Marcu Taylor's Blog, page 30

We’ve Launched MusicJobBoard.com: A Job Board for the Music Industry

This afternoon we hit the big red launch button on an exciting new side project called MusicJobBoard.com – which as it says on the tin, is a job board for the music industry. “Another job board!?” let me explain this one.

There’s certainly no shortage of job boards, nor music specific job boards for that matter, but (IMO) that’s no reason to stop improving what already exists. My personal experiences with the existing job boards have not been the best, and having spoken to others about it, I’m certainly not the only one.

So why has Venture Harbour built this?

#1 The Challenge

As an online marketing company that claims to be the bees knees for entertainment companies, I think it’s healthy for us to test those claims to make sure we’re walking the walk, and not just talking the talk. Job boards are exceptionally hard to market online. When you combine tens of thousands of user-generated pages, each expiring 30 or so days later, and all duplicated on tens of other job listing sites, you have nothing short of an SEO nightmare.

There are also geographical phrasing challenges, due to different cultures searching for jobs in different ways. Long story short, if we can do this well then we’re ready for most things that our clients could throw at us. It’s a great challenge.

#2 Alway Be Learning

Along with the challenge is the opportunity for us to refine our understanding of what does and doesn’t work. Having spent the past five years in digital marketing, few things have become clearer than the need to experiment. What Google (and many bloggers) say works, often isn’t the case – as i’ve proved time and time again. In this particular project, i’m doing a lot of experimentation around Schema.org’s job listing markup and how this structured markup and meta data influences search rankings. The ranking changes i’ve noticed already (from *just* implementing) the markup has been very interesting.

#3 It’s nice to be nice

On top of this, it’s helpful. Recruiting in the music industry is tough – both for employees and job seekers. If you’ve ever posted a job listing in the music industry, it’s very likely that you ended up with tens of CVs that had clearly been shotgun posted to fifty other employers with no aspect of personalistion. We’ve taken a hard look at the limitations of what already exists and have tried to build something that’s better for everyone.

If anyone has any early ideas, thoughts, or questions on the project, feel free to contact me. I’d be particularly keen to hear your previous experiences hiring or searching for work in the music industry and what you think could have made it easier or more enjoyable.

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The Anatomy of Creating a Great Infographic

There are speculations that infographics are losing their effectiveness in content marketing. Despite making these speculations myself several years ago, I have to disagree and eat my words – infographics are here to stay.

As a means of visual communication, infographics have been around for centuries in the print press. But it’s arguable that the intentions have changed. Back then, infographics were an effective way of ‘conveying a thousand words’ and saving column inches, whereas today they’re more or less built for links, social shares, and other indirect signals that collectively increase one’s site traffic.

The big change over the past three years is that with so much competition the bar for creating a great infographic has been raised. You can no longer get away with slapping ten factoids into a PSD and expecting it to go viral. So how do you create a great infographic that stands out? Here are some of the lessons i’ve learned over the years.

Start at the end

When creating an infographic, I find it useful to start at the end goal and work backwards. If there were no limits, what would be amazing? What would get 1,000+ shares and drive links, traffic, and awareness for the next 2-3 years? What are our audience’s burning questions or confusions that we could solve?

When you have an idea of what could be amazing, you can then work backwards to what’s possible – or what it would take to create your great idea. The alternative (starting with the data & ideas you have) leads to less creative ideas that are more likely to flop.

What’s your story?

It’s cliché, but infographic design is about storytelling. Most mediocre infographics make the mistake of dumping a bunch of data into Photoshop and making it look like an infographic. The problem with this is that if the data doesn’t tell us anything new – or the story behind the data isn’t prominent – then it’s unlikely to entertain, inform, or have any emotional impact on the viewer.

If your story is how we’re approaching the end of the World, use data to tell me where we came from, what caused the downfall, where we are now, and where we’re going. I want a story – not a data overdose!

On this note, clients often ask “should we collect our own data or can you find existing data for us?” This is a tough one. The former is my preference as it often leads to new insights and sexy stories, but it has the downside of sometimes being time consuming and sensitive. I’d say as a rule of thumb, if your data is incredible and you think you have some fascinating insights, then it’s probably worth using your own dataset, otherwise it’s likely easier to use publicly available data.

Make them angry!

The best infographics are emotive. They enrage, entertain, and envoke strong emotions that make it hard not to share. The deluge of Mac vs. PC infographics are a great example of this. If your infographic is neutral or doesn’t envoke any strong emotions, it’s unlikely to sail far in the blogosphere.

