S5E87
· 34:37
Hey. It's Matt. Welcome to Money Lab. In the brewery again, just having to sit. Just did a lot of work today.
Matt Giovanisci:I took the day off from business work to just work on the house. Just random stuff. And that's not why I started to do a podcast. Why the the reason is because today, I was helping Steph render out a video. She has taken the week and decided well, actually, I don't know if it was her well, it wasn't her choice.
Matt Giovanisci:So she edits our long form videos for YouTube for Swim University. That was that's been her job for many years. And when I say many years, I mean, like, 3. And she was using ScreenFlow, which is a Mac app, really a screen casting or a screen recording app that you can edit in, and it just happens to be a really easy editing software. And I taught her how to use how to animate sorry.
Matt Giovanisci:I'm just moving around things here in the brewery. I taught her how to animate using that software. Well, you know, she hasn't upgraded the software in 3 years, and, she's just like, I'm kinda done with this. I think I think it's I've reached my limit on what this thing can do. And so this is actually not what I wanna talk about, but, hey, whatever.
Matt Giovanisci:Here we are. So she decided, okay. I wanna learn Premiere, which is what my brother and I use to edit videos. And, you know, we pay for the Adobe Suite, so we're like, you know, let's learn that. I'm I recorded her an hour long tutorial on how to edit a video and kinda did it for her or at least, like, a minute of editing for her, and she's been referencing the video.
Matt Giovanisci:It took her all week to learn to make a video, and then when she went to go render it, there's flickering happened in the animations, and my brother experiences the same problem. I, on the other hand, do not experience that problem, and I think it's because my computer is just better, and it renders things more efficiently and better. And so anyway, so I had to help her with that and render some videos for her. So I'll be rendering the the videos on my computer until we can figure out if, a, it's just some it's just some sort of setting that needs to be adjusted, or if she needs to buy a new computer, then we need to invest in a new computer for her because she's gonna be doing the editing and kinda need a fast computer to do that. So anyway, as we were rendering the video, I decided to take a look into Crazy Egg, and Crazy Egg is the software that that I've been using to do split testing.
Matt Giovanisci:I use it to run exit surveys. I use it to take snapshots of specific pages to get heat map data and scroll data so that I can improve landing pages. And I had decided you know, we had talked about this in the podcast before, where I was reading an art or I was reading a newsletter from Brennan Dunn. I think it's, oh, I think it's called createandsell.co. I'm pretty sure that's the newsletter.
Matt Giovanisci:Sign up for it if you're interested. It's, mainly about newsletters and, getting email addresses and just email marketing in general. It's really good. So he had an article or a newsletter that came out that was about how he had helped this guy who was getting a ton of traffic convert that traffic into email subscribers. And what he did was he created one lead magnet, but then dynamically changed the text of the opt in box depending on the article that you were reading.
Matt Giovanisci:For example, and I'll I'll explain this in terms for Swim University because this is exactly the AB test that I ran. So currently, there is one headline. There's one Okay. There we go. There's one headline for the opt in, which is, you know, I forget something generic like save time and money with your pool with a free pool care plan, or save 100 on save 100 this year with your free custom pool care plan.
Matt Giovanisci:Something like that. Right? Pretty generic. Kinda works for just all pool care in general. That headline works well on the home page, and it would work well on articles that were just talking about general maintenance.
Matt Giovanisci:But in so in fact, we have an AB test running right now on our most popular page, which is, the beginner's guide to pool maintenance. You know, it's our state it's our flagship article. And, you know, obviously, the the headline there converts really well. It converts upwards of I think it's hovering around 13%. So that 13% of readers of that article become subscribers.
Matt Giovanisci:It's pretty significant. Okay? Most people and in fact, myself, way back in the day, I was getting like 0 0.5, like half a percent conversion rate across the site. Now take that same article. Now the the same headline spans across all articles.
