Building a High Converting and Well Designed Website with Brian Hood
Last episode we had 1/2 of the Six Figure Home Studio Podcast, this week we have the other half, Brian Hood!
Brian and I sit down for well over an hour to discuss everything you need to know to build a high converting and well designed website.
It’s time to shift your focus from social media, and start building your customized journey for your fans. Social media gives you neither the control nor the right analytics to know if your fans are really listening to you.
This is where a website comes in.
In this podcast you’ll learn why you need a website, how to build a high converting website, adn everything you need to get started.
What You’ll Learn:
- Why you need a website
- What is in a good website
- How to build a high converting website
- Why design doesn’t matter
- What you should focus on when building your website
- Why social media sucks for building a journey
and much more!
Episode Links
Go Check Out Brian! – https://www.thesixfigurehomestudio.com/edm/
Avian Invasion – https://avianinvasion.com/
Electronic Dance Money Booklist – https://enviousaudio.com/booklist
Automatic Episode Transcript — Please excuse any errors, not reviewed for accuracy
Hey guys, welcome to electronic dance money, your number one business resource for making money as electronic musicians and producers.
Hey,
what is up, everyone? Welcome back to another brand new episode of electronic dance money. I’m your host Kristian conceito. I’m super excited for this episode, we’ve got the second half of a six figure home studio podcast in here. Last time we had Chris Graham now we have Brian hood, who’s the owner, new owner of easy funnels owner of six figure home studio podcast. And I guess your whole I mean, it’s an entire education platform to and all you can call it an empire if you want. It is an empire including file pass to which Yeah, we’re gonna be talking about easy funnels file pass in and of itself is a beast for audio professionals. And one of the reasons why I wanted to have you on this episode is because we were talking when I was working on my EZ funnel site, we’re talking in the chat just sharing the share after you were helping me out with some stuff that was talking about how you really have created an empire like an empire is the best way to explain it where you’ve created this audience, you first had an audience from like your email list. And that was easy to launch the six figure home studio podcast which if you guys don’t know what it is, I’ve talked about a million times. So you should any new listeners, it is a fantastic it’s very similar to this podcast, but more focused on general studio owners, recording mixing mastering engineers, all that fun stuff. But you created this massive audience with that podcast. And then you found which is the entrepreneurs job, the business owners job to find the issues that your target market has build the products and sell them to them. And you’ve I mean, even with me, the lifetime I was talking about the lifetime value of your, your target market or your audience has seen it. I mean, it seems to significantly increase every single year, you’ve gotten me with every single one of your products. I’m subscribed to every single one of them. It’s, it’s really amazing.
Well, let me let me let me stop you before the audience that you have a mass yourself thinks of me as like this big capitalist pig. That’s just taking everyone’s money. So let me let me just clarify real quick. The the bright side of we’re not gonna get to a capitalism versus like, Is it bad or good. But the good side of capitalism is kind of what you described it is you have a group of people that has a problem, you help them solve that problem, and you charge a fair value for what you solve. That’s basically in a nutshell, now there’s dark side, and we’re going to get out of that crap. Because that’s just a different that’s a different podcast, a different thing altogether. But yeah, that’s the niche. That’s what it is I we built the six figure home studio as a blog first. Actually, it was a blog. On my studios website, it was like four or five, six recordings, I was actually blog dot for FX space recordings.com. That was the first version of six figure home studio. And then we turn it into like a more consistent blog, and then eventually, the podcast. And so we built this audience of audio engineers and studios and producers and you know, all sorts of people in the freelance space that need help with their business, with their marketing with their systems with their, you know, all sorts of things that comes with actually earning more. And you know, doing less of the things you hate more the things you love, finding more of the people that mesh with what you do, and it basically try to help you build your income in the audio world, which is what you do in electronic dance music space. So your audience should be familiar with this sort of thing. But you don’t you look at an audience that is honestly like the audio engineering world, the studio world is not that big of a market when you compare it to like apple and their total market size, which is pretty much everyone. It is a tiny fraction of any given niche. It’s like it is a niche of a niche, it is so tiny, that you really can’t build any massive Corporation, which I don’t have any aspirations to anyways, but that audience has very specific problems. And that’s where things like easy funnels came in. When, you know, I used Wix for years. And I always recommend it to people and I had a whole online course that showed people how to build their site in Wix. And it was like 15 videos, and it was like hours long. And it was just just to cobble together a decent template on Wix. And I promoted that for years. And it was great and it worked well for people. But there’s some there’s some negatives of Wix and Squarespace and other things. Besides the fact of being slow. It’s hard to get a good site up and running. It’s not great for audio, the audio quality is bad. And so I solve this by just building my own. I see it Yeah, go ahead. I
was gonna say why don’t you dive into what what easy funnels is and kind of the The story behind it why I mean you’re already getting into the story behind it but I can say very it it made so much sense when you announced that you created easy funnels because I’m involved in the profitable producer course I’m in the coaching calls pretty frequently and the amount of website critiques you do is unreal. I mean, I don’t know how you stay sane doing the same critique over and over again. But this will all make sense if you just go ahead and explain what EZ funnels is.
Okay, so it is a website and funnel builder for the audio industry. That’s the headline on the website at least right now. That’s the in a nutshell what it is it is Wix or Squarespace. So it’s self hosted. It’s not like WordPress, you have to have a separate host and all the technical crap that comes with that it is a self hosted drag and drop Website Builder that is built for the needs of the audio industry. So all of our website templates all of our section templates all of our you know all the features and stuff we have our built with audios people specifically in mind, but eventually just more so the the creative Freelancer world because you know that we’re rebranding our podcast from the six figure home studio to the six figure creative and we’re kind of expanding out from audio to the general creative freelance world, which very similar business problems and solutions. And so are my long term goal with the podcast with file pass my other software company and with this is to expand who we offer this to as well. And we can do that without watering it down. If you actually go to Squarespace, his website and you look at their website templates, they have things like their website template categories, or like magazines, fashion boutiques. Health companies such as it’s like it’s the most general thing of all time. So like, How am I supposed to as an audio engineer, build a good looking website that sounds good and converts at a high conversion rate, you know, like meaning how many visitors come by site? How many does it turn into leads, and we’re supposed to do all this on Wix or Squarespace when they’re trying to serve everyone and Mike my motto which you’ve heard a million times, for me, Christian is, if you tried to speak to everyone, or if you try to serve everyone, then you speak to no one or you serve no one that goes for your EDM people. Like if they try to make music for everyone in the world, they’re really making music for no one, no one wants, that you’re not going to please everyone is all I’m trying to say. And so with Squarespace, they mass market, if you ever listen to podcasts, their ads are everywhere. If you ever go to websites, their pop ups are everywhere. They’re all over Facebook and YouTube, and I see their ads all the time. And it’s because it’s not just me, it’s like, it’s like comedy podcasts and like, you know, podcasts that are not even in the they can do that because they’re generalists. And there’s pros and cons of that. But the cons are, it doesn’t serve any one niche very well. And that’s where easy funnels is like we’re gonna just serve this one small niche, and the best that we can and that eventually will branch out and start helping some of the other similar niches not too different, not fitness and fashion and, and, and retail, but similar fit like a photographer needs similar things that a studio needs and a videographer needs. There’s a similar business model. So that’s where easy funnels comes in. And, and we do things like high quality audio player, we can stream WAV files, we have things set up where you can like, just if you need to put reviews on your site from your clients or testimonials, just put a little widget down there and all your testimonials are there. It’s like if you need a form a quote request form, it’s pre built for you so you don’t have to do all that all these things are done just to make it as simple as possible. So ideally, and like my website, the website that I have for my studio right now is a template on there. Ideally you open it you change the words and your and you put your music on there and you’re done. That’s what my goal was.
It’s so simple. Well defer. I mean it was weeks maybe even months you were like Christian move to easy funnels, you can build your site and easy your website speed sucks I was like I don’t want to do it so much work blah, blah. And I was so skeptical. I was like I don’t think I can actually rebuild everything on there. And I damn near duplicated it to the tee. Like there’s very small things that I couldn’t do that I did some work arounds it still works but I mean I it was so worth it to me. I was on WordPress for most people don’t know I was using WordPress and I was using what was it I think it was Devi as a theme builder. And then there was nothing more than I dreaded then having to edit my website on WordPress, it is the worst I mean, the amount of meltdowns I’ve had just on my desk like slamming my fist on my desk because I’m so damn frustrated been working on my website for one small little thing for four hours and it just everything gets fucked up. And I just I melt down and so moving to easy phones is like this is incredibly I made my entire homepage within three or four hours I think it was I mean it was very quickly that I was able to move that the biggest thing was like moving my entire blog that was that’s the pain in the ass everything else it was so nice so streamlined, so easy.