Again, work backwards on this. What topics are making people angry at the moment? In the music industry you could illustrate major record label monopolies, live sector monopolies (and increasing live ticket prices), download piracy, minuscule revenues paid by streaming services etc. Anything that gets your audience’s blood boiling.

Go topical or evergreen

After years of creating all kinds of content, i’ve come to the conclusion that content should either be evergreen (be relevant forever) or topical (be relevant for the next few days / weeks).

When a news story breaks or a trend emerges, it can be tough for journalists to stand out amongst all of the other ‘breaking news’ posts. By creating an infographic around a topical story you offer them an alternative that’s very likely to garner a good response from their readers.

The alternative is to create evergreen content, which may not generate as much attention in the short-term, but because it never goes ‘out of date’ it will still be driving links and shares in years to come. This kind of content is like creating a glacier. You have to add a lot of evergreen content to get it going, but once it is going it’s unstoppable.

A recent trend in infographic development is to use live data feeds in order to keep your infographic constantly up to date. We tried this with a few recent interactive HTML5 infographics that we developed and we’ve found them to generally be very effective.

Unlike typical infographics, which due to their static nature tend to go ‘out of date’ live infographics are evergreen due to the data being constantly updated in real time. The only downside to creating live infographics is the time investment (it took us around 6-7 days of design & coding, opposed to 3-4 for a typical infographic).

the Build it and they will come mindset

There’s no such thing as ‘build it and they will come’ in content marketing, you have to have a smart distribution strategy. I’ve found that even spending just 30 minutes tweeting relevant journalists with your infographic can work wonders in getting you content placed.

Build up your profiles on relevant social networks like Reddit, StumbleUpon, Facebook, and Digg. Do plenty of outreach to relevant bloggers, and distribute them on infographic sites like Visual.ly.

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11 Essential Tips for Mobile App Marketing

There are over 800,000 apps available in the app store. The bar for standing out is exceptionally high, which is why it’s fundamental for mobile app developers and entrepreneurs to have a strong mobile app marketing strategy. Here are 11 tips for marketing your app online.

#1 App Store Optimisation (ASO)

Both Google Play and Apple’s App Store algorithmically prioritise certain apps in search results based on a variety of ranking factors (ratings, tags, screenshots, app title, download data etc.). However, unlike SEO (which primarily focuses on Google) app store optimisation is not a one-size fits all game.

The most important ranking factor when it comes to app store optimisation is your app’s title. If you’ve built a train time-checker app, then it’s recommended to use ‘train time checker’ in the title.

You can use Google’s Adwords Keyword Tool (with the device setting on mobile) to identify which terms / phrases relevant to your app people search for the most on mobile. I’d recommend taking the specific search volumes with a pinch of salt, but it’ll give you a good ballpark idea of the magnitude of searches for different keywords.

When it comes to ASO, it’s important to fill out all of the fields with relevant details when submitting your app to the app stores, and pick your categories carefully.

Similarly to traditional SEO (search engine optimisation) social links are also incredibly important, as is the authority of the app developer. Focus on promoting your app heavily via Google+, Twitter and Facebook and find interesting ways to incentivise real social sharing.

#2 Facebook Marketing

I’m very surprised that few mobile marketers are talking about this. In my experience, one of the most effective ways of acquiring mobile app installs has been through clever use of Facebook’s advertising platform. I could write for days on how to set this up, but my general advice is this:

• Use a combination of page promoted posts & sponsored stories targeted to mobile news feeds.

• Use page like ads, again with the placement set to mobile newsfeeds.

• Use an oCPM for conversions / installs bid type.

• Use the power editor or a tool like Qwaya to manage and segment your ad demographics.

• Use a combination of high-res images and URL posts.

Alternatively, feel free to drop me an email and I’d be happy to advise on good ways to setup a Facebook Ad campaign for your mobile app.

#3 Promoted Tweets

Similarly, promoted tweets are another highly effective way of driving mobile app downloads when set up correctly. Start off with a small budget testing various different keyword segments, and scale up what drives the best cost-per-acquisitions.

#4 Build viral mechanics into the app

Again, this technique is so under talked about. Marketing your app should not be some after-thought, but instead built into your app, if possible. What does your app do to encourage social sharing to the user’s social profiles? As long as every user refers an average of one new user, you have linear growth. If one user refers two users, you have exponential linear growth – often referred to as ‘going viral’.

#5 Drive reviews, naturally.

