Hey Mike,

Thanks for posting this. Hopefully we can turn this around for you. It's a little overwhelming with so much info to go through. I'll give you a broad opinion/analysis and if you have any specific questions we can break it down element by element.

To start, I'm unclear if you are targeting all of those options in one ad set or if you have three ad sets running simultaneously. It needs to be the latter. But there are also some issues with the squeeze page.

My feeling is that you have a message to market mismatch. Those relevancy scores are very low and a good indication that the targeting is at least half of the issue. 

When I read your headline it sounds like it should be geared towards Coast to Coast AM fans more than Foo Fighters fans. I would start by trying an ad that targets only people that like both. But you need to decide if you are trying to sell the musical experience or the sci-fi experience. Pick one and make a bold claim about how your music will offer exactly what that audience wants. Right now my guess is that you are getting clicks because of the paranormal aspect of your copy, and then losing people when they get to your page and see that it's more of a rock band thing. 

But there are also issues on the squeeze page itself. The image is far away and I get no sense of who you guys are. Smiling faces up close are where you should start. That said, you still want to match the image/vibe that you are selling. There are also some formatting issues with the quotes, and your main body copy is too short and missing some of the key elements I suggest in MMM.

Typically it's four paragraphs. the first paragraph tells them who you are (your biggest and most impressive accomplishments). The second paragraph tells them what the music sounds like. The third paragraph tells them what they will get if they take action. The fourth paragraph tells them what they need to do next.

Here's what I would do next...

1. Decide what your unique selling proposition is. In one sentence, how would your biggest fans describe your band to their friends? "Sunspot is great, they are...." How would a fan finish that sentence?

2. Work on your squeeze page. Make your best effort, post it here, I/we will offer feedback. Get that a bit more solid before running anymore ads.

3. Then post at least 3 options for your images, ad copy, ad headline, and link description text. Get feedback and refine.

4. Once you feel good about everything based on feedback, run a new ad using the split testing technique laid out in the February lesson here in the IC.

Bottom line, I think more work needs to be done before you should spend money on ads.

Sound good?

Sounds good Mike. Talk soon.

Hi Mike,

Looks pretty good. A few things could maybe be better...

1. The headline reads well, but doesn't completely give me a sense of what kind if band this really is, or what the experience is that I'm signing up for. It definitly drives home the Sci-fi thing (which is cool), but I'm not totally clear how that connects to the music. Are they sci-fi themes, sci-fi sounds, etc?

The horizontal image is not ideal because it pushes the quotes over and they look a bit squashed on a desk top. I would either try and find vertical image or expand the horizontal image to be full width and add the quotes below it. Though I personally like the former approach better.

The quotes also appear to be justified right. I would justify left.

And when you run your ads be sure to split test images. If one performs better than teh one on your squeeze page switch it out and go with the one that performs best in the ads.

I think the new formatting looks better. However, I think the headline is actually a bit weaker in the sense that the sci-fi thing was the most substantive aspect of the headline, it just needed a clearer explanation of what sci-fi meant in relation to your music. Or you needed to create a new headline that took a different angle. Currently your headline still has the "beam me up" line which eludes to sci-fi, but hangs a bit awkwardly without the sci-fi line you had and makes the headline even more ambiguous.

What is your USP?

And what did the ad you ran that performed well say, and what was the image that performed best?

Hey Mike,

I wouldn't stray from your USP at all, assuming you really do think that you have the right USP and "high-energy rock from a band of ghost hunters " is what your fans would say is great and special about your band as compared to others.

But for something like that, I would want to hear that you are ghost hunters and not just have it be something you say, unless, your communication about ghost hunting (such as a podcast) was an even bigger part of what you do as a band.

To my mind, if you were going to be successful with a "do you like rock music" ad, your landing page would really want to just knock that theme out of the park. "Rock" is an adjective of sorts, and I think that may be why people are clicking. Your image lines up with that. But the squeeze page does not drip "the rock". Instead it talks about sci-fi, so there is a disconnect.

Ultimately you need to decide who the band is on a fundamental level, with a USP that you plan to back up with your images, and then really back it up with images, headline, site design, and even the tone you use in your emails.

That make sense?