Yeah, that’s that’s kind of the name behind it. So we actually the funny story was we we got our name from our Facebook community. So I just I asked people what they thought it should be called. We got a bunch of names. We voted on it and it wasn’t the one I picked either. It was like I thought it was gonna go we were gonna go with something else. But the Community loved it. And I think that’s fine. And we named it that way. So it was fun to kind of collaborate with community to name it. But to go back with WordPress, I have two WordPress sites six figure home studio and six figure creative or both on WordPress right now. And there’s power in WordPress, there’s things that you can’t do with easy funnels that you can do on WordPress, like we’re not trying to be WordPress. But with great power comes great negativity, say on WordPress, which is there because of the power of adding custom plugins from all these developers to solve all these unique, awesome problems that you just can’t do on a self contained platform like Squarespace or Wix, or, or even easy funnels, because of the power of all these plugins, you have compatibility issues, you have slow loading speed issues you have, it’s really it’s a cobbled together solution. And so what what our goal was easy funnels with was to make something that has some of the powerful features of WordPress, like being able to add custom code Custom CSS, being able to actually access your site headers and, and body copy so your body code so you can actually put, you know, embedded, which it sounds like your live chat or your facebook pixel, or your Google Analytics code, or all these things that, you know, Wix has like ways to do some of those things. But most things you can’t access your site headers in Wix. I don’t think you can in Squarespace. And so we wanted to make it to rehab some of the powers of custom site building and in WordPress without all of the incompatibilities and headaches and slow loading speeds is your is your website faster now that you moved easy funnels
way faster, because it was like physically took like eight seconds for your site to load, which is an eternity and website load speeds at so significantly faster. And actually, after I did, I’ve done so much damn research on website optimization speeds and all that stuff. And I think the biggest thing that I found, believe it or not, is like a Google Analytics facebook pixel in like hot jar codes up in your headers, destroys WordPress comm I mean, just completely bogs the entire thing down. Because I’ve optimized I optimize my WordPress site from head to toe. The only time I saw any significantly better PageSpeed is when I removed all that shit from the header and the body, all those snippet codes. And immediately it was much faster, which is not the case with with easy funnels, I put it in the header and same speeds, nothing basically gets slow,
you can leave all that code in which for those who don’t know, hot jar is this cool tool. That sounds kind of creepy, but it’s not because it’s anonymous, but it it records the session of someone on your site so they can see what they do. And the reason that’s powerful is because if people aren’t playing your portfolio or they’re encountering an error or things look weird or things are people are not using your site, the way that you think they are, you can make adjustments. And you know, I use this for six figure I’m syrio. And realize there’s like a lot of things that I could do to optimize that page. I haven’t done it on easy funnels actual website yet, because I haven’t got to optimization space stage of that business yet. But it’s really powerful. And so you add the code on WordPress, it slows your site down so much that you can’t really run it all the time because it’s going to slow your website down. But now with easy funnels, you can add it your site’s still fast. And so that’s good. So there’s there’s that’s that’s the point is like being able to integrate things like that without it slowing your website speed down because it was likely interfering with some other plugin you had that was hurting your load speeds, it might have been Divi that the page builder you use was that was
conflicting with it. It’s very possible I I’m just glad that’s over with over and done with. Because easy funnels has just it’s a it’s made everything so much easier. The funnel system in that two is fantastic, which we’ll get into I think in a little bit later in the episode. But this whole episode is pretty much gonna be focused around websites in general. Now I’ve done an episode on websites in the past. It was a much earlier episode, I definitely didn’t know as much as I know now. And I didn’t have a an expert to come on and talk about websites. And so I’m excited to have you here because there’s no probably no one else better to have than natural. Someone who who’s designed a website builder platform. So let’s get into the point of a website. I mean, what’s the point of it? Why why even have a website, especially as an artist or a musician, which I’ve been shouting from the goddamn mountaintop that all musicians should have a website most don’t most think they don’t, but they should, all the time. Every if you’re, again, like I’ve said so many damn times, right? We’re all running businesses here whether or not you like it, whether or not you want to accept it. If you’re an artist, you’re running a business you want to make this full time career, it’s gonna turn into a business. So why what’s the best way you can explain why you should have a website and what the point of a website is?
I love this question because this is a video I’m about to make for a challenge we’re creating for easy funnels right now. But I look at it like this. In no other medium, do you have direct control over the journey someone has when they come to your site? on Facebook? If you have a business Facebook page or something like that, it is an awful experience for people. No one even do you even visit business Facebook pages or anything like that anymore. Like I can’t read the last time I went to one for anything. I usually go there to find a link to a website. That’s how I work. Yeah, the business Facebook page. Instagram, again, Instagram is fine for its purpose. But it’s not a good place for people to come to your site, and turn from a visitor a browser into a client of yours or a fan of yours if you’re a musician, there’s no specific journey for that. What Instagram and Facebook and tik tok, and Snapchat and all these other Twitter all these other platforms, the way they’re built? And I don’t know, but Snapchat, don’t use it. So I think I got one from the learning much dead. Okay. Oh, for sure. Maybe. Anyways, these other sites, they are built by investors who have poured in millions and millions or 10s or hundreds of millions in some case of dollars of investor dollars into development with the salt and consulted with people who run casinos and slot machines to systematically keep you on the site as long as possible, so that you see as many ads as you possibly can. That is the number one goal of every social media site that does ads. I don’t know if Tick Tock does ads, yes, but yet, but they will. But they do. They still want you on the site. Because I’ve seen people who just mindlessly thumb through, I don’t have a tick tock so I don’t know. But they have a very good algorithm that serves up entertaining content, to keep you hooked on the site, not to introduce you to brands so that you buy their stuff, at least not yet unless you pay for it through ads like Facebook. So the whole point of a website is it is a domain that you own. It is a site that you own, and you can build the unique experience that gives them all the information they need to either hire you as a client, or to dig into your music and your story as a musician, you just don’t get anywhere else. So that is by far, the number one reason is you control every single element of the website if you have a good builder, and to make the journey as smooth as possible and remove all friction from generally interested kind of know about you to Okay, this is interesting. You’re a cool producer, or this is really interesting. I like this band to eventually long term fan. So that’s that’s my story of why I think that’s important.
I think you nailed it one on top of it, you just don’t get the same information that you can get from a website from your insert, there are analytics, but not the necessary analytics that you want to see your need to see. Like, let’s say hot jar, for instance. I mean, you have no idea how many how long someone stares at a picture you posted on Instagram or actually read through the description that you put. And they liked it. They could have just been scrolling and saw Oh, so and so posted. I’m just gonna hit like and keep scrolling or even accidentally like it?