Reviews are a huge aspect of app store optimisation, as well as an important factor in convincing people to download your app. It’s extremely important that you find an effective way of driving reviews in a way that’s natural and won’t trigger Google or Apple’s spam filters.

I recommend the ‘offer them something cool for a review approach’ – be it some free credits or an extended subscription, giving the user something valuable in return for a review is a win-win situation that seems to work well.

#6 Mobile specific ad networks

I’ll be honest, I haven’t had an awful lot of experience using mobile-specific ad networks but I’ve heard mixed opinions about them. There are literally hundreds of ad networks available now, so it’s a bit of hassle separating the good from the bad, but the ones that seem to get a lot of good press are iAds, AdMob and Mojiva.

#7 Create a microsite & apply traditional web marketing tactics

Mobile app marketing is tough because there are a relatively limited number of ‘catchments’ where you can reach people interested in downloading your app – and those places (app stores, app magazines etc.) are extremely competitive to get visibility in. However, creating a micro-site opens up a whole host of marketing possibilities.

If you’ve built an app that sells concert tickets in London, you could build a micro-site and do some SEO around it. If you ranked #1 for ‘London concert tickets’ you’d drive approximately ~8,100 people searching for ‘London Concert Tickets’ to your app per month.

#8 Leverage other people’s audiences

Guest posting can be an incredibly effective way of driving mobile app installs if done in the right places. The more you know about your target audience and which publications they read, the more informed your guest posting strategy can be. In my experience, it’s far better to go after prestige publications (such as Mashable, The Next Web, Huffington Post etc.) opposed to the more niche publications, unless your app is highly relevant to that audience.

The traffic and awareness that one post on Mashable can drive is enormous, and probably equivalent to 10-15 guest posts on smaller sites. Aim high.

#9 Reddit, Quora, and niche networks

Reddit advertising is ridiculously cheap. The last time I ran a Reddit ad campaign I paid less than £50 for about 600 clicks, of which the quality was surprisingly high. Play around with advertising or contributing on niche social networks, such as Reddit or Quora. You can also use Google’s display network to run your ads on specific websites that support Google Ads. This can be very powerful when done well. For example, if you have a financial services app, you can run your ads on The FT or Forbes, which not only drives hyper-relevant traffic, but also associates your app with a sense of credibility.

#10 Retargeting

When of the beautiful things about having an app microsite is that you can use retargeting to run ads (on Facebook, Google, or any websites supporting Google Ads) to people who have already visited your app microsite but not yet downloaded it. These ads typically convert very well – as you’re only advertising to those who already know about your app.

#11 Email marketing

Email marketing may have connotations of being a bit 2005, but it’s still one of the most effective ways of driving traffic, building advocacy, and converting leads to users / customers. Build a newsletter and offer your potential users information that’s useful and valuable to them. They’ll respect you for it and ultimately be more inclined to download your app.

Conclusion

I hope these ideas have spurred on some new ideas to help you market your app. If you have any questions or would like Venture Harbour to help you with your mobile app marketing, feel free to get in touch and we’d be more than happy to help!

Image Credit: Soldiers Media Center

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9 Tips When Choosing an Internet Marketing Company

When it comes to choosing an Internet marketing company to work with, there are a few things you should consider to ensure that you don’t end up ‘agency hopping’ every six months.

Note: As the owner of Venture Harbour (an Internet marketing company) I clearly have some bias, but these tips are the result of my observations and conversations over the past five years with many client-side and agency people. I’ve tried to ensure my suggestions are well balanced.

1) The biggest agencies are not the best

One might assume that the biggest agencies – or those with the flashiest client list – are the best. That’s fundamentally not true. Many of the biggest online marketing agencies have only a handful of top digital marketers working for them, and then tens or hundreds of junior online marketers managing the client load. Unless you are going to be one of their top paying clients, you’re unlikely to receive the senior expertise you had hoped for.

2) If they rank for ‘SEO’ they’ve got to be good at SEO!

It may seem reasonable to assume that the best online marketing companies are those who rank #1 in Google when you type in something like ‘SEO’ or ‘Internet Marketing’, that’s got to show that they’re good at what they do, right?

Wrong. At an agency I used to work for, when clients asked us why we didn’t rank #1 for SEO our response was along the lines of “we’re too busy doing our client’s work that it’s hard to find the time to do our own” and this was true to a large extent (although, truthfully our best clients didn’t come from search so it wasn’t a huge priority to rank for those terms).

