S5E71
· 34:24
Hey. It's Matt. Welcome to Money Lab. I'm gonna keep this one short, he said an hour later. All I have to do is figure out one quick thing, and that is the home page of Swim University.
Matt Giovanisci:For the longest time, the home page of Swim University has been sort of a catchall. I was trying to figure out when someone visits swimuniversity.com, are they either a pool or a hot tub owner? And the way that I did this was I basically just, you know, had a a generalized a generalized statement, which which right now says, finally, your pool and hot tub problems solved. And then there's 2 buttons. There's a pool button, pool care button, and a hot tub care button.
Matt Giovanisci:And the idea was you just pick one of those buttons, and it just takes you to that category page. On the the also on the home page, a little bit lower, is the pool guides. So, like, our top, I think there's 9, and then top 9 hot tub guides. And that's the whole home page. So I had a thought of wanting to turn the home page into a better lead capture system.
Matt Giovanisci:And I was working with Klaviyo to be able to do this. And so the idea was I was gonna have the same tagline or the same headline, and then there would be a button that said something like join our newsletter. And when you clicked it, you would first enter in your e your name and your email address, and then it would be a pop up box. And then the next screen, it would it would ask you, do you own a pool or a hot tub? And it would be 2 buttons.
Matt Giovanisci:And whichever button you clicked, it would send you to the OTO page of that product. And in Klaviyo, it would tag them as either a pool or hot tub owner. This, unfortunately, in Klaviyo, looks like something you can do, but actually, it doesn't work. And I've talked to Klaviyo several several times about this, and it's been months and they haven't gotten back to me because they allow you to add 2 buttons, but they don't allow you to so they allow you to add 2 buttons in in a form, but they don't allow both buttons to be a submit button. Even though you can check you can you can say that they are, it actually doesn't submit the data into Klaviyo.
Matt Giovanisci:So it is a bug, and they need to fix it. Now that, ideally, would have worked very well. But since Klaviyo doesn't seem to give a shit about this right now at least or no one else has had this problem, which feels very odd because it does feel like this would be a great use for dual buttons as be able to have people pick and choose things, but here we are. I thought, okay. I'm just gonna leave it alone for now, and we'll just carry on.
Matt Giovanisci:But we are slowly making the shift, and I think that this is a long time in the making. We're slowly making the shift away from focusing on hot tub content in our generalized branding. Because one, there are just more pool owners. Our list of pools are bigger. Like, we have more pool owners on our email list.
Matt Giovanisci:When we publish pool content on social media, on on YouTube, on our website, it just gets more traffic. Hot tub stuff does also get traffic, but it is like 80 20. So like 20% of the traffic we would get for a, you know, a hot tub article. It's just it all it's doing and and I've and it's so hard to get away from it because we sell hot tub products. So we have you know, it's not it's not a nothing category for us, but it is significantly, stunted.
Matt Giovanisci:And on top of that, hot tub care is just not as complicated as a pool, because it is a small body of water. It is essentially a bathtub. So if there is ever a problem, you basically just drain and refill it. So, yes, there are some people who have hot tubs and pools, but are to sort of strip away the the confusion, we are basically just declaring that we are a pool care company to the public. We also happen to have hot tub stuff too.
Matt Giovanisci:It's just that in our public facing you know, I'm saying all of this just to be very clear on what it is that we're doing here. This allows us to do a few things. 1, and I'm gonna get to the home page in a second, and, of course, here I go again with this will take 5 minutes, but, yeah, it'll take an hour to explain everything. But I do think that there is some importance, And I've talked about this on other episodes, so there is something to this. But By removing the extra callout, the extra audience callout, we are basically saying, okay.
Matt Giovanisci:Who are we for? What problem are we trying to solve as a brand? We are a pool care company. We teach homeowners, specifically pool owners, how to take care of their pool as easily as possible. Simple simple stuff.