Well, actually, here’s the big thing is social media analytics focuses on what I call vanity metrics. Yeah, these are metrics that look good, they feel good, they make you feel warm and fuzzy. So you keep posting which actually just feeds it in the machine of the of the social media conglomerates. But on with Google Analytics, yes, sir. vanity metrics, the things that make you feel good, but what matters are the actual analytics, what are called KPIs key performance indicators, the things that actually push the needle in your business. And those are the things that you need to keep track of so that you know, if you have a healthy business, I can go over KPIs if you want, because other things I think everyone should know. So KPIs are gonna be different depend on what your business are. But these are the things that you need to track long term and I’ll give you I’m in the the studio world, the audio world, I don’t know what the EDM producers should be tracking on their website. As far as KPIs, you can maybe translate this for them. But in my world, the audio world KPIs are generally I focus more on conversion rates than I care about overall numbers. Yes, you know how many website visitors you have, but you need to know how how well your website converts from top to bottom, meaning someone comes to your page, they take an action of some sort, maybe play your portfolio, maybe they open up your contact form or whatever. And then they ultimately submit maybe a quote request form or a contact form. And then maybe they book a call with you. And then maybe they buy from you they hire you for your audio services. That’s kind of like the steps involved with a lot of these things. And so I want to know, what’s my conversion rate from landing page visitor to filling out my contact form? That’s one of the big the big things is like, what’s my landing page conversion rate to lead? It’s called lead capture. So I’m getting a lead on my website a lead is just someone that could maybe hire me one day. So what’s the conversion rate if I have 1000 people that can my page how many of those people actually fill out my quote request form that’s my conversion rate. So if 100 people fill out my form, it’s a 10% conversion rate. We’re not gonna get super super deep into numbers cuz they don’t really matter. These are just examples. So 100 people fill out my quote request form they they’re interested in working with me, they’re maybe asking for rates or whatever. And now I need to know what percentage of those people ultimately hire me. So what’s my quote request to paid project conversion rate? That’s another KPI so maybe 25 of those, hire me So that’s a 25% conversion rate. So now of those 25, how much am I earning per project on average, because now I now I can start to factor things in, like when I know all these numbers, I can, I can tell you like, based on the quotes, I get today how much I’m going to make tomorrow or next next month or next six months, because I have a good indication of all these key performance indicators. And social media does not really give you many of those at all. You can kind of call together some like bounce messages you get and sometimes let’s turn into customers. But I want to touch on one other thing, similar to this that people always give me pushback on when they say I get all my, all my customers through word of mouth, I get all my customers through social media, you don’t know their full journey. Because here’s the other thing is when people hear about you, as a producer, or hear about you as as a as a musician, whatever it is that you do. likely what they do is they they they look you up somewhere, a lot of times it’s on Google, like people are Googlers. So people are straight to social media, and they look for you up on social media. But eventually people usually find their way to your website. They listen to your work on social media, they look all the words you have on your page, your copy on your website, they determine whether or not you’re a good fit for what they’re looking for. And then they may reach out to you on social media when maybe where they originally found you. But they analyze you and they want you or they were one over on your website. And then they messaged you on social media, but you never knew they even went to your website. to you it was just a visitor. So you don’t even know that that website was what got them hooked for you as a producer? Or are you as a fan as if you’re doing music yourself. So that’s why again, another reason why I push back on only having social media sites. So that’s
actually that’s a really good point. That’s something I’ve never actually really thought about. But yeah, the website could 100% sell you and someone actually I think I’ve had that happen before. more so with like podcast listeners. But the thing about having a website too, that you don’t get the luxury of with social media is the control of the messaging and like you said, the control the journey. You You don’t I mean, you have control over your messaging on Instagram and whatnot, but it’s mostly photos. So like, unless you’re really calculated and how you can design your Instagram homepage or whatever your profile page with proper messaging just through images, images, which I have no idea how you would even do and if that would be worth your time over literally creating a one page website with controlled messaging in terms of in terms of like KPI for if we’re talking about because I do I know I do have a lot quite a few listeners who I think are you know, part of this podcast is about teaching EDM producers to pursue pursue other business journeys, I guess does it you know, becoming a mixing and mastering engineer because you can’t really just be an EDM producer, write music be DJ. That’s what everyone wants that listens to this. But it’s very hard to get that without any supplemental income. So more than likely, there’s a good chunk of this audience that does have some sort of business that they’re either thinking about starting or have already started. So this completely applies to them in terms of the KPI stuff that you’re talking about before, just the EDM producer who just wants to be a producer. I mean, the number one thing that you should be focusing on is collecting an email because there’s no better access that you have than an audience that you own through an email, you don’t own your audience on social media, you don’t own those followers, there’s no guarantee you’re going to get in front of those followers. Even if you pay even if you run ads, especially with the new iOS 14 update, which has completely turned Facebook advertising upside down. I mean, I’ve been running around like a chicken with its head cut off for the past two weeks figuring out what the fuck is going on. Because that’s such a prime like a big part of my business. And even for artists I mean, I that’s something I’ve been promoting with artists you should be touching in the ad space to promote music, especially if you’re wanting to tour specific city, it’s perfect way to start building an audience there. But going back to just the website stuff, that’s what you should be trading you can very simply track Okay, your journey should be eventually collecting the email on the on your website, or I mean, you can send people to Spotify. The issue there is that is no longer in your control that journey you don’t have any control as to did this person x person actually listen to my song for more than 20 seconds, so I get a stream. And also you can’t track those ala. That’s the main issue with Spotify. Again,
Spotify, SoundCloud, all these other like audio hosting sites. Their main goal, again, is to keep you in there as long as possible. So what happens when they open Spotify is Yeah, they’re opening like, I see people that put direct links to playlists on their website, even thinking that’s a good idea. And it’s, it’s, it’s fine, but the issue is they open up Spotify, they’re playing your song or listen, they see the new release by Ariana Grande day that they would listen to now and so they’re gonna play that instead of your track or the next track in your play. So, again, when you when people leave your world, which is only the only world most people have as their website, when they leave your world, you lose control over what they do. And that is the negative of relying on Spotify or SoundCloud, as as audio hosting, or relying on social media for turning leads into customers. Now, I will actually talk about something really important, because I don’t want to sound like I’m super negative on social media. Now, I personally don’t do much on social media, I built multiple six figure businesses without analysis social media, because I don’t really other than a Facebook group, a Facebook group, the only thing that we’ve really used as a business tool for social media. But if you understand funnels, you understand the power of social media, because there are different steps where at different, different stages of the customer journey. This is the word I’ll use here, you can you can think of a customer, as a listener, a fan, a client, whatever you want that word to be, but the customer stages are going to be required different needs to move into the next stage. So you only talk about that for a second. Cuz I think that’s a really good point for this. So think about and this is where the word funnels kind of comes in, because I like to think of it as a funnel. But you have different stages in this funnel. And if you think about it, like ever, if you ever had beer funnels or whatever, what is it? What is it a beer bond? Yeah, beer bonds, like a big old beer bond,
this is probably the appropriate audience, usually, as an analogy,
coming coming from the straightest guy who’s never drank in his life, or whatever. So you got a beer bong. And at the very top of the beer bong, if there’s no liquid being poured in is dry, that’s your pipe, that’s your pipeline for new fans, new customers, whatever you want it to be. So in order to start getting customers, you have to generate awareness for what it is that you do, we all know this, this is common sense. But that’s the very top of the funnel is getting awareness poured into your funnel. Now, next step is turning that awareness into interest. If you don’t have any interest in what it is that you do, then that is essentially like them pouring into the funnel, and then it leaking out of that funnel before it gets to your very parched mouth trying to get drunk. So I’m gonna keep using the stupid beer bong analogy, but you get the point. If your funnel is bad, or leaks like meaning, let’s just let’s just use this Facebook ad for an example. Because I feel like a lot of people have tried Facebook ads, they boosted post or whatever, or they boosted posts on Instagram or whatever. And that’s like their idea of testing out ads. And so they they run an ad, it’s not optimized, it’s not a good ad, it’s not a good photo, whatever not a good video, it’s or their musics is whatever it is, it’s bad. They spend money, it creates awareness because people see the ad and maybe even read the ad or listen to the ad. But they don’t take any action that is a lead. That’s what we call leaky funnel, that means you’re wasting effort. And it’s just like pouring, I guess a beer into a bomb with 1000 mile our wind is just blowing all the beer away, none of us getting to your funnel. So I’m going to stop using that analogy now and go back into the actual business element here. So you have the top of the funnel that’s creating awareness for what it is that you do your music, your live tour, that you’re doing interest that’s getting people interested enough, in order to look more into it, maybe they’ll read about the tour coming up, maybe they’ll check and see if they’re playing in your city, maybe they’ll see what services you offer in your website, maybe they’ll listen to your portfolio, they’re interested enough to browse through things. And if your website is great, then they’ll turn into what is considered a lead the bottom of your funnel, which turned into a leader interested enough. And they have desire. Now that’s the third phase is their desired to have desire to potentially work with you or be a fan of yours or whatever. That’s the next stage in the customer journey. And then ultimately, if the desire reaches a certain point, they will you’ll get money from them in some way, shape or form. Whether that is streams is a very small trickle of money, you need a lot of those to do that. It might be that they hire you for mixing or mastering or editing. It might be that they hire you to produce their track, whatever it is that you do. But if the desire is is high enough, then they will hire you to do those things that they need. Right. So that’s kind of the the stages here and where social media fits in really well. It’s not the top of the funnel. I don’t think social media is a great way to get your word out there unless tik tok might be one right now because the algorithm is so strong and in favor of creators. And I’ve seen I’ve found some cool musicians on there doing some funny stuff to my wife, she’s, she’s a big talker. Again, I don’t have an account. But eventually that will change just like a demo Facebook back in 2009 2010. You could build your business on Facebook and tons and tons of likes, get free exposure for your business, and then they pull the rug out from under you and now it’s only a pay to play game. That’s the negative of it be relying on a platform for only organic so Tick Tock will eventually go away. But I don’t think I don’t think for the most part that social media plays a good part at the top of your funnel, where it plays a good part in the middle of a friend or foe middle of your funnel which is building desire building interest and desire for what you do. So think about it this way. Your I use EDM for example you just played what’s the biggest festival in EDM?