I think a more accurate answer now is that those results are almost entirely taken over by Internet marketing companies who are applying unethical spam tactics, and it’s not worth our reputation to try and compete in them. Don’t assume that those who rank well are the best. Similarly, if a company offering conversion rate optimization don’t have a well-converting site, give them the benefit of the doubt – look at their client’s sites before you jump to any conclusions.

3) Be the highest paying client, not the lowest.

It’s quite often the case in agencies that the highest paying clients receive the best service and access to most senior staff. As mentioned in #1, being a low-paying client in a huge agency means that you’re unlikely to have senior staff working on your campaign. Conversely, being a higher paying client in a smaller boutique agency usually ensures that you will have the senior and more experienced staff working on your campaign.

4) If possible, find an agency that is specialised in your niche

As Internet marketing has developed, many Internet marketing companies (Venture Harbour included) have specialised in a specific niche or service to maintain a strong competitive advantage.

Being good at everything is extremely inefficient. If a pharmaceutical company approached me tomorrow to help with their internet marketing I’d have to invest a great deal of effort in learning about their industry, building pharma contacts etc. – and frankly, I’m just not passionate about spending my days doing content marketing or keyword research for pharmaceutical companies.

By specialising in music, film and game, some interesting things have happened. While it’s hard to say from an unbiased perspective, I think it’s fair to say that we’ve undeniably become the best option for companies in those niches (many larger agencies have started approaching us to help with their entertainment clients)!

The reason for this is simple. What takes unspecialised agencies eight days to do, we can get done in two days, because we have the pre-established relationships, understanding of the industry, and reams of data on what’s working and what isn’t. While we may be inefficient working for a pharma company, we’re incredibly efficient and effective when working with music, film, and game companies.

Unless your niche is really weird (think: ship galvanizing, or pilot software) then it’s likely that there will be an Internet marketing company who is passionate and knowledgeable about your industry. Those qualities are massively under looked when hiring an online marketing supplier.

5) Don’t go for the cheapest option

I’m sure this is a given, but when it comes to SEO there is a certain truth in getting what you pay for.

While at a music conference last year I spoke to a friend who was very proud of the fact that her company was only paying £50/month for SEO (outsourced to The Philippines) and that they ranked #1 in Google for a very competitive and profitable keyword. Needless to say, following the Penguin Update they lost their impressive rankings, and have had to work extra hard getting back to where they were pre-SEO campaign.

In the long run it’s far more cost-effective to work with someone who is both ethical and exceptional at Internet marketing – and those people tend not to have the lowest price tags. In my experience, you can hire someone pretty exceptional for around £40–60 per hour.

6) Use recommended lists & supplier directories with caution

While there are some good supplier directories out there, such as the Econsultancy ones, there are many that just require agencies to pay a submission fee to be featured in, which obviously discredits any kind of recommendation. Others are very cliquey and only ‘let in’ agencies who are on good terms with the owners of the supplier directory.

If you’re using supplier directories to find an agency, do some homework on the agencies you shortlist to make sure they walk the walk.

7) Case studies & recommendations

One of the most unbiased ways of identifying how effective an agency is at online marketing is to look at their case studies, testimonials, and to ask for a client recommendation. I’m a firm believer in show > tell, so case studies are a great way to catch out the agencies who only know how to talk the talk.

It’s worth bearing in mind, though, that virtually every Internet marketing agency will have case studies. What’s important to look out for is how relevant those case studies are to your specific situation – and how many case studies the company has in proportion to their total number of clients.

8) Pay attention to what they do, not what they say

A client’s backlink profile tells you a lot about their SEO agency (I should add: current and past agencies). While you have to be mindful that one bad link profile absolutely does not mean it’s the agency’s fault, if 20/20 of their client’s most recent links are littered with crappy directory links that appear to be built by the same agency, then it may be worth moving on to the next company on your shortlist.

I’d recommend using Majestic SEO – as that enables you to view most recent links, and thus those most likely to have been built by the agency. I’ve run this test for a few agencies I respect, and a few less trustworthy agencies and it’s generally quite a good litmus test. Pay attention to what people do, not what they say.

9) Don’t buy into link networks

I thought this was a given, until two weeks ago a potential client said to me “we’re speaking to another agency who have their own link network where we get added if we work with them”. Facepalm. Gone are the days when you can slap your link on a network and rank #1 for ‘digital cameras’. In 2013, those tactics simply will not work – especially not in music, film, or gaming.