Matt Giovanisci:We also do hot tubs, but that is that is not something that we are going to that's not the message we're gonna put out, and this allows us to do a few things. I think it's gonna help us grow our YouTube channel much better because we will be singularly focused on one thing. So imagine you are a pool owner and you do not own a hot tub. This is a majority of people. And again, there are more pool owners than there are hot tub owners in the world.
Matt Giovanisci:In fact, a lot of people own hot tubs at their vacation home and and not even at their regular home. So people identify as pool owners more so than hot tub owners. So by exclusively creating public content on YouTube and social media about pools, we are now focused on what we do, and therefore, I think it will increase the subscriber count more significantly because all of our subscriber counts really grow in the summer when we're talking about pools, and then we usually switch to talking about hot tubs in the winter. And not only does our subscriber count go stagnant and we lose some, but our hot tub videos don't do nearly as well. And, again, if you imagine you are subscribed to a channel where it's, Mexican cooking, And then all of a sudden, in the next, you know, the next video, there's she she's talking about pond care.
Matt Giovanisci:I don't know. I'm just thinking of random stuff. And you're like, wait a minute. This is not the channel that I subscribe to. In fact, this actually happened to a I there's a guy in our space who teaches pool care.
Matt Giovanisci:Now he is his channel and I I don't I don't I doubt he listens to this. I actually don't know him personally, but he is, the baby basically, like our competitor on YouTube. And and I say that with air quotes because we're not really in competition. But he was creating content around taking care of a pool. Right?
Matt Giovanisci:Because he was actually going out and taking care of pools. He somewhere shifted or started to dilute his content with product reviews and podcasts specifically geared towards the pool industry. So all of all of a sudden, if you followed him as a pool owner, as somebody who just owns a home and has a pool in their backyard, I would say maybe now, 80% of the videos that he publishes are not even they're not even directed toward you. They're directed towards a person running a pool company. So he diluted He basically was like, okay.
Matt Giovanisci:This is who my audience is now and basically ignored the general pop. Now on top of that, he started and I I don't know if he's done this multiple times. I think he did it once, but it this is a this is the point I'm trying to make. He did a he did a YouTube video where he talked about his nutrition and what he eats in a day and how he prepares his meals. And he tried to spin it to like, hey.
Matt Giovanisci:This is what a pool guy eats in a day, you know, to stay healthy and be be able to do his work. But that is completely not even in the same category. And I bet you a lot of people just unsubscribe when they saw that video. Point is is that that is happening to us when we switch to hot tub content, especially on the social platforms where it is just about there it's not a keyword based or a search based platform. It is a algorithmic platform.
Matt Giovanisci:And I think once we start to kind of give the signal to Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, whoever, that you know what? We're doing pool content now. So it's going to have a much easier time serving our content, and I think we're gonna grow much faster with that. And that doesn't mean that on our website, we're going to remove the hot tub content, or on our social channels, we're gonna remove these hot tub videos. We're just gonna keep them there.
Matt Giovanisci:And on our website, we're going to continue to create hot tub content, and that is basically where we're gonna source the most sales from. And it's a it's a tough it's a tough thing for me to swallow because, I mean, literally, I started Swim University as a pool and hot tub company because that's what I grew up in. I grew up in a industry or, I guess, working in working at companies where we focused on both, but mainly because we were a company in the northeast where in the winter, there were no pools open. So it was a means of survival. In fact, one company that I worked for, well, one company I worked for sold pool tables.
Matt Giovanisci:So, yeah, you could see Niagara Pools was the name of the company. Niagara pool, also billiards because it's pool. And then I worked for another company called Danzy's, and they did janitorial. So they were kind of like a cleaning company, and pools were their summer gig, and then janitorial was their winter gig. And then I've I've I've known of other companies in my area that did fireplaces in the winter time.
