Hey John,

I put together a page with a headline like you suggested and tested it against my current no headline page: The page with the headline ended up beating the other page without it by nearly 3%. It started off at 30% but truth is one of my subscribers on that 1st day was an existing fan. So what I thought was 3/10 subscribed was really only 2/10 if you're only counting cold traffic. So the starting numbers were really 20%, and dropped to nearly 9% after 113 visitors. It's good to know where the page really settles. Now I can start really driving it up.

Thanks John! I am getting the hang of all the tech. stuff so I can now make wiser decisions from a birds eye view, instead of always focusing in on one little detail I can't get the hang of.

So going back to Thurs. when my CTR was at 2.72 (yes, same target audience), the next day on Friday my CTR ironically went up to 4.5% and stayed there almost the whole weekend until I shut it off on Sun. morning. But that's still lower than before. I found the article you shared https://www.facebook.com/busin.....n-facebook very helpful. I will go back to your IC lesson on other forms of ad optimization and familiarize myself.

I came up with a bunch of different ideas to split test in the coming week. I created a vision page with all the changes made to it that I could think of at http://www.brianrogersmusic.com

The winning page (with the headline) I just split tested is at http://www.brianrogersmusic.co.....e-music-b/

Both pages have a different headline, sub-headline, "Listen to what others are saying" sentence, one page has more quotes, and different body text. The vision page is just a fantasy page, but the headline from it is the 1st thing I want to test against the winner's headline. Little by little we'll notch this thing up. Your thoughts are always welcome John, thank you!

Right on John thanks for the encouragement and boiling down the basics of what I should be really testing. I will be in touch soon with further results.

Hell yeah! So I determined with 90% confidence that video on the page is not helping me at 3.3% and still photo at 16.1% after about 31 visits to each page. I know I need to be 100% sure, but I think I'm just gonna go ahead and choose the picture for now. I'm now split testing the headline, the shorter one being page B which is my previous winner and page A has a new headline I wrote- you can check them both out here: 

http://www.brianrogersmusic.co...../freetrack

I changed the body copy and now everything has a bit more text, but I think it paints a clearer picture of what I'm selling.

I also went after two new audiences on FB: Flea and RHCP fan club called Stadium Arcadium. The Flea ad has a fairly solid CTR at 3.24%. Only problem is I was using the same freetrack split test on all the Flea audience, the RHCP fan club audience, AND the Bass Musician Mag. audience so I don't know where most signups are coming from! Doh!

I think it's the Bass Musician Mag audience since the FB conversion pixel is only picking up 1 conversion from each Flean and RHCP audiences. So I shut those off for now: I'll probably go back to the Flea audience and see if I can bump that CTR higher and then work on that squeeze page for just them.

I'm looking forward to seeing which squeeze page performs better with the only ad I have running right now which is the Bass Musician Mag audience. Still no sales, but I think I'm getting an idea of what kind of stuff they need to feel comfortable in the blogs, based on what I'm seeing work in the squeeze page split tests.

\m/

Hey John,

Yeah that was a bit confusing what I wrote to you: You're right the pixel was working fine so I did know that most conversions were coming from the bass musician mag. audience and only 1 subscriber each from Flea and the RHCP fan club.

What I meant was, I couldn't tell how many visitors my squeeze pages had coming from each audience, since Aweber just says Page A 31 visitors and Page B 30 Visitors. The next time I test/split-test multiple audiences at once, it seems need to use unique forms for each audience to tell how many visitors I'm getting from that audience. That implies I'll need to copy and paste my squeeze page html onto a whole 'nuther page with a unique form on it, for each audience?

Yeah the video only converted at 3.3%. Thanks for saying it's an impressive video John, perhaps people like it, but they're saying "Cool, I'll check him out next time now that I know what he's all about." I want to try one more approach with the video, which is getting rid of most of the text and letting the video do the communicating- like this: http://www.brianrogersmusic.com

I know it's bare, but maybe folks will feel less confused, more clear about what's happening, and just sign up because they like video and I told them to sign up for free music. No other copy to cram the page. Haha, I honestly don't know if this will work better or not

Totally-- You've told me that recently: split test ads OR squeeze pages. I had an old school mantra from 2014 ads workshop in my head that I should "always try a few different audiences at once to make sure it's not my targeting that's off." Granted, that was assuming there was no squeeze page split test going on.

So Page A-- the plain an simple page with the video and the weed oriented headline is at 21 visitors, 6 subscribers today so far.

And Page B-- same exact page with the beer oriented headline is at 24 visitors and 1 subscriber today so far.

You can check them both out here: http://www.brianrogersmusic.co...../freetrack

The clear winner according to the calculator is page A at 28.6%, with page B at 4.2%, however I'd only had 21-24 visitors on each.

I'm temtped to shut off the split test, to make my ad dollar go farther to get a true subscriber acquisition cost by tonight. What do you think John, should I keep the split test going until I get 100 visits or more today? (I'm spending 40 bucks a day).

Thanks for you thoughts!