Matt Giovanisci:Right? So if you're reading an article right now, and then I I I pulled up another, popular article, but that was a little bit more niche. It was our how to clear a green pool in 24 hours or something like that. It gets a decent amount of traffic. And it's it's getting a lot of traffic right now because we're heading into pool season, and this is when pee pools are normally green.
Matt Giovanisci:So the idea there was to change just the headline of the opt in from the generic, which is, you know, save time and money on pool care with this pool care plan to in fact, I didn't even do it for the pool care plan. I'm just still doing it for the cheat sheet, which is our, the opt in that or the original opt in that we're using right now, the lead magnet, I should say. So I, just on that page, ran an a b test where I where I said another headline, which is simply stop worrying about pool algae with our free pool care cheat sheet or something like that, with our free cheat sheet, something like that. That's the only thing I changed on that page, and my goal is subscribers. Well, when I looked at the results today, it is still very early, but it is like a 150% difference.
Matt Giovanisci:So the more specific the headline and we're not this is not shocking by any means, but I was like, okay. There you go. So the fact that the headline was more specific to the article means I got more subscribers. Okay. So let's say that that holds true, and it may not be as high as a 150% difference.
Matt Giovanisci:Maybe it just I don't know. Maybe we go from because we were I think I think the numbers were we were converting at around 3% on that page. That pretty decent, honestly. Decent conversion rate. But we're now but but the more specific headline, we're at 7%.
Matt Giovanisci:Okay? So huge difference. Right? Double the conversions just by changing the text. Okay.
Matt Giovanisci:Let's say that holds true. Even if it's a 10% increase, even if it's like, let's say it goes from 3% to 4%, that is still a significant increase. That's only one page where I did that. Alright? So I'm thinking, how do I programmatically do this across the website where the headlines get more specific per article.
Matt Giovanisci:I have a few ideas. The first idea I had was using my existing using tags, essentially. Alright. So I would categorize a handful of posts into very specific tags. So for example, the pool the green pool one, which is pool algae.
Matt Giovanisci:Right? I have, I don't know, probably, like, 4 to 5 articles centered around that specific topic of, you know, algae as a as a problem. So I could create a, you know, a headline that says, you know, if it's this tag, use this headline. And so therefore, the same headline would be used across all of those, you know, those 4 or 5 posts. Right?
Matt Giovanisci:The problem is is that I would have to store that headline somewhere. Like, I'd have to write that headline, whatever it is, and store it. I could do it all in PHP and just kinda do if else statements, but that feels really clunky. So I would need some sort of database to store the headlines. What I could do is add some kind of custom field to the tag section of WordPress where I could just add in headlines.
Matt Giovanisci:And so I would add the headline, and then it would just replace that if it, you know, if it if it had that. That's one idea. Now that kind of makes sense, except there it it makes my tagging system a little wonky. Because right now, I have pretty generic tags, like, they're they're wide tags because the I use the tagging system in WordPress to generate my recommended reading articles at the bottom of every post. So let's say I'm talking about, you know, like, I have a bunch of articles about pool sanitation.
Matt Giovanisci:Well, that is a subcategory. So now if you're reading an article about, you know, how to add chlorine to your pool at the bottom of the article, whatever else is categorized in that tag is gonna appear there. So it doesn't get specific to the article itself. It's more on the vibe. So would the for example, if I had 4 articles that were all centered around pool algae, right, would stop worrying about pool algae apply to all those headlines and or to all those pages.
Matt Giovanisci:And probably, but there are probably some cases where the article might be tagged as something, but then the headline wouldn't make perfect sense. And so, therefore, that page would suffer in conversions. And so that was my idea to write less headlines, but, ultimately, I think it skews things a bit and it makes it harder. So the other idea is to use, advanced custom fields, which which is the plug in that I was mentioning that I would use for the tag section. But what I would do is instead add a advanced custom field for every single post that would that would basically say like, I would call it, like, opt in headline.
Matt Giovanisci:Right? And so this would mean that I would have to manually craft every single headline for every single article. That is 215 headlines as of today. Obviously, I could reuse some of them. I could just copy and paste the same headline across multiple articles.