Conclusion

Ultimately, all of the case studies, testimonials, and online recommendations in the World won’t ensure that a company is as good as they make out. Always go with your gut feeling, but do your homework and use these recommendations to prevent ending up with a company who don’t have your best interests at heart.

Of course, if your company is in anyway involved in music, film or game, i’d love to hear about your situation & challenges. You can reach me via the contact form or directly (my email address is marcus (at) ventureharbour (dot) com).

Image Credit: Fueg0

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7 Tips for Making Your Facebook Ads Work

When it comes to Facebook ads, most marketers I speak to are skeptical about how effective they are. In my experience, those who don’t believe in Facebook Ads simply haven’t experimented enough.

Over the past five weeks I’ve been running a Facebook Ad Campaign that has a ~400% ROI for a client in the music industry. Every £200 we spend, we drive £1000 worth of signups.

What I find particularly interesting about this campaign is that there is no way it would have been a success if I had created it via any of Facebook’s recommended approaches. To cut a long story short, Facebook do not make it easy for you to run a really effective campaign. You have to experiment and learn what works for you.

Here’s an example to put this into perspective. This month I ran two identical Page Like Ads as an experiment. The only variable was the bid type. One had the bid type set to oCPM (optimised cost per thousand impressions) for reach, the other was set to oCPM for clicks.

The first ad received a cost-per-like of $29.89, the other $1.20.

Imagine you had only ran the first ad? You’d come away thinking that it was going to cost you $3k to get 100 likes! What a waste of our budget – let’s stick to posting cat memes!

What’s really interesting about this is that nowhere on the Facebook Ad platform do they tell you that if you want likes that you should optimise for clicks. In fact, they suggest you optimise for likes – which, weirdly don’t perform as effectively as optimising for clicks!

Understanding what works with Facebook Ads

I’m not going to explain what does and doesn’t work, because, of course, it depends on a variety of variables. But I will explain what’s helped me, in the hope that it might inspire you to think about what you could test.

Scrap the Facebook Ad Manager

If you’re serious about Facebook advertising, stop promoting your posts on the page, and stop using the Facebook Ad Manager. These tools are extremely limited, and in my opinion often guide you down the wrong path.

I highly recommend using Qwaya, which to my knowledge is probably the most comprehensive Ad management tool specifically designed for Facebook Advertising that won’t break the bank.

Failing that, use the power editor. These tools not only offer you a wider selection of powerful ways to promote objects on Facebook, but they also speed up the setup process and enable you to do clever things with segmenting your ads and tracking what works.

Use the conversion pixel

Facebook’s conversion pixel is not just about being able to track conversions better from Facebook, it’s also about optimising for them. One of the bid types that Facebook offers via it’s power editor is ‘oCPM for conversions’ which algorithimically optimises your budget to drive more conversions.

I have tried this and it did appear to work, but I personally prefer using an oCPM for clicks bid type, and then just segmenting my ads to work out which demographic segments convert best, and then optimising for more of that traffic.

Segment, segment, segment!

When I speak to friends who are heavy Facebook advertisers, one thing that is always quite amusing to hear is how massively the results for similar demographic targets can vary.

“18-19 year old males in Canada converted at 5%, but 20-21 year old males in Canada didn’t convert at all”!

Depending on budget, I try to segment each ad by gender, country, and age blocks of 3-5 years. You can then use the campaign reports to identify whether it’s worth segmenting by interests or other variables that you’ve chosen to target by.

Use mobile ads for app advertising or page likes

Mobile advertising on Facebook is currently one of the most cost-effective paid options for driving page likes. It’s also incredibly effective for driving mobile app awareness and downloads, for obvious reasons.

About a month ago, I wrote a post on Social Media Today suggesting what lies ahead for mobile & tablet advertising, particularly on Facebook and Google’s advertising platforms. In a nutshell, as marketers understand the platforms better, and app creators like Conduit and Mobile Roadiebegin to integrate app advertising more heavily into their packages, bids will continue to go up and up – so now’s definitely the time to be making the most of the low costs of advertising on mobile.

Vary image, URL, and video posts

I generally stick to promoting really fascinating photos or URLs when promoting page posts on Facebook. My rule of thumb is, if I post an image and it gets an unusually high amount of engagement naturally and includes a call-to-action link, then it’s probably worth promoting. That way, you’re not promoting annoying crap in people’s news feeds.

URLs tend to work best for driving traffic, so if the goal is driving conversions it’s usually a safe bet to use them. When promoting external websites, I recommend changing your landing page’s open graph image once every 2-3 campaigns, to prevent ad blindness.