Matt Giovanisci:So I feel like I kind of got stuck, mentally through that experience. And I think kinda coming away from that is a good thing, but it's a it's a tough pill to swallow because I've been, again, doing it for so long. So that brings us back to the home page. And while I'm not getting rid of hot tub content, the point of the home page, I think 80% of the traffic that is coming to that home page is probably a pool owner. And going forward, as we continue to create content on these external platforms, it's gonna be more and more pool pool are gonna come more and more pool owners are gonna come to the home page.
Matt Giovanisci:Okay. So that's that's the setup. So now I'm gonna change the headline to to basically just remove the word hot tub in the headline. And then instead of having 2 buttons, which I think is confusing, I'm going to have one button. And the one button I want to have is a sign up button to join our email list.
Matt Giovanisci:On other pages of our website, we offer a cheat sheet. And with a cheat sheet, I we could we could put the cheat sheet on the home page. And I've thought about this and but I kinda feel like if you're somebody who comes to swim university, maybe for the first time or you're even if you're coming back, that is not going to work as well. And I think I also wanna try to offer something different just to see how well it performs. So I was just thinking about a newsletter.
Matt Giovanisci:I hate using that word because and maybe this is not what we use. This is what I'm trying to figure out today. A newsletter is what we call it in the industry of, like, online marketing, and that's, like, the hot thing right now. But the general population, like, my father doesn't subscribe to email newsletters. Like, doesn't even know that that's something you can even subscribe to.
Matt Giovanisci:And he's the pool owner we're talking to, really. Right? 71, 72 years old. Now even if you're younger than that, I just don't think I mean, look, personally, I don't really subscribe to that many newsletters. It's not a hard sell to me.
Matt Giovanisci:In fact, Miles Beckler told me once, nobody wants more email. So the actual idea of saying to some or selling to somebody, hey, I'm going to send you weekly emails. I think that sucks. 1, that's more of a you focus thing than a them focus thing. So what is it that we're actually delivering to people?
Matt Giovanisci:I've talked about on previous episodes that we are kind of shifting the thought process of our email of our email marketing to more of a notification platform, where we're notifying our audience that content exists. So basically tips and, you know, and how to videos, but without putting that content within the emails. We do it sometimes, but it's it's rarer. So I'm gonna I got my whiteboard here, and I'm gonna start writing some stuff down because I wanna get clear on, you know, what it is that we're what's our button? Alright.
Matt Giovanisci:And then or, like, what's the offer? Alright? So one is, I wanna write tips, but I'm actually gonna say secrets. Are they really secrets? No.
Matt Giovanisci:But it's sounds sounds better than tips. This is that's just copy this is better copywriting. Alright? And, we're not sending notifications. How are we helping them?
Matt Giovanisci:It's yes. We, we can say, we will send you tips. We will send you secrets. But that is, an us focused phrase. You know, like, unlock unlock new secrets every week.
Matt Giovanisci:You know, unlock new pool care secrets every week. We are you know, we will send you, we will send you pool care. I wanna say something like time based, but that's the horrible phrase. Time based or just timely. Pool care, advice, help, not via email.
Matt Giovanisci:We'll just you know? So what is the not just the benefit that they get. The benefit is, like, you know, stay on top of your pool. Okay. There's not that's not that's not alright.
Matt Giovanisci:Stay on top of your to keep it clear all year. Alright. You know, like, time time sensitive is a little bit better. Something about that word sensitive makes it feel like there's a little bit of urgency to it. I'd like help because that feels like, you know, we are we are there to help you.
Matt Giovanisci:Like, you know, you need the but then I don't want anybody to feel like they just, oh, I need help. It's like, no. What did they what did they really want? You know, if I think about it from my perspective and I am not a pool owner, I don't need help taking care of a pool. I know what I'm doing, but I struggle with taking care of my ponds ironically.
Matt Giovanisci:I have 2 ponds in my house that that were here when I moved in, and I thought, oh, well, this is like a this is just like a tiny little pool. I'll figure it out. It's not like a tiny little pool. You can't just add chlorine to it and kill everything. It doesn't have a traditional filter, and it has a lot more wildlife and there's a lot more you know, it's it's not as to me, I don't find it as easy to take care of because it's more of an an ecosystem that needs to be balanced as opposed to, like, hey.
