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QuoteSo, I feel I need to preface this with what is going on in my campaign right now.
I'm running a 4.4% CTR, but am getting an abysmal number of subscribers. I sent the details of that campaign along with a screenshot of the ad and links to my squeeze page and a potential new squeeze page to support@www.mmmanifesto.com as per Steve's instructions. I'm optimistic that we will get this thing dialed in.
That said, I really got into this to drive local traffic to my side job as classical guitarist. I have recorded one CD and have plans for the second already. In addition, I play some paid gigs here and there on the weekends and I have a standing gig for tips on Saturday mornings in a coffeeshop.
This doesn't do too badly, BTW . . .I average about $10.00 - 15.00 per hour, which in my book isn't bad for just playing for the hell of it. 🙂
This is what brings me to local or regional traffic. When I stay in my area if I add any interests when selecting an audience the size gets very small. In fact, the whole population of my area is a little over 100k.
Even so, I believe that there is an untapped market for me to play weddings and corporate events as well as some gigs that will let me sell CDs.
I'm the only working classical guitarist within 3 hours of here that I know of (excluding San Diego, of course).
I have been a practicing psychotherapist in the area since 2003, and ran a tax business for about 5 years. Because of this, a lot of people know me.
I have tried "networking" and have been doing it for years. Contacting restaurant owners, for example, has been a major pain in the ass and is very slow. The same with the local art scene. I need to make this happen as others certainly won't.
So here is what I would like to do: Use the funnel to stay local and get more gigs here (within a 3 hour radius) in addition to selling the CD.
How can I use the funnel to do this?
Kevin
12:09 pm
June 7, 2011
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Hi Kevin,
I'll refrain from commenting on the first part of your comment because you are already chatting with Steve and I don't have the data you referenced. But the long and short of it is, if you are getting cheap clicks and no subscribers, then something on your landing page does not align with the reason people clicked. That needs to be addressed, tested, and rectified before the subs will come in.
In terms of creating a local funnel, you can absolutely do that but you will have a harder time simply because the audience is so small. For local, I don't recommend spending more than $1/day for every 1000 in your audience. Normally I recommend $1/day for every 10,000. However, it's important that you make the angle of your ad, and your landing page really speak to the fact that you are a local audience. You need to make what you are offering relevant to them based on location, as well as their taste in music. You will also need to target very broad and probably throw multiple artists and genres into your audience (something else I don't normally do). You should watch the lesson on creating event ads. Not all of it will apply, but much of the psychology and targeting discussions will. You can find that here: https://www.mmmanifesto.com/in.....ve-events/
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.
Thanks John:
Since that last conversation with Steve I was able to create a look alike audience based on people who have engaged with my FB page. I also tweaked the squeeze page, and used a different image in the ad.
I have been really amazed at the change. I went ahead and optimized for conversions and am able to see that out of 20 clicks only 13 resulted in squeeze page views.
Here's the cool part, of those 13 landing page views, 8 have become subscribers!! We are at $1.43 per subscriber which is better than the $13.00 per subscriber I was getting. It seems to be getting cheaper as time goes on, so I'm looking for that magic $1.00 per subscriber.
There have been 338 impressions with 13 views, making that a 3.8% viewing rate.
I'll check out the link you posted. I had a pretty cool gig the other night where I was able to pick up new subscribers face to face, and I have a poetry event and an art opening in August that will allow me to pick up more subscribers.
I ran a group of 24 local subscribers through the funnel a few weeks ago and I ended up with two sales.
Is 10% a good minimum to be looking for as far as sales go?
Thanks.
klb
So, John . . . .I read your reply to another member.
I'm also getting cheap subscribers but notice that only about 50% of them open the e-mails.
I temporarily turned on the "confirmation message" and tested the squeeze page. While it sent me a confirmation message in my e-mail, it still sent me to the "Thanks" page.
If a bona fide customer comes then checks their e-mail and downloads it, well and good.
However, won't the FB pixel still pick up on the event and log it as a "conversion"? (i.e., new subscriber) even if the person never confirms the e-mail? Then, won't FB still be optimizing for the same substandard "subscribers?"
If this is the case, I thought about inserting an additional page that the FB pixel does not log which would ask the potential subscriber to confirm their e-mail. Once they do so, they could then be directed to the page that the pixel tracks. The idea is to encourage FB to optimize for these better quality subscribers so as to get our cost down for them.
Before I go messing with things I wanted to get your input here.
klb
4:39 pm
June 7, 2011
Offline
Hey Kevin,
Really happy to hear that prices are coming down and sales are coming in. 10% is actually an extremely good sales ratio. Average is more like 4 - 6% and 10% is more or less the ceiling aside from the very odd case. As you get more and more subs from real world events like live shows, you will see your sales conversion rate go up though, as those are the best subscribers you could ever get. I worked with one artist who had a list of only leads from live shows and she converted at about 30%. The only negative there is that you have to tour forever to get those leads. So it's all a trade off. Great to do both though.
As you are gathering, when you have confirmed opt in off, opens can go down. This is something we've been talking about a lot on coaching calls over the last 6 months or so. I usually leave confirmed opt in on these days due to fairly recent changes in the algorithm.
But yes, if you have confirmed opt in on, you need to create two thank you pages. One that essentially says "Wait! there is one more thing to do" and one that lets them know that they are all set. You create a conversion goal for people that land on that second page, and select that as your conversion event when creating the ads.