Mix your ads up, try a combination of videos, photos, and URLs to see what works for you.

Sponsored stories vs. promoted posts vs. ads vs…

The best combination of ad types is highly dependent on your goals. From my experience, promoted posts are best for engagement & traffic, standard Facebook Ads are good for reach, and sponsored stories are good for increasing the effectiveness of either.

One thing I will add is that these ads all compliment each other. As your story or object gets more engagement, it will perform better on all metrics. So while standard Facebook Ads may suck for traffic, if they can drive a bunch of likes and comments which improve the effectiveness of your promoted post and sponsored story, then it can be worth running them for that reason alone.

Use Facebook Exchange retargeting

I have to admit, I’m still experimenting with Facebook Exchange retargeting and have seen very mixed results so far, but overall I’ve been quite impressed.

For MusicLawContracts.com, a side project of mine, I saw a 39% conversion rate from people who had not purchased but then been retargeted to on Facebook. A friend of mine in the gambling niche also sent me a screenshot showing a 50% conversion rate from his Facebook Exchange advertising!

I recommend giving Perfect Audience a try, as they also offer a $60 free trial budget to test whether it will work for you.

Final thoughts

From my personal experiences, I can say that Facebook Ads do work if you’re willing to put in some effort. Sure, not every niche lends itself to them, but I think it’s naïve to jump to the conclusion that they only work for consumer-facing brands, or brands in exciting industries. Those assumptions are, in many ways, self-defeating.

The next time you read a ‘Facebook Ads Suck’ blog post, consider – did they just give up too early? Did they have the wrong strategy?

When it comes to Facebook advertising, I highly recommend building a small network of people who are also experimenting that you can share insights with and get feedback from.

 

Image Credit: Toodlepip

The post 7 Tips for Making Your Facebook Ads Work appeared first on Marcus Taylor.

14 Lessons Learnt From My Most Successful Online Product Launch

For context, last month I launched a 100-hour long ‘epic deal’ on my website TheMusiciansGuide.co.uk to help musicians save money on recording, distribution and music promotion. Here are fourteen lessons and tips I picked up whilst creating this deal.

1. Focus on WHY your offer or product is valuable, not HOW

If you haven’t already seen this TED talk by Simon Sinek, I strongly recommend putting aside 18 minutes today to do so. It was one of the videos recommended to me by the organisers of TEDxMelbourne when I was planning for my TED talk.

Simon explains that the human brain is made up in a way that makes us most receptive to marketing ideas that focus on why a product exists.

I learnt this lesson through a simple headline split test. I was testing ‘The Ultimate Package to Build Your Fanbase’ against a few variations that implied why the product was exists and why it mattered, such as ‘Need to Get Your Music Out There?’ – the latter outperformed the former by several percent.

 

2. Add a sense of urgency and/or scarcity to your offer

When you add a sense of urgency to a great offer, conversion rate typically increases, as the customer no longer has the option to procrastinate.

There are various ways to add urgency to your offer. For example, you can add a time limit e.g. ‘offer available for 100 hours only’, or a simple product stock limit e.g. ‘only 21 products available’. Both imply that if you don’t act soon you may miss out.

Conversion rate for the epic deal almost doubled as time ran out

Interestingly, I also found that how you present urgency is a major factor – static text saying ‘offer available for 100 hours only’ was nowhere near as effective as a second-by-second countdown timer.

 

3. There’s an easy way to pay lower PayPal fees

If you were to sell 1,000 products for £10 each via Paypal, you’d pay around £540 in transaction fees. I wasn’t sure how many transactions I would receive during the epic deal, but I guessed that it would be in the hundreds, so I began looking into ways to lower my inevitable Paypal transaction fee bill.

I came across this useful chart detailing how Paypal fees work. In short, the more money that goes into your Paypal account the month before, the lower your transaction fees for the following month.

By sending a single payment of $10,000 into your Paypal account the month prior to your launch you will automatically lower your fee per transaction from 2.9% to 2.2% for the following month. Just be sure to do your math and check that the fee you’ll pay on sending the $10,000 is lower than the amount you save by having the lowered Paypal transaction fee.

 

4. Segment Your Converting Traffic by OS, Browser and Country to Troubleshoot hard-to-diagnose problems

There are a few reasons why I care so much about segmenting converting traffic by operating system, browser, country, and traffic source.

First of all, it’s a great way to troubleshoot problems that are hard to diagnose. When you notice that all browsers convert at 4-5% except IE 7.0, or that no sales are coming through tablet computers, you can begin to investigate what might causing those anomalies.