Matt Giovanisci:If when in doubt, just kill everything in there, you know, because you have fish, you have other things in there. So it is a completely different type of thing. Now I struggle with it for a few things. 1, it's always leaking. There's always we're always losing water.
Matt Giovanisci:It's always getting algae. It's the fish are always dying, either being eaten by wildlife or whatever. I'm constantly having to skin stuff out of it. Right? So what is it that I what is the deep desire that I truly want?
Matt Giovanisci:I want or one, they I like, I have said this is okay. Here we go. Here we go. So getting to the emotional root of what it is that we're offering, I the emotion that I feel about my ponds is that I is that they are annoying. Let me just write these down, and I'm gonna bring my chair over because I got it right.
Matt Giovanisci:I wish this whiteboard was taller. I'm too tall. I'm gonna have to find some kind of, like, system for this. Okay. Gonna write pawn care emotions.
Matt Giovanisci:Alright. They're annoying. Always a problem. I want to just fill them in. I just wish someone else would take care of it.
Matt Giovanisci:I wish there was an easy system. I don't know what to do. Yeah. Pon caramel, annoying always a problem. I wanna just fill them in.
Matt Giovanisci:I wish someone else would just take care of it. I wish there was an easier system. I don't I just don't know what to do. And so I kinda feel like if a company had an like, there were alright. So there's this company down the street.
Matt Giovanisci:They're expensive, but they take care of pawns. And when I moved into the house, the owner had said, hey. You should subscribe to that newsletter. Here I say newsletter. This is an older guy too, so maybe newsletter is the phrase.
Matt Giovanisci:He was like, they have a really great newsletter. And what they were doing was they were sending they don't do it anymore. But they send timely tips. Right? But a lot of their tips were just written and didn't really apply to me.
Matt Giovanisci:Okay. I just thought of something. That's interesting. The oh, fuck me. Alright.
Matt Giovanisci:Hold on. The thing I just I just thought of, and I didn't even think of it until just now, is what if the home page is a quiz? And instead of it just being a, hey, newsletter sign up, your email address, that's not really an offer. But we oh, no. I think I may have just went down a rabbit hole.
Matt Giovanisci:Okay. But this is okay. This is okay. So that's what I fucking want. As a pond owner, I wanna be able to say, my pond's special.
Matt Giovanisci:Design me a a a fucking plan. Put me put together a plan for me. You know? And I will this will be great. So instead this is oh, man.
Matt Giovanisci:Alright. I just wanna say I love doing these podcasts because this is the kind of realization I would have not had unless I talk this problem out for 26 minutes. But this is absolutely what I have to do, because I feel like this would fucking work for me and pond care. In fact, it almost did and I got really pissed. So I ordered I don't know where I found it, but somebody was, like, you should get muck tabs, they're called.
Matt Giovanisci:And if you have a lot of muck in your pond, it's basically this bacteria in a tablet that you throw into the pond, and it, like, helps break down the muck. When I bought it, the company that made the muck tabs had a little card in the box, and the card in the box was like, hey. Go to this URL. I think it was a QR code, and it was like, fill out everything about your pond, and we'll basically design you, like, we'll, like, send you back help help documents, whatever whatever. I went, oh, okay.
Matt Giovanisci:Cool. This is oh, and I saved the card because I was like, this is a this is what we need to do for pools. And then so I went to the website, filled out all my information, and what's cool is that they, you know, on their side, they take a picture from, you know, like, Google Maps of the of the pond. Now I have 2 ponds, and I wasn't talking about the backyard pond because we were getting that we were we were redoing that one. But they made that assumption from the Google images and basically just told me like, I got an email back that was like, we can't help you.
Matt Giovanisci:That's not really a pond. It's a water garden. And I went and I emailed back, and I'm like, no. No. No.
