Hey Mateo,

I can't offer a complete funnel review here in the forum, just because it takes about an hour. I'm always happy to give feedback on things, but the blog posts take a really long time to read, so I can only scan. If you ever need a full review, I offer those in my consulting sessions which you can learn more about at https://www.musicmarketingmani.....with-john/

But as for general feedback...

Squeeze page

Looks pretty good. I don't know that I personally like the album icon in place of an arrow above the sign up form, and I don't know your template displays o mobile. But otherwise, it has most of the right elements. The biggest issue I have with it is the headline. "ARE YOU READY TO SHAKE THAT BOOTY?!" doesn't say a lot. I read it and I have no idea what kind of music you make. You could be funk, you could be EDM, I just don't know. That said, it does convey energy, and that it inspires dancing, so that is good. But I think it could be improved.

Sales Page

I like the sale page. Looks good.

Blog posts

For reasons mentioned, I can't analyze in depth. They appear to be well written. I wouldn't personally say "blog post of a lifetime" in the post, but that's just me. I'd also include images and bold out some lines here and there to try and make them pop a bit.

All in all though, everything is looking pretty good.

Hope that helps.

Matteo Grassi said
Ciao John,

 

Thank you so much for taking the time to answer, I really admire your work. and I am finally proud of myself that I completed all the steps..

Thanks Matteo, that means a lot. And you should be proud!

The consulting session sounds like it would help at some point after testing few campaign options out, I have some money to invest in my project and I believe they would be well spent that way

Before booking that, I'll see when launching the single (and EP which is being pitched to subscribers once registered) how everything behaves, tweak a few things around if needed (most probably) and examine what happens afterwards. 

 

Sounds good. You definitely don't need it until you get some results. And if things go well, you hopefully won't need it at all 🙂

One thing regarding the squeeze page: I know the headline isn't the most artful of all but I assume that by the time people will read that headline, they have seen and listened to the content that they're going to download (they are going to download the album version of that same track), which is performed live here:

this is only why I assumed it was not necessary to write the headline accordingly to your specs but I will look into this. Might try all different versions, I could actually make an A/B squeeze test page with wordpress as I was plannig to do that regarding the download button (I thought the orange one is effective) 

Well, as you've probably heard me say... In my experience, video does not typically convert as well as images do when you are driving traffic to a squeeze page. This is because a big part of why the MMM process is successful is because we really hone our skills as copywriters, and a good ad really titillates the curiosity of the prospect.

The goal of the ad is to make a bold claim or promise about the experience your music offers. We do this by demonstrating in our copy that we completely understand what it is that our prospects love about music. If we do that well, our prospects will feel that they just need to find out if we live up to our claim. With a squeeze page, the only way to scratch that itch is to take the next step and subscribe. This is one of the reasons I commonly get conversion rates of over 40% on my squeeze pages, from cold traffic.

Now, you might be thinking… but what good does this do if it turns out they don’t actually like the music?

If they truly don’t like the music then it won’t do you any good at all.

But more commonly, people find themselves on the fence. They might like it, but they don’t fall in love at first listen.

With the squeeze page/list building approach we buy ourselves time to build a personal bond and impress them with additional music and content. Thus, increasing the chances that they will become genuine fans and eventually spend money with us.

This is the method to the madness and it works well.

With video everything is put on the table right away. The prospect’s curiosity is satisfied and they feel far less compelled to take the next step, even when they do like the music. This is because there is no personal bond yet, and music itself has no inherent value if their is no bond or pre-existing desire (such as that which exists between a fan and a celebrity artist).

So, while there are exceptions to every rule, and I have seen video work well, it is not typically the best place to start. My advice is to at least test your videos against images.

As an aside, where I do often do well with video ads, is when targeting an warm audience, when running traffic directly to a streaming platform, or when using them to build a custom audience for retargeting and/or lookalike audiences.

All of that said, I think the video looks cool and who knows... maybe you'll be the exception to the rule.

 

Regarding the blog post of a lifetime and blogging in general, I strongly agree with you....It's too long. I also struggle to wanting to read it.

However, how about a VIDEO blog? Like, myself talking for 3 mins explaining who I am and how I got here instead of the long written boring monologue. I will still include some text in that page with some boldened out and links  here and there but definitely a much shorter version of both.

Yep, I think this is a great alternative.

appreciate your help John,

 

Matteo  

My pleasure. Anytime!

Thanks for the condolences Matteo. It was very sudden and sad.

I'm definitely not here to say your first approach was wrong. There are exceptions to every rule, and your plan may work well for you. I'm only laying out the psychology of what I do and what tends to work more often than not. But I'm all for trying things. It's just better to know the rules before you break them. That way, if things don't go right, you have some immediate recourse.

Definitely keep us posted.

Hi Matteo,

I totally understand. That's why it's called "Manifesto". I've been bucking the system for a decade now. Those who get it, really get it.

But most musicians will always have a reaction along the lines of... "But everyone else releases to Spotify, so I have to release to Spotify". It seems that looking successful is more important to many than being successful 🙂

But again, I'm not saying you should ignore Spotify. In fact you should at least release your singles.

I'm just saying that if you embrace the reality that to make $50,000 a year you need to either sell about 2500 albums and convert 30% of those sales with a 3x upsell, or get a minimum of 10,000,000 streams, and if you agree that attracting 2500 customers is far easier for the average musician, then you can't shoot yourself in the foot by giving the same album away, as very few people will buy an album they already own. However, giving away the singles is a different story, and because most people will generate 80% of their streaming revenue from 20% of their tracks... why not have the best of both.

And you can still have an "official release". You are just redefining what that means.