It also helps you to understand which traffic to invest your time increasing. If you’re paying for online advertising, having a dashboard like this makes it very easy to see at a glance which adverts are profitable and which aren’t.

 

5. Approach print media advertising with caution

I have to admit that I’m very naïve as to what the general consensus is around print media advertising for online campaigns, but my experience tells me that it’s relatively ineffective compared to online advertising.

There are a few things that I repeatedly noticed about print media advertising. First of all, the numbers always sound tempting. I paid less than £200 to have a quarter-page advert in a magazine that went out to 85,000 musicians. I paid another £600 to reach 325,000 musicians. Both ads turned out to be unprofitable.

Secondly, print media sales reps often tell you that you need to run an ad for more than one week for it to be effective. I call bullshit. If an advert is good it should work the first time round – if not, it’s probably not a good advert, and running it over several weeks won’t help.

 

6. Use pre-orders to troubleshoot problems, improve the product, and test the effectiveness of adverts.

Personally, I don’t tend to pre-order products, so I wasn’t entirely convinced that enabling pre-orders would be a good idea. After reading the chapter in Josh Kaufman’s excellent book ‘Personal MBA’ on using pre-orders as a means of ‘shadow testing’ a product, I decided to give it a shot.

First of all, I received about 50% of my total sales through pre-orders (I was very shocked by this!), which not only boosted my confidence in the product, but it also helped to spread out the incoming payments over several weeks – limiting the likelihood of PayPal account limitations etc.

Secondly, it meant that I was beginning to receive customer feedback, advertising effectiveness data weeks before the product actually launched, which helped me to improve the success of the launch overall.

 

7. Concept Feedback is an amazing (and free) tool for improving your landing pages

For those unfamiliar with Concept Feedback, it’s a website where you can post a landing page mockup and have professional graphic designers and user experience experts critique it for free. Ever since I stumbled across the site, I’ve been using it religiously to improve my landing pages.

Here’s a snapshot of the concepts I posted for the epic deal.

 

8. Forget average conversion rate

When people ask what my conversion rate for the deal was, I tell them 3.99%. But this number is an average, and is therefore quite misleading. Some traffic sources converted at 14%! Most converted at 7-9%. Plenty didn’t convert at all. What use is 3.99% in painting a true picture of what’s going on here?

IF your traffic sources are consistent, and you’re looking to improve your landing page through split testing, a mean average of conversion rate is a good metric to measure. But if you’re trying to understand how traffic converts on a page, measure conversion rate for that page segmented by traffic source.

 

9. Turn every refund request into your happiest customer

In total, I received 7 refund requests from customers who bought the epic deal. I ended up refunding just one of those, as the other six went away as some of my happiest customers.

Here’s an email I received from a customer who previously asked me for a refund.

How do you turn a refund-requesting customer into a happy customer? You find out why they’re disappointed, and do everything you can to change it – even if that means making a few phone calls or calling in a few favors.

 

10. Talking to potential customers via live chat = amazing

After hearing good things about the Olark live chat plugin I decided to give it a shot. Within a few hours it proved it’s value. Customers began chatting to me – repeatedly asking questions like “do I actually get a recording contract if I buy this?”

I was stunned – of course I wasn’t offering an actual recording contract! It turns out that several potential customers had confused a recording contract template that we included as an actual contract with a record label. Sometimes things can be so obvious to you that it’s difficult to see it from the customer’s perspective. Live chat is a great tool for remedying this.

 

11. The Surest Way to Boost Conversion Rate

Is to make your offer more valuable to your customers. Landing page A/B and multivariate testing has a glass-ceiling, which is that you’re focusing on changing how your offer is being communicated – rather than improving the value of the offer itself.

If your product or offer can’t be changed (or you’re not in a position to change it) then traditional landing page optimisation is a good call, but if you do have control over improving the product, bare in mind that this goes a long way towards improving your conversion rate.

 

12. Partner with companies who can compliment your weaknesses

In my mind, there are three broad aspects that you have full control over when trying to improve the success of a product launch:

1) Improving the value of your offer or product to a specific audience

2) Improving how you communicate the value of your offer to that audience

3) Telling as many people in your specific audience about your offer or product

It’s likely that you’ll find some of these aspects easier than others. For me, my strengths were part 1 and 2; I had created a product that was incredibly valuable to a lot of musicians, and I built a landing page that clearly demonstrated that value. My weakness was reaching a large audience of musicians.