Matt Giovanisci:But the reason I think I like that is because then I have control over each article. So for example, let's say I we get we have a really popular article that just, you know, is popping off at the moment. And I have a custom opt in headline associated with that post, and that is the headline that appears. Now what I'll probably do within the code will just say, if that custom field exists, then use that headline. Otherwise, or else, use the generic headline that's there.
Matt Giovanisci:So I'll always have so there will always be a fallback headline because I'm not gonna have time to go through and do them all, and I might forget when I create a new post or whatever. So if that is the case, what might happen is if it is an article pops off, I might wanna AB test that headline on that page. Because what if the one that I wrote originally is converting it, like, 4%, but I might be able to get it to convert to 6%. So I could run a crazy egg test, a split test, on that one specific page for about a week and see if I can get another headline to to to create more subscribers. And if it does, then I can just go into that one article and replace that headline right in WordPress and be done with it.
Matt Giovanisci:So it it allows me to have that sort of granular control over every single article and headline. And, yes, it does mean writing a bunch of headlines, but I think it'll be very easy to sit down and do that because, you know, for example, like, I might you know, I'll just I'll just, I'm just gonna think about an article. I'm not sitting in front of my computer, but there's an article that I just updated that was like the complete guide to pool testing. K? Pool water testing.
Matt Giovanisci:Okay. So what would that headline be? And let's say it's for the custom pool care plan. So I could be like, you know, you know, learn how to get accurate test results with with your with your free custom pool care plan. Just I don't know.
Matt Giovanisci:Does that make any sense to the reader or to, like, what it actually delivers? No. But your brain is probably like, well, yeah, that's well, I'm reading this article because I want that's what I want. So I would have to look at every article and go, okay. What is it that the reader ultimately wants at the end of this article?
Matt Giovanisci:That's the headline that I put at the top. Now that could be it's it's interesting because it let I'm just laughing because you think like roughly 10% of people are are gonna read this free article, Right? And they decide, I'm not gonna read the article. I just want the plan. And it's like, that is exactly what I feel like a blog should do.
Matt Giovanisci:It's like, it's a it's an advertising tool. What's also interesting about that, which I had not really considered, is here's what I haven't considered, but holy shit makes a lot of sense. That sort of granularity, I don't know if that's the word, but that sort of specificity of the headline thing that I'm gonna do on the website. That idea translates to running Google Ads. So assuming 10% of people, you know, visit our pool maintenance article.
Matt Giovanisci:So the the here's here's okay. Here's the here's the crazy thing. Oh, man. Okay. Fuck.
Matt Giovanisci:Okay. Here's what we're doing right now that is not ideal. I've been having an issue with Google sorry. Facebook, we've been running our popular shorts as ads, converting people to the cheat sheet. Okay?
Matt Giovanisci:That is working like gangbusters. We are currently seeing results less than a dollar per lead. Like, I'm getting as low as 60¢ per lead per email address, and that's because the ad itself is delivering value because it is an organic, you know, how to or it's our organic pool tip. At the actually, not even at the end of the ones that are winning. We just, you know, have a button that says, like, download our free pool care cheat sheet.
Matt Giovanisci:That's that's all it is. We're just taking, like, well performing shorts, running them as Facebook ads and Instagram ads, and just adding the button. And the button takes them to a very simple opt in page where they, you know, where they can download the cheat sheet, where they just enter their email address. That's great. That works really well, and I've been slowly creeping that up.
Matt Giovanisci:And it is and what's nice about that is we also track who's buying, and right now we're at breakeven. Now we're only spending, like, roughly $50 a day, and I'm like, I'm I'm budging it by, like, $10 every few days until it just stops performing, but I feel like this is the time where I could ratchet it up. But if I ratchet it up too fast, it's gonna screw up the machine learning, and we're just gonna start getting shitty results. So So I'm just gonna leave it go. But what I've been doing is taking money away from our Google Ads and budgeting it towards our Facebook ads because they're working better, because they're breaking even.
