an experienced direct-to-fan marketing expert look over your actual campaigns, music, or content and offer feedback? Or perhaps you’re just looking for a little one-on-one assistance so you can ask questions that pertain to your specific goals and get a second, more experienced, perspective? Click here to book a session with me now.
12:04 am
June 7, 2011
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Sounds good. I'm really interested to see what you get.
Having trouble with your marketing? Wish you could have an experienced direct-to-fan marketing expert look over your actual campaigns, music, or content and offer feedback? Or perhaps you’re just looking for a little one-on-one assistance so you can ask questions that pertain to your specific goals and get a second, more experienced, perspective? Click here to book a session with me now.
Okay, so I sent out the the survey 2 days ago, and have received only 2 responses. The two responses said (in response to "Why didn't you buy the album?")
1. "It's a money thing"
2. "It's not my type of music."
At this point, I think the statistics are pretty much telling me that I'm not connecting with the right audience. The ads are effective, the squeeze page is compelling, but once they listen to the music, it's not connecting.
Also - of the 146 people to whom the message was sent, 35 people opened, 7 clicked, and 2 actually filled out the survey.
Any additional thoughts from anyone?
8:07 am
June 7, 2011
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Hmmm, this continues to be a tough one. Two people is not enough to feel certain of anything. The only thing it suggests is that the engagement is low. I would have expected more responses than that. 7 clicks from 147 subs isn't so hot.
These are the things that strike me as worth investigating...
1. Targeting could be off. No money and not into the music are the only indications we have, and that points in part to targeting. You could try a different audience and see if things change.
2. However, the fact that so many signed up doesn't scream targeting. So my thoughts then go to the email series. It could be that your targeting is good, and that's why you have those initially good open rates, but the emails and content you are sending this particular audience are failing to grab them. In this case you would look at improving your email funnel. This is my best guess for what is actually wrong here.
3. 147 subs is a decent size, but it's not that statistically significant. It could be just a bit of bad luck.
You mind posting a track, and refreshing my memory as to who you are targeting?
Having trouble with your marketing? Wish you could have an experienced direct-to-fan marketing expert look over your actual campaigns, music, or content and offer feedback? Or perhaps you’re just looking for a little one-on-one assistance so you can ask questions that pertain to your specific goals and get a second, more experienced, perspective? Click here to book a session with me now.
11:48 pm
October 28, 2015
OfflineIn the book Ask, Ryan Levesque suggests the subject line "Do You Hate Me?" for such a survey, since it almost forces the reader to click it - we don't like it when someone thinks we hate them. Then, of course, you'll be joking and light hearted about it in the subject, and ask what's up. Might get a better response to your inquiry.
Disclaimer: I'm a total noob at this... I just read that book recently, and it's fascinating, and I've wondered to what extent those principals might apply to music. I think this might.
John Oszajca said
You mind posting a track, and refreshing my memory as to who you are targeting?
Yup! Our band is called Tiny Boats, and the first free track we're giving away is called "The Broken Vessels". You can listen to it at the link below.
https://tinyboats.bandcamp.com.....en-vessels
I'm not sure how to give you an idea of my funnel, but I can give you a link to the "blog entry", which is sent out in the 2nd email. That can be found here:
http://www.tinyboatsmusic.com/.....ats-intro/
We've had two campaigns so far. The first campaign targeted Frank Turner fans. The 2nd campaign had 4 ad sets which targeted 4 different bands. After 6 hours of running it, it was obvious that one was working much better than the other 3, so we turned them off. The ad set that seemed to work was targeting the band Flogging Molly.
Both Jesse and I are struggling to figure out who our fans would be, or as John would say it, "our ideal fan".. We thought we had an idea due to the subscription success of these two campaigns, but I'm having doubts now. Not losing hope, though.. Just got to figure out who to connect with and get to work.
Thanks for the help.
9:06 pm
June 7, 2011
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It's really hard to say here.
One thing to point out is that 6 hours is not enough time at all. Very rarely I will kill an add that quickly if I've had a LOT of impressions and it's doing something ridiculously bad. But I've seen ads go from $5 per conversion to under a $1 over the course of days. It can take 3 - 5 days for FB's algorithm to figure out who is most likely to convert. That said, if you have had thousands of impressions and you are paying $20 per conversion then yeah, you can kill it because that is never going to be what it needs to be.
My best guesses remain that your email funnel needs to be improved. You may need to introduce more of yourself into the funnel and around the offer.
That said, I'm not at all convinced that targeting isn't the issue. Isn't Flogging Molly an Irish Band? That doesn't necessarily matter. You can target bath toys if it gets you the subscribers and sales you need, but that could be something. But I'll be honest, I've never seen strong engagement and no sales..
All you can do is take each element of the funnel, try to spot the place where things break down and tweak until they improve.
Since sales are the only problem at the moment, it seems that we need to look at the emails that lead to the offer, the offer itself, and the people that are getting exposed to the offer.
One thing you could try as a bit of a hale Mary is to come up with some kind of a new offer. I better discount, a different bundle, something that you think is really cool. Really try to put your own voice into a couple of emails and run a three day sale. This wouldn't so much be about making money, it would just be about seeing if by shaking things up a bit and taking another pass you couldn't get those people to buy. I'm trying to figure out if it's that these people won't buy, or that they just didn't because of the way that they were ultimately asked.
Imagine yourself standing at a merch table after a show, in need of gas money to get home. Everyone in the room just saw you play. You know what these people like, and their demographic info (based on the targeting). How would you get the attention of someone walking buy? How would you start a fun conversation? How can you envision that conversation ultimately leading to a sale. Distill that into a few emails and a special offer and see what happens. If you squeak out another sale or two then you are suddenly in the "reasonable conversion ratio" range. If not, then maybe we do need to look at the targeting.
Having trouble with your marketing? Wish you could have an experienced direct-to-fan marketing expert look over your actual campaigns, music, or content and offer feedback? Or perhaps you’re just looking for a little one-on-one assistance so you can ask questions that pertain to your specific goals and get a second, more experienced, perspective? Click here to book a session with me now.
7:49 pm
April 13, 2012
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Hi Jason,
How's it going now? Have you been able to tweak your autoresponder and/or sales page to convert more sales?
I just started generating traffic and in my first two days of offering the LTO I haven't had any buyers yet. Not sure if my offer is enticing enough, but I'm giving it a few more days to let more people receive the offer.
Thx,
Ali
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