Probably either let’s just
go with EDC, electronic Daisy, etc. And you do what a lot of musicians do is like you do some some way you get the text and number to get their their email Just to get like a free something, whatever the text a number, you get a bunch of leads from that. Great they’re in your world now maybe you can get yourself to like your social media pages, whatever. They’re aware that you exist now, but they don’t really care about you that much. This is again where social media can can shine because they can start to get to know your personality, your little quirks that you have little things that are weird about you, that make you you, that make you interesting, that make you fun, that make you unique, and they start to know you, they start to get to know you, they start to like you, they start to trust you. And that furthermore builds them into potential customer long term because not ever, you have two types of types of customers in the world, you have tortoises, and you’d have hairs. hairs are the ones that they find you. They’re like your perfect, let’s go, I’m hiring you right now. I’m going to give you money, I’m going to buy your album, I wanna buy our your merchant to teach you all this crap, these are the hairs. There’s not that many of them. They’re awesome. But they’re not that many of them. Most people go towards the tortoise side, I am a tortoise versus the hare. I’m a huge tortoise. And so if I’m the, the amount of time I spend analyzing, and debating and researching things, especially the higher the cost of the purchase that I’m making, the amount of time I spend on that is absurd. Like I want to spend about 40 to 50 hours researching cameras for my trip to Thailand, because I wanted a good camera, which I’m actually using this 12 $100 camera as a webcam now, that’s how important it is, to me is just a webcam. Now it’s all it is. But I spent 40 to 50 hours debating between two cameras that were ultimately the same price, the same exact damn thing, but had my new tiny little detail. That’s the that’s the plight of the tortoise, there’s a negative of the tortoise, I am the tortoise I’m trying to get a little more towards the hare. But that’s the reality of the situation. So if you have a lot of tortoises in your audience, or people that are aware of you, you don’t have any way to build trust long term to help answer their questions. If they need to hire you for something and they’re not sure they have objections. Maybe they’re not sure if this is the right type of service that I need. Maybe they’re you know, whatever fill in the blanks fill in the gaps here. It’s everyone’s situation is different. But if you don’t have a way to feed that tortoise, what they want to know before they hire, you’re they’re never going to hire you. And that’s where social media and things like podcasts, things like YouTube channels, that’s where these things can be fantastic ways to turn hair to turn tortoises that are sticking around forever into customers. Like I have people my mailing list that have been on mailing lists, since I started in like 2014 that just bought from me last year, like like, super tortoises, but eventually they did and so I may have spent money on ads in 2015 and gotten leads that never bought anything for 2015 2016 2017 2018 2019 nothing doesn’t 20 they bought from me and now it’s a profitable lead. So it takes forever sometimes especially in the freelance world where it’s like pop all of a sudden it’s a big chunk of money whereas you know in the musician world is a little different it might be that the listen your album tons and tons of times over time and they finally donate it to your to your GoFundMe thing for your next album. Maybe they finally subscribe to your Patreon whatever that big metric you have that big goal you have, it may take forever and that’s where again long term is called nurturing long term nurturing comes into play here.
Yeah, and I had. So if you’re not new listener, and you weren’t listening in, you have listened to the past few episodes. We had Matthew equilon, who great artist fantastic. has one of the best websites I’ve ever seen. 40 Km producer
show it to me I tell me I’m gonna look it up right now.
I think it’s avian invasion, calm, avian or avian avian a vi A n avian invasion is branding is so good. Let
me make sure that is correct. China even envision calm Yeah,
yeah, it is so well designed. I think he has a Spotify player, which you’ll yell at him for that.
I know that I will.
But his um, one of one of his primary calls to action is his radio show, which is where he does a lot of that nurturing, and it is a very great call to action. He and we died. We dove into a little bit about his website, but mostly focused on the Patreon stuff, which is, you know, there there are so many damn calls to add. Ooh, that was loud.
I was like, no, sorry. Go ahead. You’re
all good. There’s so many damn calls to action you can have as an EDM producer, I feel I feel like most producers just don’t know. Or they think that there isn’t a great call to action. They, you’ve got Patreon if you want to start Patreon. If you’re doing live streaming on Twitch, that can be your your call to action. If you’re just collecting emails for an email list, or if you do want to send someone to Spotify, which again, I don’t think that’s I think we can both agree that’s not the best, best route to go. But in terms of your call to action, and through your customer journey and your funnel, like you’re talking what you’re talking about, if they’re the beginning of their journey is them finding you finding your website and your call to action is something like a live stream the way Matthew does it. That is a great median of the funnel where you’re warming up an audience where they’re getting to know you, they’re getting to know you in a more personal and intimate experience through a live stream where they’re talking, they’re chatting with people. And that creates such a bigger, such a stronger bond, it creates super fans. And then when you have new merge come out, and you say, Okay, this is the bottom of funnel that I want them to reach is by my merge, because that’s more valuable than the three streams, they’re going to give me on Spotify, which more likely it is. But if you’ve nurtured that audience, if you’ve warmed them up, if they become a super fan through this sales funnel, and in your live streams, then when you go, Hey, new shirt is out, those people are getting I guarantee if they come to every single stream, they’re buying the shirt right away. And that in and of itself is so much more valuable than just posting on Facebook have this new track on Spotify, go check it out. Yeah.
So again, it’s the long term nurturing building, building the the trust that people have. So I see on his website, he has a link to twitch. So it sounds like he does a lot of his live stream stuff on Twitch as well, which again, it’s good to have a face as well. And not just the voice which voice is powerful, but face is great as well. And so you you actually got to have something in the in the fan business model world that we don’t have in the freelance business model world and that is what we call they call it in the gaming world they call it wells. A familiar with that term.
I think I’ve heard of it. But I if you want to dive into it, I don’t know it. Yeah,
very detailed. So wells are what business single handily funds, all of those, like free to play video games on the internet. So what you see is like fortnight I forget the other ones fortnight’s a big one, because you have mobile and desktop, there’s a ton of like, free to play games on mobile. And the way it works on that world is is free for the general public. And if you want some sort of little perks, freemium, it’s Yeah, it’s freemium. It’s like little, it’s little hits money here and there. And some of these games, man, there are people that spend 1000s of dollars per month on these games. 10s of 1000s of dollars Trust Fund people who just just blow money cuz they don’t care about it. It’s just minor transactions. Yes. microtransactions. And so in the, in the music world, you kind of have that same same similar thing. If you do a lot of branding, you bought a lot of trust, you get some super fans that have some moolah, that can be a really good way is is essentially creating things for wealth, like little S is a little shoe that he put out he but how many? How many? God what is it 666 30,000 shapes, okay, 636 shoes, they were 1000 bucks each, right? So that’s $666,000 generated not counting a legal fees is going to have from that we’re not going to get into that. But he’ll sell those two, well, it kind of loses it breaks down the analogy a little bit, because the shoe world is actually a genuine collector’s thing like that is an actual legitimate, like market. In the world. It’s huge, just blown up, especially in the last few years. So that’s a little different, like those shoes will forever resell for insane amount of money. If you’ve got one of the original 686 pairs like that will sell for 10s of 1000s of dollars in the future, most likely for shoe collectors. But take the whole shoe collection thing in general out of it, he could have sold that limited edition thing for the same price to his super fans. If there were no real desire in the shoe market. For those, it would just be the fans that want this limited edition thing. So you can still take the same similar funnel approach earned lots of money from just a few fans, by building your brand online through things like social media. So again, a website is a huge part of this, like you just mentioned with this guy’s website. It’s awesome. It’s a little slow, I checked the website speed on it, but it’s still a really cool site to kind of makes up for it. But you know it, but if you set your site up, right, and you send them down to nurture them into two areas that preferably you own so if he has a social media, or if he has a mailing list, hopefully he’s he’s capturing leads on there and then pushing them pushing them to twitch then pushing him to all these other areas like Patreon. You can maybe sell limited edition merch, do sorts of things that have a Patreon, maybe as high tier things, the only like five or six people pick, but it’s like $1,000 a month per thing. You know, they get some sort of intimate meetup meet and greet or whatever. There’s ways to monetize that world that picks these same exact fundamental things that I teach at six figure home studio, the same exact stuff that easy funnels is built for, and allows you to do it in the music world because you have those things called Well,
yeah, well, there are so many different facets that that that most musicians in general should be focusing on with monetizing, whereas there’s so many artists are wrapped up in this idea of I need stream stream streams. I need people on Spotify, Spotify, and it’s almost like they’ve done like Spotify has put this out there. It’s almost like they’ve hidden the ties artists into thinking focus all on Spotify, and they’re just pushing the entire audience there when there’s so many different facets that musicians should be focusing on in where they can actually monetize. I know so avian invasion Matthew, he also does he does the Chris Greenwood Smart music smart, smart smart music. Yes. Yeah,
I know, Chris. Is the music business a smart way something like that.