Done and done, I just chose the winner as page A. We'll see if it maintains.

Hey John-

Great talking to you earlier on the call. I am going to start communicating with these folks in real time for a minute, as if I'm building up to a release: get some feedback, get some back and forth happening, and even already I'm getting some email love from a couple folks who have replied to my first automated email.

But in the meantime I wanted to share a blaring mistake I made while creating my last ad campaign. When I fist started this ad run a couple weeks ago, I accidentally put the pixel on the squeeze pages, instead of on the thank you page... I kept it that way for about a week, just not knowing what the hell was happening and figuring something externally was wrong, until it dawned on me that it was an internal mistake, my own damn fault. 

As you can see I got over 500 conversions I fixed it a few days ago and It's kinda funny, but are there any real consequences to my doing this?

Thanks John!

Hey John,

Thanks for the great advice via phone the other day. I just listened back to our conversation and you had some great techniques for treating people like people, instead of acting like a cheese ball on the keyboard. 

I then stumbled across your interview in the insider interviews section with Tracy Childers. Very interesting and applicable. for a cat like me who's been at it for a while but never really rallied my fan base like that. I mean, I've got lots of people I've touched and have old emails, lots of current FB fans, lots of fans of old bands I was in who might be interested in joining the free version of my own "IC" that Tracy was talking about, and maybe then become a paid member after I generate some buzz in the free forum.

Listening to y'all talk made me step back and say: "I DEF. need to generate cold leads into new fans while breaking even or making money from my initial sales funnel, and that will come soon, but.. As a first step I really need to

1) survey the subscribers I've already gotten, like we discussed on the phone.

2) Get a back and forth going and generate some buzz and maybe sales, while getting some great feedback from them.

3) Do the same for all my existing and long time fans who are just waiting for something like this from me.

It all kinda made sense when I heard your and Tracy's interview. I really like the idea of picking up Wishlist Member and starting my own Forum, mainly for the hundreds of existing and old fans that I already have. Esp. since there are a couple of big things happening in the next month that I can use as an excuse to "Celebrate the grand opening of the Forum" by highlighting. I'm releasing a documentary about my style and live show next month, and we're opening for Ben Harper, Brandi Carlile, Lettuce and others on Sep. 20th at the Kaboo Festival in San Diego. Thats a pretty good excuse to start my own Forum 

Again, I really like the idea of picking up wish list member for my existing and old fans, and starting some kind of free forum for them to chat in~ just to get some visible buzz popping off before I start taking subscriptions. Another motivation for starting the free forum 1st is to get a lucrative conversation going with existing and longtime fans, about their experience with me and my music. Maybe even they'll air some frustrations, tell me things to do differently in the future. That will ONLY help me use the right copy when reaching out to future cold traffic.

I need to listen to the interview because it details starting a free forum 1st just for getting people talking, and then sell subscriptions a bit later, but what are your thoughts on this John?

Also, maybe a good IC monthly lesson down the line

Thans for your thoughts John! -Brian

Hey John,

Sorry for the slow reply. I certainly took what you said about no to forums but yes to engagement, and used it. Not only online but face to face- I had like 6 shows last week and actively recruited almost 50 new subscribers (could have been 4 times that if I'd hired a fan to go around the room with my iPad while i played, instead of doing it all myself with my iPhone between set breaks and after the set).

I emailed these new fans their free music and got a few positive emails back. Very good feeling. And helpful. I also emailed my online subscribers from Bass Mag. the other week and asked them what they honestly thought of the music. Got 3 very good emails back.

One guy said "very interesting basslines, I always love checking out other bass players." One guy couldn't unzip the free downloads, and the last one was the most important: he basically said it wasn't what he expected and he couldn't connect with it. Said Les Claypool inspired him and Larry Graham pulled him in and held him, but he couldn't connect with my music. He said he found some genius there, but he couldn't find the hook or feel the groove. Most importantly, he said it was more lyrically driven than bass driven. But he gave me encouragement and said keep going.

I can dig everything he said. It's been a great week of realization and seeing myself from their eyes. I will expand on my exact findings later, but I think I may be targeting the wrong crowd. While my bass playing is an important in making me stand out amongst my peers, and it's a kick during my live show especially, I think I am overusing it in marketing myself online. At least in terms of the ad, squeeze page and initial sales funnel.

I think the musicianship (bass playing ect.) is something to be highlighted in videos and blogs a couple months down the line post initial sales funnel, but at the front of the funnel, I'm envisioning a new approach. I will get into this soon, but for now this is getting to be a little long. I just wanted to hip you to my findings and thank you for encouraging me to get real with these new subscribers and straight up ask them their experience with me. Very human and helpful. Thanks so much John. Talk soon, Brian

Totally.I look forward to running new ads to new interests very soon. For now I am getting some good feedback from existing fans after simply reaching out with a new blog and asking them to give me production advice for the final master, on a new song demo I sent them in the blog. I actually am waiting until tomorrow morning to look at the new emails and comments I recently received wight their feedback. Will be in touch with results and new paths.