Here's an example of copy I use on the first one. Edit it to match your own tone and brand.
Thank you page 1:
THANKS! THERE’S JUST ONE THING LEFT TO DO…
In a few moments an email will arrive in your inbox. You just need to click the confirmation link in that email so that we can confirm that you are the owner of the email address. It’s simply a formality to insure that we never send an email to anyone who didn’t request it…
If for any reason you do not receive the email in the next few minutes be sure to check your junk folder in case it somehow found it’s way there. Once you locate the message, simply click the confirmation link and your downloads will be sent to you seconds later.
Thanks!
Confirmation page:
AWESOME!
You’re all set. Your download info is on it’s way to your inbox now. Be sure to hit reply once you’ve had a chance to listen to the music. I’d love to hear what you think.
Thanks again and enjoy the music.
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.
Hi again, John:
So, people now sign up in two steps: They get a thank-you message that directs them to their e-mail; Once they confirm they get directed to the confirmation page and aweber sends them the link to download.
Subscribers are coming in, and so I now have a question about FB optimization.
According to Aweber I picked up 5 confirmed subscribers today.
FB says I only got one.
I created a new custom conversion event, making the "confirmation" page the event to track. My thinking was that since confirmed subscribers are what we are looking for, we really want FB to optimize for those people that hit the confirmation page.
I contacted FB customer service today and they confirmed that the ad is set up to track the people who hit my confirmation page.
Right now I'm paying about $1.60 ish for a subscriber and my squeeze page is converting at 40% when I get the real conversion stats from Aweber. However, I'm concerned that FB may not be optimizing properly.
Am I missing something?
klb
12:19 pm
June 7, 2011
Offline
Hi Kevin,
I'm not 100% sure I am reading your reply correctly, but I interpret that to say that Facebook conversions are showing less than half of the conversions aweber is showing.
If that is correct then there are a few likely reasons why this is the case...
1. (and this is the most likely reason), Aweber counts a subscriber after they submit, not after they confirm. At least on the web form stats. Go take a look at the subscribers themselves and see if their status is confirmed or pending.
2. Facebook will occasionally fail to count a subscriber because of privacy settings, and/or other cookie/pixel related complications. I often see FB stats being about 10% light compared to the confirmed subs on Aweber.
3. Facebook is set to west coast time and Aweber is on East coast, so there is a three hour discrepancy which means the stats ever line up exactly right.
4. Something is not set up right (but this doesn't sound like it's the case).
Hope that helps.
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.
Thanks John. It was the time zone thing.
Another thing that happens with annoying regularity is that FB routinely takes 24 hours to approve my ads. My last ad was approved at 11:30 PM, so FB dumped the whole $10.00 daily budget in that last 30 minutes of the day.
Also, I had to do some tweaking of the Thank You page with Steve to get rid of the "Home" option in the footer as I didn't want anybody "leaking out" without confirming their e-mail.
So, taking that first 30 minutes out of the equation, I can see that my cost per subscriber went from $2.00 to about $1.80 over the past few days. The squeeze page has consistently hit between 25-27 % and the ad runs about 3.5% to 6% click through to actual landing page views.
Right now the price per subscriber is a bit high, but I notice that I get more subscribers in the early AM and the evening as opposed to the day time.
Once my local people got out of the funnel my sales dried up, so I reworked my e-mails today to make them a little more consistent with my personality, plus more geared to an older crowd.
My physical CD will be here from disc makers in a few weeks, and I'm thinking about pitching that to the people in the funnel as all of them are over 40.
Based on what I'm saying here, do you have any other input? My thoughts right now are to leave it alone for a few days to see if the price per subscriber goes down . . .unless you have a magic idea for me. 🙂
3:00 pm
June 7, 2011
Offline
Kevin Benbow said
Thanks John. It was the time zone thing.Another thing that happens with annoying regularity is that FB routinely takes 24 hours to approve my ads. My last ad was approved at 11:30 PM, so FB dumped the whole $10.00 daily budget in that last 30 minutes of the day.
I know what you mean. I've had that happen as well. But it's one of those things that happens sometimes and not others. I don't know what the rhyme or reason is there. If it concerns you, what you can do is publish the ad but pause the ad set. That way it will get approved but not become active until you unpause it.
Ads can take a while to be approved, but in my experience it's usually just a few minutes. But account history has a lot to do with it.
Also, I had to do some tweaking of the Thank You page with Steve to get rid of the "Home" option in the footer as I didn't want anybody "leaking out" without confirming their e-mail.
So, taking that first 30 minutes out of the equation, I can see that my cost per subscriber went from $2.00 to about $1.80 over the past few days. The squeeze page has consistently hit between 25-27 % and the ad runs about 3.5% to 6% click through to actual landing page views.
Right now the price per subscriber is a bit high, but I notice that I get more subscribers in the early AM and the evening as opposed to the day time.
Once my local people got out of the funnel my sales dried up, so I reworked my e-mails today to make them a little more consistent with my personality, plus more geared to an older crowd.
My physical CD will be here from disc makers in a few weeks, and I'm thinking about pitching that to the people in the funnel as all of them are over 40.
Based on what I'm saying here, do you have any other input? My thoughts right now are to leave it alone for a few days to see if the price per subscriber goes down . . .unless you have a magic idea for me. 🙂
I think that all sounds on point. That's what I would do. And adding a physical option could be great. This lesson shows you how to offer both: https://www.mmmanifesto.com/in.....t-options/
Good luck 🙂
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.
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