Yeah, his his, his method of GoFundMe of doing crowdfunding for albums. I know that Matthew does that as well. And it’s such a, we briefly got into it. But that alone is a major market that artists aren’t focusing on, it’s a much easier way to start going full time actually making money from your music, rather than waiting for a Spotify cut. And let’s be real here, when the record label takes their cut. Most of the contracts even in there, say you’re not going to see a penny until you make $10,000 on this, so you’re not even ever going to see a check from Spotify. Yeah.
That’s so I had musician friends. And I see on social media, you’ll see some big musician who’s like, I had a 10 million streams on Spotify. And here’s my $7. Check. And then I’m like, it’s because your your deal was trashing their label, it wasn’t because we modified royalties, like I know that, what is it, right? It’s like about a million streams is about four to $5,000, or something like that. So that’s the, that’s the way we look at. So if you listen to popular belief, and it’s like, I need to get stream stream streams, right? So if I want to make $4,000 a month, which is like a livable income for a lot of people in most in non major cities, then I need to get a million streams a month, right? That’s very hard to do, especially in a niche market. Right. So let’s look at avian avian, what is it called AVR. envision for AV innovation, for example, they have 4000 monthly listeners, they have 50,000 streams on their most popular track. Overall, they likely don’t even have a million streams total. That means they have not made a million or they have made haven’t made four grand on their entire Spotify portfolio unless you just have tons of tracks I don’t know about. But anyways, this is a point to be made. So just call it 1000 bucks. He’s made off Spotify in his career. That is not livable in any way, shape, or form. However, if you look at his Patreon page, he has, he has Patreon packages up to $50 per month, he has 89 Patreon. I don’t again, I don’t know what he’s what how that spread is from his lowest to his highest plan. And honestly, I would probably have a higher plan than that for the what I call the whales. But you know, if he has just call an average of 20 bucks a person that is almost $2,000 a month in Patreon royalties from that just patron, just Patreon.
And I know he’s full time with music, too. He’s been full time for like 10 years. And so he’s monetized. Yeah.
So what I’m saying is you don’t have to focus on tons and tons and tons and tons of streams. There are smarter ways to monetize what you do. And so that’s where it’s fun to do things like merge stores, he I’m sure he sells a lot of Mertz doing what he does, especially if he’s on live with Twitch. You know, but again, I’m not the musician type. So I’m not the person to go to Chris Greenwood is probably more knowledgeable in the ways the different ways to monetize your music world. But I see the potential in this and easy funnels while not built specifically for EDM producers or anyone in your world specifically, you can absolutely use it because we have a merch store we have a way to do merch store it’s we you can create basically what is an e commerce store on easy funnels. and sell merch just like your friend avian invasion is doing and likely crushing it from but it’s not like you just put it it’s just like in the audio world. If you build it, they will not come. If you build your studio, you put a million dollars into it, you have incredible facilities, that doesn’t mean people are gonna come hire you. So if you if you’re the same way you put your music out in the world, he spent all this time, effort, energy money, go into a nice studio with a big name, producer, people are not all of a sudden going to start listening to music and paying you It takes time to build the brand. It takes time to build the trust, it takes time to build the credibility. Sometimes it takes time to build the connections takes time to build your website, it takes time to find the ways you’re going to monetize it and getting your merge designs, it takes time to get your Patreon packages set up and delivering those benefits from the Patreon. There is no quick way to make money on this earth that I’m aware of that’s legal, and ethical. So all of these things, whether it’s freelance, whether it’s software, which is the lot of stuff I’ve been getting into whether it’s real estate, which I also do, whether it’s musician, being a musician, whether it’s being an EDM producer, whatever, whatever niche you’re trying to do business model you’re trying to do, whatever it is, it’s going to take work and it’s going to take time. So as long as you’re patiently building these things with the long term, with a long term end game in mind, it can be done, but just make sure you’re doing it smart and not doing it the hard way. with anything you talked to Chris about. That was Maslow’s Nevermind. You didn’t talk about the parados principle with Chris on the episode? Oh, no, we didn’t. So the credos principle is it’s called the 8020 principle, it is that 80% of your results come from 20% of your efforts. And if you flip that, that means that 80% of your efforts all the time, effort, energy, promotion, all the sweat and blood that you’ve done 80% of that was essentially wasted. It only costs you about 20% of the results. So if you can find those 20% of things that really push the needle on your business, that’s the key to at least speeding up the growth of what it is that you’re doing. And again, that’s the stuff that you Easier said than done. I’ll say that right now. It’s way easier said than done. But every now and again, you can just stop and say, Okay, look at anything that I’ve considered success in my life. What did that come from? And how can I do more of that? Anything is caused frustration my life? What caused that? And how can I do less of those things and just doing that every now and again, will do a lot for you, you your life, your business, your happiness, your health, your relationships, in all things, not just business.
Yeah, that’s I’m currently going through that right now. I’ve been, like the past three or four months, I’ve just been analyzing everything and kind of cutting the fat, you know, cutting the fat out figuring out what do I need to work on? What do I need focus and slowing down to you know, it’s so many people are in a rush to get what they want, when in reality, the most important thing is to slow down, you know, what are you doing, because you need to make sure you understand, you know, some of the changes you may be making in your business, or especially when it comes to like website stuff, what and we will get into split testing in just just a minute here eventually, which is kind of kind of the what I’m talking about here. Let’s talk about the fundamentals of a good website. Because we’ve talked a lot about how a website’s useful, how it works, why you want it, and the you know, what you can actually control in that and the funnels that are associated with that. But probably just as important, I would say it’s probably 5050 on do you need to have a website just to have proper funnel setup. But then the other half of that is okay, well, you need a good website, because you can’t just throw anything up. What are the things that you found to be like the most important things in terms of having a good website, a decent website setup?
So there’s, this answer can vary depending on what your what your niches and what it is that you are going to be doing goals to Yeah, what your goals are like if you’re, but I’ll give you some some just general guidelines. So the, the big thing that I try to make sure people understand is not trying to reinvent the internet with this, I looked at the AVR and aireon. guy, his site is cool, but he’s doing, he’s doing some stuff that I wouldn’t necessarily recommend for a high converting website. So there’s something you’ve heard me talking about this question. I call it the template of the internet. It’s the template that most companies use most websites use in any legitimate business. And if you just look at sites like Squarespace or Wix, these are website builders. This gives you a pretty good idea of what the website of the what the template of the internet is, every website and you can go to software companies, you can go to freelancers, you can go to website builders, like WordPress Squarespace, web flow, easy funnels is one that you can go to and check that out, obviously, easy funnels.io. And just look at the website layout, it is usually three to four things. It is a headline, and big text, sub headline, which is like smaller text under the big headline, it’s a big button that is a call to action, telling them what to do next. So fill out our form or listened to our music or buy our merch or whatever. And sometimes a secondary call to action, which is like a backup if you don’t want to listen to our music. Or if you don’t want to buy our merch, then click this button to listen or music. Or if you don’t want to, to get a quote request from us. Click this button here to hear, you know, my portfolio, something like that. So I think a lesser call to action. And a lot of websites follow this template. And the reason people do this is because the more brain power someone is required to use when it comes to your website, the lower your conversion rate will be. So if I make people have to go through some crazy, intense adventure, to get to my contact form and ultimately hire me, I’m losing customers and may be super creative and really cool. Like the avian adventures or invasion guy may be really cool and really adventurous. But if it’s too difficult to use as a website to reach what goals I have, which are maybe hiring me it’d be buying my merge, maybe listening to my music, maybe sending it from a Patreon, whatever my goal is, or goals income multiple goals. If it’s not that simple, and I have to use brain power to use it, then I’m losing potential customers. So the website the template of the internet is what I just just for funding calling it is it’s just like, okay, you play video games, Christian?