Matt Giovanisci:That's the wrong pond. You're you're looking at the wrong pond. There's I have 2 of them. Silence. Radio silence.
Matt Giovanisci:And I was like, fuck this, but I don't need a fucking picture of your pool. Although, could could be helpful, but here's what I'm thinking. Instead of the button on the home page, it's like, maybe we we take a page out of Sunday's book, which is, the lawn care service, and we ask people to not enter their email address. What they ask for is to enter their physical address first. Right?
Matt Giovanisci:And the idea is to get a custom lawn plan. And there's another company that I think Josh Pigford started who used to be Baremetrics, and he has a lawn care I think it's called, like, my lawn care planner or something, and that's kind of the same idea where it, like I think it's what it does. You basically enter all these details and boom, it spits out a plan. Fuck. Yeah.
Matt Giovanisci:Yeah. Okay. So that's the offer. The offer is not a lead this might even okay. This may work better than a cheat sheet.
Matt Giovanisci:I don't know. But is the home page is a great place to test this. So we could say, finally, your pool care problem solved. You know, get your custom lawn care plan or get lawn care. Get your custom pool care plan.
Matt Giovanisci:Okay. Get your custom Pool Care Plan. Now the button will just go to a Typeform. Because I have Typeform, I pay a lot of money for it, and it has the ability to do if else statements. So what I can do is it's gonna take some time and my you know, I'm running out of hours here.
Matt Giovanisci:But, basically, what we can do is it will I can I can start really basic, and then I can scale up from there? And then at the end, I will basically have a, you know, the the very end of the quiz, you enter your email address, and then we will send you a custom plan. That will be tougher to do, but it can be done. And I have a feeling, what is the thing that they're gonna get? I could, Is it a downloadable?
Matt Giovanisci:Is it a custom video? Is it a is it just an email with their plan laid out? Probably. Like, we'll email you your your custom plan. Because with email, we can put we can dynamically insert different things about their pool.
Matt Giovanisci:So I think that that's the way to do it, and we just designed the email to be the custom plan. Oh, man. This could really be good, but it's not it's gonna take me some time to figure out. But if I start really basic where I just ask, you know, 1 or 2 questions and then an email address, You know, it's like, hey. In ground a pool or above ground pool, and do you use chlorine or bromine, and then what's your filter system?
Matt Giovanisci:Basically, all the things that I asked for now. And yeah. Okay. Yeah. That is yeah.
Matt Giovanisci:Super helpful to talk this out because this whole time I thought, okay. It's gonna take me 2 seconds. It's gonna be a short episode. All I'm gonna do is sit down and, you know, come up with what does the button say, and then what does the pop up say to get you to subscribe. In this case, it is getting an and this is something that I wanted to put.
Matt Giovanisci:This was a a button also that I wanted to put at the top of the website because I thought, okay. If we're gonna switch to pools, what is something that we can do that isn't cheat sheet dependent? And I also think at a certain point, there is a diminishing return there's gonna be diminishing returns on the cheat sheet, on the cheat sheet essentially, because I've already noticed because we are kind of a leader in the space that now everyone has their own cheat sheet. Like, all of my competitors, again, quote unquote, have their own cheat sheet, which is basically just a carbon copy of mine in their branding. And so I'm like, okay.
Matt Giovanisci:Not really that helpful. However, if I said, like, I might be the only person if I can spin this up very quickly, I might be the only person who has this custom plan, and that I could definitely run ads to more than a cheat sheet. And I bet you I would get it would be, 1, it would be more helpful. 2, I bet you the offer's way better because it's like, oh, cost it's a custom plan. It's like a custom cheat sheet essentially is what I'm making.
Matt Giovanisci:Yeah. I can do this. Yeah. I have to mess with Typeform, but I'm gonna report back on this because I think that this is yeah. This is the move.
Matt Giovanisci:Alright. Cool. So if you have any questions or if you have any ideas, hit me up, matt@moneylab.co, and I'll talk to you soon. Bye.
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