April Fools Marketing Campaign Update

Hey. It's Matt. Welcome to Money Lab. This is a quickie, or at least I say that, and we'll see how it goes. But today is April 1st.

I know you're hearing this way later, but I wanted to give an update on what has happened to the April fools campaign that I put together. Now I've told a few of my friends about this idea. I showed them the bottle that I created, and everyone I told wasn't that many people, but they all love the idea. Right? And so it made me nervous because I was like, well, if I do this, am I gonna sell a ridiculous number of bottles and I'm not gonna be able to keep up?

And I kept trying to tell myself that in the pool industry, nothing goes viral. Nothing is a smash hit. Nothing is crazy growth. It never it has never happened to me. If if it's gonna happen to anybody, I've been doing this for almost 20 years, it has never happened to me.

And I've never heard it happening happen to anybody else in the pool industry. I just think it's one of those things. Now I've had viral moments, but they were I'd say viral in the smallest sense. Like, yes, people did share, it did get passed around, etcetera, but it didn't like nothing I've ever done has never blown up and to, like, you know, get a ton of traffic, but that's pretty much it. So I launched this thing this morning.

I sent out an email. I published a YouTube video. I so the email went out to 80,000, 90,000 people, I think it was. I had a YouTube video that go out to go out. I had a short, a reel, a TikTok, all the same video, but, yeah, all across all platforms.

Podcast went out, not a lot of people there. And I have about I ordered 96 bottles because that's that was, like, the the number of you know, in the case. And within so it is 1 o'clock in the afternoon. It launched at 8 o'clock this morning. I have sold half at $10 a pop.

So not gangbusters. Not gangbusters. And, again, that is the case. That has always been the case for Swim University. I thought at the very least, I'll get a 1 out of 10 on YouTube.

I got a 4 out of 4 out of 10 on the video because I'm like, oh, the video is 2 minutes. But I there's a so a lot of people hit email back, you know, from the original email. Most of the sales came from email. And they said, great idea or like, Happy happy April fools or whatever, like, not even knowing it was real, not even clicking through to it or whatever, not buying it, etcetera. So I do think launching on April fools day, which I knew was gonna be I knew I knew I was doing, you know, like, it's probably the worst day to launch a product because everyone's just putting out bits.

And this is technically a bit, but it's also a product. And so I think that the there is no this was this was not a success. This was not a successful, you know, thing to do, at least in the short term. I do have 2 more emails going out. I have a couple of more, like, promotional things happening, but very small.

And this is really a long term play, because this is going to be our 404 page. So it's gonna be something that I put in place, and we'll see what happens, you know, long term with getting any press. So what did I learn? Like, I I went to bed nervous because I'm like, alright. Well, it I think 2 things will happen.

1 or 2 things could happen. One version, and I've mentioned this before, is that it it's a dud. You know, it it sells a handful of bottles, whatever. The second version is I thought, okay. At least we'll sell out of the 100 bottles, which is which is what I think will happen.

I think it's still too early. We're about halfway through. The next couple of emails, I think by the end of the week, we'll have sold out all 100 bottles. So that is what happened. The third scenario, which I guess could still happen, is there actually there actually is a viral moment, and it could happen later because the video could just, I don't know, get picked up by somebody at a later date.

And then we sell a ton of bottles that way, but I just don't think it's gonna happen. So that's that's what I think that's what I think is happening. I would you know, Steph was like in at last night, she was like, what if we sold 2,000 bottles? I'm like, if we sell 2,000 bottles, I'm like, I don't know if I could handle that much because it's like I having to hand label a 100 bottles is really a tough job, but between Steph and I, we could do it in a day. But if we had to do, you know, what is it, like, 20 times that, I I don't think I would have been I would have been screwed.

Or at least I would have been my whole week would have been just been labeling bottles. So that didn't happen. Again, I guess it could still happen, but I wanted to give an early indication of, like, okay. This thing worked. People liked it, but it wasn't the, like, big smashing success that, you know, part of me hoped for, but the other part of me didn't because I didn't wanna have to do all the work.

I kinda wanted to be like, alright. This is a 4 zero four page. I just wanna put it up. If I sell a few bottles throughout the year, great. Like, what an easy gig.

Right? And if somebody finds the 404 page and, like, really gets a kick out of it, then that's also, like, a thumbs up. Great. So I hope if if there's anything I really hope for, it's I hope that in the future, somebody finds this and turns it into a bad decent, like, press release. I, you know, I talked to Doug Cunnington.

He was over my house on Saturday, and I I was telling him the story of making this, showed him the bottle, and he was like, you know, this is right for a press release. And I was like, yeah. I I agree. And that's what I've even talked to Pat Walls. He was over doing an interview, and he was like, yeah.

Press release. And I went and I went on Twitter and I was like, how the fuck do you do a press release? Like, if all of the marketing skills that I have, that's one I do not have at all. I don't even know I don't even know the first place to do that. But I think it's something I should start looking into.

I was gonna do it prior leading up to it, but I was like, well, my skill set, that's not where my skill is. My skill set is in all of the other like, is basically creating this thing and, you know, making a really nice video and all of the media surrounding it, but not the actual pitching to media companies. And, personally, I don't know if I want to get good at that because it feels like a sales thing. And perhaps anyone in the audience this is, again, gonna come out later. But if anyone in the audience is like, oh, dude, just use this service, or, you know, you don't you know, just they'll write a press release.