Oh, yeah. Okay, so
if you play a first person shooter on console, the keys are the same, the buttons are the same on every pretty much every damn game with a few exceptions, you know that the left joystick pushing that in, you’re going to sprint, you know, if you push the rights joystick and you’re going to do a melee attack, if you push the right trigger down with the right finger, it’s going to shoot, if you push the left trigger down with your left finger, it’s going to it’s going to aim down the sights, usually something similar to that. And there’ll be some variations from game to game, but generally, it’s not gonna and then if you move the right joystick, it’s gonna it’s going to aim and left joystick to strafe around right those are that’s basically the template of first person shooter video games. And so the reason every video game does that is because the last thing you want to do is have to retrain somebody how to do a basic thing in first person shooters. Can you imagine? If every game was different, like you move you looked around with the left stick and then you move with the right stick and then you play the next game? You know, the next month and it’s backwards, and how about That would screw you over. It’s bad enough that sometimes it’s inverted. Like you might have an inverted stick on, you know, but this is getting into Nordea video game world, but it’s the same on on desktop, it’s like you move around with them, you move around with the AWS D keys, and you see you, you move around with a W SDKs. And then you look around with your mouse and you shoot with a left mouse click, and you aim downside to the right mouse click, that’s how most sites are most. And so it’s the same thing. It’s you’re not trying to retrain people how to use basic stuff, you know, that certain key is going to do a crouch, you know. So when the website is the same damn thing, people know that the menu is going to be at the top, there’s generally a big button at the top right that your main call to action, sign up for my thing, by my thing, they know that the headline, and the sub headline is going to kind of explain what you do and who you do it for or what your mission statement is, or whatever kind of thing you want to put up there. They know there’s gonna be a button to take the next step with you. And so if you just follow those things, you’re like, 95% Yeah, it’s when you get away from like this basic website template stuff, that things start falling apart. And so that’s, that’s the big thing, I have to pound into people’s heads, they do some really weird stuff, I saw somebody on easify. And now that I have a website builder, I see even more crazy stuff. But somebody had four buttons above the fold in their hero section was at the top of the site, and none of them, none of them linked to anything. They were just using those buttons to show what services they offered and the buttons didn’t do anything. And I was like, do you Oh dear, no, I had to help them out. And I made a contact form and and open the contact form and they click the buttons at least so something happens. Because one button would say mixing one button say mastering one button would say music production. You know, it’s like,
Oh, dude, yeah,
and I wish I could pull.
I wish I could find out to see if I can find images, there’s got to be images from when I did the profil producer course of doing before and afters of my website, probably
have them saved away in our Dropbox somewhere if you submitted your photos.
Oh, my original website was horrible. Holy shit. I mean, it was incredibly bad. I think I had YouTube videos as my portfolio layer.
And was just the worst audio on the internet. I had no
I had no like headline sub headline call that it was Dude, I don’t even I barely remember what it looks like, I’m gonna have to see if I can find some before and afters. But my website now is incredibly more. I mean, it looks so much better, it’s much more natural, it makes so much more sense. The whole vibe of it is much different as well. But currently what I’m going through, which I’ve been horribly obsessed with, to the point of just, it’s a terrible obsession now, which is something that I think a lot of people should focus on a lot more, which is conversion rate optimisation. I’ve been so damn obsessed with it. So if people don’t know what conversion rate optimization is, we’ve talked about converting people, when you get them through your sales funnel. Ultimately, you’re wanting them to convert through something whether they’re converting with signing up to an email list or signing up to Patreon. We’ve already talked about this. So what conversion rate optimization is, which I can’t remember who was it that coined the term, they coined the term like there’s some company that coined the term like 10 years ago, I was like probably
what’s that probably HubSpot. They usually are the ones that coin these sorts of things. But
the whole point of conversion rate optimization is essentially split testing now with split testing is you have version a of let’s take your website, for instance, and easy funnels does this through their funnel system, which is fucking amazing. But you have version a of your website, which may have you know, let’s say you have your headline, sub headline call to action, well, then you would go in and split test that with a version B. And maybe you change your headline a little bit, you change either the font or the actual words that you’re using, or maybe you put a secondary call to action, in addition to your normal call to action. And so you’re essentially split testing those two versions to see which one converts more and so you’re optimizing your conversion rate. So you’ll know realistically, okay, this version is actually doing what I want to do. The worst thing you could do you could possibly do is throw a website up and say, All right, I’m done. That’s it. Yeah. That it’s I mean, even if you have the template of the internet down, again, like Brian said, You’re 95% there, you’re 90% there. But there’s an additional percentage that you need to follow, which is conversion rate optimization, you have no idea you could be losing out on so many more leads and so many more conversions. If you had just tweaked your headline a little bit, but you never would have known that if you didn’t go in and split test this. And easy funnels has such a good system setup for split testing with their funnel this
basically and you kind of explained it really well. So I’m not going to really talk about this much more, but what do you finally make the website of your dreams like if I were if I had avian invasions website, I still got it up because it’s just cool. It’s got a lot of cool moving stuff. So go check it out if you haven’t already, but if I were to work with him on this, I would say I think Your website that you have it is it right now, it sounds cool, it’s cool. And then I would duplicate it. And I would change certain things around, I would have your big logo that you have taken up half the screen and make it smaller, I would make the words a little larger. And I would just put a big button and take some sort of next step, either listen to our music, or buy our merch or something like that. And I would see, if you sell more merge by version be because you have a big button that says buy our merge. And it’s above the fold. And people often scroll down for it. It’s just, it’s clear and obvious what step you want them to take. And so more people are going to take that said, it sounds weird, but you have to tell people what to do on your site. It’s it’s called the bystander effect. So if you are, if you’re just say, You’re being mugged for some reason, like you’re in New York City, you’re being mugged. And you just cry for help. A lot of times, actually, let me better a less a less dire situation here, because that just seems way too violent. Let’s just say you’re with someone, you see someone having a heart attack on the street. And even people can be crowded around watching this happen. And you are saying like so I call the police. People won’t call the police because they assume everyone else has a you have to point at someone and say you call the police. You come help me do CPR or whatever. I don’t know, if you give CPR of someone with a heart attack, don’t I don’t ever do that, because I don’t want medical doctors but you have to point specifically to a human being and tell them to do it. And people have similar types of things. When they come to your website, a lot of times the brain is turned off, which is great. If you have the website of the internet, they know how things work. It’s also good if you don’t have a call to action, telling them what to do. So that’s another like big thing you need to have on your website. But you kind of touched on this that’s really important. That doesn’t get talked about much as I can tell you what sections you need on your website and what parts you need on your website. Like for audio world, you need to tell what services you offer, what you’d have a section for your portfolio to show what work you do. Maybe an About section explains you and your story and how you’re going to ultimately help your customer get what they want. Maybe testimonials, maybe a before and after examples, like case studies or whatever. I’m not gonna get into specifics here because it’s gonna be different for everyone, especially in the producer world. But the thing that people don’t ever talk about anything that matters more than anything is copywriting. Like, honestly, beautiful websites. Web Design is overrated. People spent a lot of money and time like this dude’s website was probably not cheap or easy to make, because it looks good. Maybe he made himself maybe he didn’t I don’t know. But it’s it’s really well done good photography, everything. But a pretty sight does not turn into a turn a visitor to a customer. It’s good copywriting, at least in the freelance space may be different for the musician, world. And there’s a lot of branding elements. I don’t fully understand that world because I’m not a musician. Really anymore. I used to be. But But I will say copywriting is what turns visitors to customers. So think about this. I like I use this example in our EZ funnels website challenge that depending on when this episode comes out may or may not be ready yet. I don’t know we’ll talk about in a second. But the example I use is if you are on Tinder, I love using Tinder or Bumble. Is that what people use? Still? I don’t know. Because
I, my girl, Marty and I met on Bumble.
Yeah, man. I met my wife on Tinder. But it was like years and years ago. But anyways, yeah, there’s
like four years ago.
Yeah. So anyways, let’s talk about this. You’re on Tinder, you are beautiful. Everyone swipes you, right? Because you’re just so beautiful, right. But beneath the surface, they go to your profile, it’s just this drum jumbled mess of just gibberish, and ramblings and run on sentences and capital letters everywhere that shouldn’t be there. And and so people are like, what the, what is this? What a great analogy. And then they just back out. So you may get, you may get interest, I’m sorry, you may get awareness. And people may swipe you and maybe have a little interest. Because you’re attractive, right? You have your pretty website, right? This is what I’m kind of getting out here. But when they dig beneath the surface, it’s a train wreck. And they’re not interested in any way shape or form. So you get no messages, no one will reply to your messages, you get no dates. And ultimately you get no relationships, think about your website is that it’s like, you can honestly get by with a decent looking website. If you have clever copywriting on your site. Just like you can be a decent looking human and have like a good personality on your writing on on Tinder or Bumble or whatever other apps are out there. And you’ll get more people to have conversations with you and ultimately probably get more dates out of it. And more relationships, so or a long term relationship. So that’s that’s where I like to use analogies, because copywriting ultimately matters. If, if the substance isn’t there, then it’s not going to turn into customers. So part of the substance and the audio engineering community is our portfolio. That’s a huge part of our substance. But if we don’t get the words right, so that the person that comes to your site is and is not understanding that you are the right fit for them. If you’re not convincing them that you are right for them, then they’re not gonna even listen to your portfolio in the first place. So copywriting absolutely matters and you need to take time and effort writing good headlines that explain who you what, what you do, and who you do it for sub headlines talking about what it is that they actually get the outcome that you provide a call to action to get them to take the next step with you a secondary call. To action to maybe listen to your music or your portfolio like all these things, speaking to ultimately what they want, which is a great sounding mix, or a great sounding recording or whatever. Like these things are really important in the freelance space. As far as turning a visitor into a customer, so copywriting is the area that I’ve put a lot of effort into. And honestly, I don’t put a whole lot into conversion rate optimization, do I still do it? But all my effort, energy goes into good copywriting, which I already know your site has good copywriting on it. So I’m speaking to an audience, not you.