Matt Giovanisci:Now the reason I think the fake the Google Ads have suffered is because what I'm essentially doing is just running ads to that most popular post, the the pool maintenance post. So, basically, anyone who converts to a from a click goes to the article. Okay? Now I said only roughly 10% of those people are actually subscribing. So my lead cost per lead is way higher.
Matt Giovanisci:It's, like, multiple dollars, like, 2 to $3 on Google. But those people are are actively looking for a solution, and I'm technically providing it for them because I'm I'm running, you know, ads to an article. So the so, you know, to the end user, they're happy. But I'm not because I'm not making money from that post. So what I could do is change it.
Matt Giovanisci:Instead of sending people to the post, instead of you know, it could still be the same keywords, but the ad would read different. The ad would read, like, this like, the specific headlines of our custom pool care plan. So now I could run an ad directly to Typeform where they just start answering questions about their pool. And that has an 80% completion rate as opposed to, say, a 10% completion rate, which would be sending them to the article. And I wouldn't have to change the keywords we're going after.
Matt Giovanisci:In fact, I could get a little bit better at that. And that would, 1, lead to more email subscribers, obviously, and 2, would probably lead to more sales. So in that case, I am providing the wrong offer on Google. But it's making me think, well, if I'm gonna go through the entire website and give a custom headline to every single post, then why wouldn't I create a, like, multiple campaigns or a single campaign that has multiple, you know, specific headlines to the same page. So the campaign would be, you know, the campaign is the custom pool care plan.
Matt Giovanisci:That's the that's the campaign. And the goal is leads. Right? And then I would have an ad group that was only targeting, you know, the keywords for, you know, say, in ground pool maintenance or, you know, pool algae, for example. So I could just start targeting that, and then the ads would read, you know, stop pool care algae with a free cool so the offer just becomes way better.
Matt Giovanisci:Holy shit. Okay. I am absolutely doing that. I wanna say that this is the most important thing that I could do in the before May. So I'm I'm recording this April 23rd.
Matt Giovanisci:So I have time. I well, 1, implementing the headline thing in WordPress, I could do that in 30 minutes. I know exactly what to do. I've done it many times before. Super fucking easy.
Matt Giovanisci:I might even just keep it with the cheat sheet, not not even, like, you know, not even fuck with that, because I can. And then once but then, you know, if I change it over to the custom plan, then I'm gonna have to go back and change every single one of those headlines and fast and fast. So I am currently running an AB test on our most popular page where I'm testing both the cheat sheet versus the the the pool care plan. And right now, the pool care plan is winning by about 2%. It's not it's actually not a huge increase, but it is an increase.
Matt Giovanisci:So like I said on previous episodes, I honestly just didn't want it to fail. Because if it failed, then I I I would just I wouldn't even if it failed miserably, I wouldn't have even switched from the, you know, the cheat sheet to the pool care plan. But since it's actually beating it, you know, and I would have done it even if it was even if it lost, like, a single point because then I would have been like, alright. Well, it lost a single point, but the offer's better and I know I can go in and, like, tweak the headlines and keep keep trying to improve it. You know?
Matt Giovanisci:And it's not gonna, like, destroy our website if I went from, like, you know, a 10% conversion rate to say a 9% conversion rate. When I know that the offer is better and I can keep making the the copywriting better, and I can make the offer itself, what they get in the end, even better. So the question is, at this stage, I've been running the AB test for about 5 days that, you know, it's gotten more than a 100 conversions. I'm pretty confident that switching to the pool care plan makes sense, but I'm still unsure. And I think that's my my biggest issue is that I'm just, like, a little unsure about, you know, how many of those people.
Matt Giovanisci:I guess the biggest issue I have is I don't know if the pool care plan converts as well as the cheat sheet to actual sales, but I don't I don't have hard data that suggest that. But I have to imagine that it's the same type of person finding it. So if I'm getting more conversions, what's the difference? I don't know. Here okay.
Matt Giovanisci:Let me let me think about it this way. If okay. This is simple. I could switch everything over, like, in an instant. Right?