This is where partnerships kick in – there are quite a few music companies out there with large audiences who were willing to joint venture with me, and therefore compensate for my weakness In this area.

 

13. Forums are great for brutal feedback

You can always count on forum dwellers to be brutal with their feedback. A month or two before launching the epic deal I posted a message on one of the music business forums that I participate on asking “What do people think of this epic deal – is there anything that could be improved to make it more useful for artists?”

The responses were brutal. Ranging from “it looks like a scam” to “the logo looks like it’s for a children’s product”.

I won’t lie – remarks like that can be tough to swallow, but I can’t deny that this advice was invaluable and significantly helped me to improve how the product came across.

 

14. Treat yourself to a cold beer

Because product launches are hard – and you totally deserve it ☺

I always enjoy talking product launch strategies with other entrepreneurs, so if you’ve got a launch coming up and want someone to bounce ideas off of, feel free to drop me an email on marcus(at)themusiciansguide.co.uk.

Marcus

The post 14 Lessons Learnt From My Most Successful Online Product Launch appeared first on Marcus Taylor.

Watch my TEDx Melbourne Talk

I’m Speaking at TEDxMelbourne

A couple of nights ago,  I was on the tram into Melbourne CBD with my girlfriend to meet some friends for dinner, when my girlfriend got a text from the friends we were meeting saying “Does Marcus know he’s just won the Awesome Foundation Grant and is speaking at TEDxMelbourne?!” – apparently my reaction at this point was priceless.

After checking the TEDxMelbourne Facebook Page I confirmed that this wasn’t an evil prank that they were playing on me

I really can’t describe how excited I am to have such an amazing opportunity like this, so for the next few weeks i’m going to be head down bum up getting my presentation as good as I can.

If you happen to be in Melbourne around the 24th and fancy coming along to the TED event, you can sign up to their newsletter at www.tedxmelbourne.com where they’ll be announcing the tickets shortly.

 

 

Hotel Rooms Aren’t Full of Ideas

A few weeks ago I noticed this tweet from Robin Sharma appear in my Twitter feed.

At first I disagreed with Robin. I thought to myself “How can the cost of a hotel room be linked with the quality of your ideas?” After a few weeks of contemplation I realised that there was probably a bit more to Robin’s tweet that was left unsaid.

The cost of the hotel room has nothing to do with the stream of ideas you receive. The tranquility and the atmosphere do. While there may be correlation between the two (after all, you are paying for tranquility and atmosphere), it’s important to know that they’re not connected in any way. Tranquility and great atmospheres are free – at the beach, in the park, and in many quiet public places.

This elusive stream of ideas come from you, not from expensive hotel rooms. Your best ideas are unlocked with inspiration, which exists all around you at no cost.

Two weeks ago it was my 21st birthday, and I spent several days down the west coast of Melbourne with my girlfriend to celebrate. Over the long weekend, I spent several hours planning the next steps for my creative projects. I can’t deny that nice B’n'Bs and hotel rooms are great for inspiration, but I have a different theory as to why.

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Treating yourself to experiences that you enjoy is a way of investing in your motivation, which consequently heightens your creativity.

Nice experiences breed positivity, which breeds motivation. Going for dinner at your favourite restaurant, spending a few nights in a nice hotel room, or spending a day doing something you enjoy is an investment in your motivation. When your motivation is low, you struggle to generate good ideas – and any that you do come up with won’t be executed to your full potential.

Here’s my advice in response to Robin Sharma’s tweet:

Spend more time experiencing situations you enjoy. The boost in your motivation will be evident in the quality and execution of your ideas

WhatisMyComfortZone.com Facebook App Launched

When I launched WhatisMyComfortZone.com in February 2012 over 10,000 people measured their comfort zone using the web app, but after the initial surge of users, traffic died down to a couple hundred users per week (still not bad, but pretty low in comparison to what it *could* be).

The initial surge of traffic was mostly referred via Twitter after a few people with large followings tweeted about it, and so relying on this as a traffic source was obviously unsustainable.

Over the past few weeks i’ve been experimenting with Facebook Applications, and have created What is My Comfort Zone 2.0 – the Facebook App version, which you can use here: https://apps.facebook.com/whatismycom...

There are a few minor changes to the original comfort zone calculator, the main being that the personal information collected by the app (email address, name, age, sex, city, and country) is received automatically through accepting permission to access those details within your profile (rather than having to fill them out in a form). This information is really important from a research perspective as it allows us to identify how our comfort zones vary over age, sex, and in different countries.