Yeah, well, I’m trying to actually work on copywriting right now I’m starting to pick up some books on like marketing psychology and like, writing general writing stuff. But one of the best examples, I can point to this, which this might not be a maybe not, might not be a great example. But have you been to Kanye West website before?
No, but I’m doing it right now.
Go to his website. Now. It’s Kanye West. He’s fucking huge. He’s one of the arguably the biggest
producer. He’s like a household name at this point.
Yeah, yeah. So he doesn’t need to, he doesn’t necessarily need to have the best website in the world. But if he goes website, I would argue it’s trash. It is literally just images. It’s like, it looks like some videos, it looks
like a giant, geo city site from like, 2001.
It is, it’s like all these call to actions to like play stuff. You’ll look at these things and be like, Oh, it’s an image, you click on it, and it will play but there’s no there’s not a play button telling you to play it. The only call to action is like a tap to play text that’s hard to read under some of these videos or images. So like that is arguably a terrible way to design a website. I don’t know, you go to his website, and you have no idea what he’s trying to sell you
should idea is strange. That’s a good example of the first of all, the design is not good. So that that actually is like you’re ugly, and your website is gibberish so that the only way he gets away with me, here’s the deal with that he like it gets a lot of website traffic because it’s Kanye fucking West. But also, people already know, some people like and some people trust him. So he probably still gets sales or whatever it is he’s selling or we’re getting people to do however, I, I would put a million dollars up on this bet on this wager if they would take it that I could rebuild this site and easy funnels. And I could double whatever conversion rate he hits double double the amount of views on things double the amount of sales on things than they’re currently getting right now. Just by adding copy to the site and making sure it’s clear and obvious what it is they’re doing. I could double whatever the effectiveness is of that site. overnight. I could do it in one night. As bad as that site is.
There you go Kanye West even called out Brian hood has called you out.
guy from Nashville is calling Kanye West out for his bad
website. But, uh, but I mean, going into this it’s a copy is very, very important in split testing, that copy is very important as well, which I’ve Okay, so I’ve heard from I think it’s from you and Chris on the six figure home studio podcast talking about conversion rate optimization and split testing stuff and like doing so here’s what I here’s where I push back on some of the things I’ve heard you guys say you’ve talked about, oh, well, you know, change the button color and change font stuff.
No, I haven’t. And buy from me. Never don’t ever tell people to change button color. Like if I do split tests. I’m usually completely redesigning the page. I want to taste Okay, big things on my Yes, yeah,
yeah. So I don’t, I don’t maybe don’t quote on quote me on this. But I thought I might have heard something like that, like, Oh, you wanted split test everything. Maybe I maybe I took that the wrong way.
Because here’s the thing, the more things you split test, like every little thing, like a button color, it’s so it’s so minor. It’s gonna be it’s too small, too small. So what will happen is maybe a one color, like a red versus a green is a difference. But it will take millions of website views to find a statistical significant difference in which one is better. We don’t have as freelancers and most musicians, we don’t have millions of websites used to do that. It’s a wasted anyways, you could do 100 other tests that are going to get you much better results in that timeframe. Whether it is testing, like avian invasions is website testing, like a call to action, and maybe changing up his headline either it says you are on his website, as you’re alive, you are beautiful, you are not alone. That doesn’t tell me who they are, what they do, who it’s for. And I know it’s not you’re not writing the same kind of headlines and call to actions on musician site as you would on a on a business site. But you could still do something to make a little clear what it is and what they should be doing next. So so those are things I would test is like this, because most people and you you can just tack this on hot jars like most people, when the rest of your site there are a lot of people bounce like your bounce rate is usually 50% or more, which means they go to your site and they leave without taking an action. And that’s usually because you have a really bad copy on your site. Hi That rate is and there’s some other variations I’m not going to get into. But I would bet that we could probably make his site more effective for getting his Patreon subscribers and more people to his twitch channel, more people on his mailing list. If you did some basic split tests, and I would change copy first designs great, I would work on copy first and big changes, new headline, make the logo smaller focus on the big words and a call to action that gets them deeper into his life in his funnel. That’s how I would do it. And I would test which one’s the most effective at that.
Yeah, this is exactly where I was going to is the big changes, you really want to split test major changes, because that’s how you can really tell, okay, this actually did something here. Okay, let’s let’s start transitioning in this part of the page. Now let’s do another big test and maybe keep some some things. And so
one thing is you some of the things you can do, obviously copywriting like headlines and stuff, but sometimes the Page Layout, so sometimes you might have all of your like headline and buttons on the left aligned, and you might have an image on the right side. Sometimes switching those around can change conversion rates, sometimes stacking things on top of each other where the whole page is centered. Sometimes a different background image can affect how people can whether it’s readable or not. I see that all the time where people put dark text over dark background, and it’s impossible to read, or light text over light background. So all these things can affect conversion rates and testing it is up because here’s another big danger is like I have a giant monitor in my studio right now or I get a screen. And so when I’m designing websites on here, sometimes it looks different when you get to a smaller screen. So if you think your text goes on a background, on a certain point, maybe you have a dark spot that doesn’t show up on your screen, like you have a dark text on a light background. But there’s one dark spot in the background photo, that on all 15 inch laptops, it’s on that dark spot and you can’t read the headlines. And that’s where split testing if you don’t have a small computer to test it on, and you don’t resize your window, that’s where split testing to ultimately see Holy shit, this this background image tanked my conversion rates, I wonder what that is, you might dig into it more or you might not you might not care enough, you just know it, it hurts your conversion rates. So you’re just going to switch the background image and you’re good to go. So sometimes these things are only found by split testing, because you just don’t know what you don’t know.
Yeah, I have a 34 inch monitor. And I used to design my website on it. And now I don’t you know, because of that very issue. I’ve got a smaller 27 inch or I think it’s like 25 inch monitor, they do all my website design on because generally most monitors are around like 24 to 27 inches, I think almost a high majority of them. So
so many people on laptops with like 13 inch screens and 50 on screens that you haven’t really encountered those. Yeah, so my wife has a 13 inch laptop, I have 215 inch laptops, and I have my big 27 inch in my studio. And that gives me a good example of all three now you can also just resize the window on this big screen and it will do the same thing for the most part, but and then and then mobile. God done mobile I
mean, yeah. Mobile is the most Yeah, you should be optimizing everything for mobile over browser hands down across the board fight like fuck just a monitor, you really want to be focusing on that mobile optimization. I’m
about to look up some some wonderful stats for you. Right? The
second, the mobile thing is it’s so funny, I never you can. I’ve actually even seen my analytics from just I started my business in 2018. And just the analytics from 2018 to now have increased by probably five to 10 points going to mobile, that’s just within the past few years. And you’ve been seeing that trend happen though, since like 2012 2011. Really everything pushing towards mobile, I think almost all my traffic is now coming through mobile, I would argue it’s probably well over 50% maybe 60% is straight up mobile. So if you’re not mobile optimized you are. There’s so many points that you’re being destroyed, especially when you want to talk about SEO and Google and especially with Google’s new core web vitals, which getting into some real nerdy stuff here. A lot of that has to do with optimization with mobile making sure that it loads properly on every single device and the Page Speed including that loads quickly as well. Which I can leave some documents on core web vitals if some nerds in here want to I want to get into that nobody cares
what I will say is I’m looking at my website stats and I’ve got you know over a million pageviews almost 2 million pageviews at six figure home studio we have a total pageviews of 7000 on easy funnels because we just launched this past month and then we have about 1.2 million on filepath calm and I’ll tell you right now when you look at the actual like mobile of this when we actually pull this up and I’m telling you what are with millions and millions of page views at stake what is our mobile mobile percentage on this site? Never Yeah, the custom silence out cuz I’m leaving.