Matt Giovanisci:I could build everything on a staging platform and then just go, alright, upload. And then the entire website is now no longer the cheat sheet in in our you know, it's it's now on our post that is. It's now all the custom pool care plan, like, just like that. Right? Then what I could do is I could at the same exact time, I could also do the headline thing where I go in and do custom headlines for everything.
Matt Giovanisci:Now, obviously, I would have a standard headline that would work across everything. And then what I would do is 1 by 1, go through each article, or I would start with the most popular ones and switch those over to custom headlines. Okay. Worst case scenario, I run this for the 1st week of May, which the only reason I'm a little nervous to do this is because this is our busy season, but I'm like, it's really the best time to to learn if this fucking if we see a bump. Right?
Matt Giovanisci:If I see an increase in both subscribers and sales, then I'll know it was from that change. But if I see a significant decrease, then what I can do is just from a, you know, frightening position, I could just go back, flip the switch back, and then we just go right back to the cheat sheet the way it always was. And I just go, okay. That was a that was a mistake. You know, let's let's go back and incrementally just sort of replace an article by article, which I could do as well.
Matt Giovanisci:I I I could do that as well. I could, actually, because I already have this set up. This might be the better thing, actually, now that I think about it. Okay. The better thing to do would be so every single article that I have on WordPress right now has a custom field that's called offer, and it's a drop down menu.
Matt Giovanisci:And you can choose the hot tub cheat sheet, the pool care cheat sheet, or the saltwater pool care cheat sheet. So depending on the article, that that's what's gonna appear on that page. What I could do is just create a third offer or a or a 4th offer called pool care plan. Right? And then 1 by 1, I could switch over each article to the pool care plan and then add a custom headline at the same time.
Matt Giovanisci:So I could do it that way, but then I wouldn't know how well that performs because I wouldn't have a massive update number to be like, alright. I switched everything to the pool care plan. Holy shit. Things are out of control. It's great.
Matt Giovanisci:I would be doing it 1 by 1, and then I would have to look at each individual page and make sure that, okay. Yeah. The pool care plan is outperforming the cheat sheet. I don't know. I don't know.
Matt Giovanisci:I think that's the way to do it. I just because it makes it the most flexible. And, technically, I could, if I wanted to, because it's so flexible without going into code, I could bulk update all the posts to the any any offer I want. So I can I can do that manual switch, that one fell swoop switch in WordPress and not have to, you know, go back into the code and do that? So that makes more sense, and it might we might it might turn out that, you know, like, I'm spending so much money on Zapier or, you know, it's like it overloads it or it's too slow and I have to figure out another plan, and so I could easily switch back specific things.
Matt Giovanisci:And I could measure each individual page with Google Analytics because I do have the events. And so I could say, hey. Look at this page. We were able to increase the conversion of the subscriber event on this page by switching the offer to the pool care plan, and so I could take it page by page or or article by article. And then that would also allow me to go through and add the headline too.
Matt Giovanisci:Yeah. That certainly makes more sense. Okay. So to wrap things up, because I'm actually gonna go out, to a brewery tonight in about 10 minutes. So to wrap things up, what I'm gonna do is I'm going to create another offer called the pool care plan that I can choose as a drop down for each post, and I'm gonna add an advanced custom field called opt in headline or offer headline, exit to match.
Matt Giovanisci:And then, I'll be able to not only choose the offer, but also update the headline. And then if the headline does not exist, fall back to generic headline for whatever offer is selected. Okay. I'm doing that shit tomorrow, and I will report back on how well that works. I really thought this was gonna be a lot more work, but now that I think about it, it's actually not a lot of work, but could result in a massive increase in both subscribers and sales if if it works.
Matt Giovanisci:So we'll see. Alright. That's it. I'm gonna head to the bar, brewery. Another brewery, not the one I'm in.
Matt Giovanisci:So if you have any questions or you have any insights, shoot me an email, matt@moneylab.co. Bye.
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