Like, you know, I could have wrote a press release with chat gpt and been like, okay. Here it is. I was kind of hoping that I could at least have a better story to tell after the fact. I mean, I guess I still have a somewhat of a story is that, like, hey. I sold an empty bottle.

That's kind of interesting, I guess. I don't really know. I would I mean, I would find it somewhat interesting, but I'm like, alright. Well, cool. You know?

I don't know if that is a I don't know if there's a teachable moment. It's just something I did. So I think maybe getting maybe the next step, if I'm gonna do anything, would be to maybe do a little bit of research on, you know, doing press releases and, like, what does it, like, what does it take, just out of curiosity, to get on, like, morning shows and that sort of press? Like, how does that come about? Is that has that always been an organic thing or that or is that is there some entity out there that's pitching that?

I don't know. I looked into you know, back in the day, there was PR Wire. There was, like, another one that was, like, press release distribution services. And I was like, okay, this is easy. It's like a $100, you know, it's like and I already think that that sucks.

Right? It's like, alright, well, I'm gonna write a press release. I'm gonna pay a $100 and it's gonna get press. Like, that feels like it wouldn't work that well. I know there are more expensive distribution.

I think there's something like muck rake or muckrack or something where you could pay a lot of money and they'll do stuff for you or they'll just get give you access to a list of journalists, and then you pitch them. And it's like, if it's gotta be a manual me pitching journalists, I don't think that that's worth the time. So we'll see. I don't know. Just for documentation purposes, I'm just gonna pull up Instagram.

So Instagram, within an hour, we had 500 views on that video. Not a lot. TikTok, we're sitting at 723. Yeah. I the and the last few videos have been in the hot tens of thousands of views.

So even the shorts are not doing all that well. And, again, think it's an April fools thing for sure. Everybody's kind of like I know people, at least in my industry, hate this. They hate this holiday because it is it's basically like it's not worth being on the Internet today because nothing you see is real. But if I keep sending it out, then we'll see what happens.

So short little quick little update. I think what is the lesson here? I think, for me. The lesson here is, okay, I got to do something creative in March, I got to think a little outside the box, but as I've said in previous episodes, this particular brand and this particular industry doesn't really care. It they don't appreciate the extra effort.

I've heard mister b say about YouTube videos that your audience appreciates, you know, appreciates the effort. When they see it, they appreciate it. And I and I a 100% believe that. I don't believe that that effort is rewarded in specific industries. Like, industries like mine where it's like it doesn't really matter.

However, in in things that people are very passionate or interested in, for example, home brewing. When someone sees a really good home brewing video, like, somebody who took the extra effort, there there is a verbal reward for that. It is it it does there is a reward there. And it's because the people who are watching already already appreciate that you made a video, and if you took the extra step, it's like, holy shit. Right?

But in pools, they're just glad there's any video. And so the extra effort isn't really noticed because they're just like, I can't even believe there's a video about this, and this is great. This is exactly what I was looking for. And then it's like, yeah. But I went above and beyond.

It's like, okay. Well, yeah, I only needed this one video. I mean, you know, I didn't need this extra shit. And I think that that's the lesson is, I I you know, it's I think it's still worth doing creative projects like this. But at the end of the day, the most important thing that I can do for my audience, that they will appreciate a hell of a lot more than a empty bottle of empty pool detector bottle thingy than a stunt is if I can get them to a clear pool as fast as possible and as easily as possible.

And that requires me to put out just incredibly helpful content consistently and to improve my products right now that just work. And they're also looking to save money. And so, you know, a pee bottle is like, whatever. It's it's it's not a really it's not a it it doesn't really it it, you know, it fits our make pool care easy and simple and, you know, we're try just trying to help you, but it doesn't solve anything other than that. And I think there's a lot of other things that I could do that are not stunt based, that are actually not even creative, that people would just, like, appreciate like crazy.

So with that thought, one of the things that I that I thought about is, like, man, if I had a live webinar kind of thing where, you know, I taught pool care, basic pool care, or pool opening, and people signed up for it, and it was very inexpensive or free, and, you know, I just sold my course at the end, they would be like, this is what I wanted. I wanted to be able to ask you questions. I wanted to be able to sit down, spend 1 hour, learn what I gotta learn, and may be able to take care of my pool for the rest of the summer. Like, that's really it. I'm helping solve that problem.

And when I met whenever I'm not solving that problem and I'm doing these little extra things, they're worth it, but they're not going to they're not changing the game. They're not moving the needle. They're just reinforcing the brand message. So, am I disappointed with this? Kind yeah.

I would say that I am in that I was just hoping a little more fever than it than what what then what it got, but I'm also sort of relieved because I don't have to label a shitload of bottles and send them out. So that's it. And now going forward for the rest of the year, I can focus on the task at hand, which is create articles, create podcasts, create videos, you know, create emails, run sales, create ads, send emails, I think I just said that twice, and just be consistent. Serve my audience what they what they come to me for or what they look what they look up to me for. And that's it.

So that's it. If you have any questions or you want me to get any more any more details about this, I'm sure there'll be an another update soon because it's only been, you know, a handful of hours since it launched. But that's that's the news so far. If you have any questions, let me know. Mad@moneylab.co.

Bye.