Now you’re all good man. But the but yeah, the mobile stuff. I think I had it.
I got it. I got it. So file pass with 1.2 million. 71% of those people are on are on mobile. Easy funnels This is my smaller one so this really doesn’t even matter
what was nice about easy funnels was I got done designing everything and then I went oh shit mobile ad that always happens I always design everything I go This looks fucking great on my on my monitor and I go fuck me mobile. Oh no and I look and most of like what was nice easy funnels optimized it almost immediately fairly well there was some issues with my with my homepage but like in terms of the blog stuff it like it it almost immediately optimized it i didn’t i don’t think i had to really do much with my the the individual blogs it was just automatically optimized to perfect it looks fucking crazy
funnels mobile site is 52%. And then six figure home studio, our mobile site or mobile version is 61% of our traffic. So all three businesses file paths even more so but all three businesses, our website traffic is that is more than majority is the majority of our website traffic. So that’s why you want to talk about conversion man. split testing things with mobile in mind is something that people don’t think about is making sure like when you make changes, sometimes when you make changes on desktop thinking everyone’s gonna look at this, but the majority people are looking at on mobile, you’re not thinking through how that change affects mobile, is it a change? Does it affect it at all? Does it affect it the most? is it doing something you didn’t really understand like people, you get to pay attention a lot to mobile when it comes to website conversion rate optimization, which is the nerdiest thing in the world, but it is necessary. Now here’s the here’s, here’s the pushback here is like, again, there’s 8020 principle, and I want to make sure people understand this, when we talk about 80% 20% of what you do to your website is going to affect 80% is gonna have 80% of the changes. So what that means and this is good news, what that means is if you are just a musician, you’re a creative, you don’t want to do all of these nerdy technical things, you don’t want to have to split test your page, you don’t want to have to worry about copywriting. Well, you’re, you’re gonna have to be a big boy, big girl, you got to learn these things. And you got to be a business owner, you got to learn to an extent of these things. But But the good thing is, you don’t have to sit here like in a laboratory and just methodically analytically do all these things, you could just have a test running. And every month you check it and just see which one did better. And then go with the one that did that, and then find another test for the next month. And just do this once a month, and your website and just improve over time. It’s not hard to do. And you don’t have to like this doesn’t have to be your all consuming thing. The good thing about a website and the good thing about easy funnels. And now that I’m doing, like getting this up and running as far as like customer support and seeing how people react is is they’re very active for like the first week, they get their site done. And then we never really hear from them again, because they know how to use it. And their websites done. And they can move on with their lives, other than the occasional split test. So it’s not like it’s something is going to consume your life forever. It’s worth spending a week of your time, just getting it right the first time. And then having a test running read, just go check it every now and again. Even if he came back in six months, nothing’s gonna be broken. If you’d take six months to look at a test and see which one was better. It just means you have more data and you make a more informed decision. So yeah, it’s worth also talking about statistical significance. Do you want to talk about that question?
Yes. Okay. Yes, yes. Yes.
Try to be less.
I’m not taking up too much of your time by the way, but I love this shit.
I miss it. Yeah, I got a haircut to get to man get get on with it, sir. God damn.
Well, if anyone that doesn’t want to I’m, I will announce this. I’m slowly getting things in the work currently. But I’ve I’m starting a marketing business focusing more on Music Studios, but I’m very curious about bringing on actual EDM. This is you want to talk about people who need help with marketing studios usually have no idea what they’re doing. So I’m part of that
we have success with a six figure home studio podcast because it’s like, Yeah,
but part of that is going to be website design. So I’m actually really curious about bringing on some EDM producers as clients, but I just I think I just came up with the brand name the good music marketer. So I’ve got it, I’ve got dial things in with that. I’ll let everyone know once it’s actually launched and if anyone wants to bring Come on as a client, but Brian, thank you so much for coming on. Dude, this was a really, really, really awesome conversation. Please plug away everything you’ve got and everything you talk about, too. I’ll have in the show notes at Envious audio.com slash Episode 51.
Yeah, I’m gonna make this as easy as humanly possible. Because I’ve been a podcast listener where they’re like, go check out this and then go check out that and then go check out this. This is a good lesson for anyone listening right now. The power of simplicity, one single call to action. If you want to learn about anything we’ve talked about, or a few other things on top of that, just go to the six figure home studio comm slash EDM. That’s it. I’ll have everything there. That’ll be that. So I will I will talk about these things that will be there. One is funnels, which is a website creator for the audio industry. And there’s a lot of things that we talked when we talked about it all day to day, it’s not gonna, I’m not talking about that the other thing is filepath calm. And we’re about to launch an embeddable audio player that is lossless that you can actually stream WAV files, it’s the full track, you can change colors and dude light mode or dark mode and embed it in any website builder, not just easy funnels is any website builder that you already have. So this is great for musicians who don’t want that shitty Spotify playlist on their page that only allows 32nd clips, and then ultimately gets them to open the app. Oh, man, here’s the biggest thing is when you’re playing stuff on Spotify, on your desktop, on the internet, it constantly pops up open in the app open in the app, which gets people off your website. So that’s something we’re about to launch, but it’s also an audio collaboration tool. So if you ever work with studios, make them use file pass so that it’s easier to collaborate on like, hey, change the volume here, turn the vocals up here, you can put timestamp comments. It’s a whole thing. I’ll put that link on that page as well. And then also, if you’re our producer, I have a whole webinar where we talk about finding leads, doing sales processes, positioning your studio, like it’s a lot of things that you need to know this kind of, we really talked about one narrow thing in this episode today, which is websites, but there’s a whole lot more when it comes to that stuff. So that webinar will be linked on that page as well. That’s just six figure the six figure home studio comm slash EDM. So no matter what you whether you type it out, or spell it out, or put the letter or the word whatever it should for to that page, because I have every variation of the six figure home studio.com purchased and forwarding to that site. So that’s my single call to action to you. Go to that site, check out those things. And there might be a couple bonuses there too, depending on when this episode goes live.
Yeah, I think it’s let’s see what’s today. It’ll be coming out next week on the 16th. Okay, the 16th. Well,
I might have the easy funnels website challenge done and ready for registration by then. So that’ll be on that page as well. But that’s essentially where I’ll walk you through three days, three videos, some live stuff, to help you get your your website up and running in three days. That’s the goal. So
and I’ll update If I see you pretty much every single week. So whenever that is live, if the episodes already out, and it hasn’t been I’ll update the website link as well, for the show notes. But everyone like I cannot suggest Brian’s products more I every product you make you make it really with the mind of us as audio professionals and everything you’ve made as significant. I mean, this podcast would not be here. If it were not for the six figure home studio podcast. I wouldn’t I wouldn’t know the things I know I wouldn’t have Envious Audio. I wouldn’t have met Chris. I wouldn’t have coached with chris chris wouldn’t have come up with this podcast. So everything is because the six figure home studio podcast. I thank you so much for that. I appreciate you coming on man.
I’m glad to
be here, man. A lot of fun. And I love talking about this stuff. So thanks.
Alright, take care of it. Hope you guys enjoyed that episode with Brian hood. As a lot of fun. I really really enjoyed that conversation. I know for a fact he does have the EZ funnels challenge set up now. So if you guys want to learn how to develop a really high converting website, you guys can go register for that as well. So head to Envious audio.com slash Episode 51 or we’ll break Brian’s rule right now had the six figure home studio podcast.com slash EDM, you should have the links there. Otherwise, I will have the links on the show notes page. So go check that out, start designing your website. I know I am joining that workshop, that little challenge as well to start designing a website for my next business, the good music marketer. So check it out. And I’ll see you guys in just a couple weeks.
Recent Episodes
Want to help support the show? Leave a usefull review of the podcast, and let me know what you think!
Electronic Dance Money Episode #111 – Building A Brand Awareness Campaign
Building A Brand Awareness Campaign What is up! I am FINALLY back after a few weeks of being MIA. In this episode we are jumping into brand awareness and building your own brand awareness campaign. But first, what is brand awareness? Why is it important to you? How...
Electronic Dance Money Episode #110 – How Finding The Right Job Can Make You a Better EDM Producer
#110 - How Finding The Right Job Can Make You a Better EDM Producer In this day and age, finding the right job can be difficult, but not impossible. "The right job" means you have balance in your day job and your hobbies outside of it. You need flexibility, support...