Click here to get the case study video on Facebook
NOTE
I had some friendly exchanges in reaction to the Facebook thing, as well. If you’re one of the people who sent me an email along the lines of “I don’t use Facebook… bummer.” please don’t feel accused. I’m not calling you angry, in this video. :)
Fitting in with the whole “observe what other businesses do”, I published a new post explaining why I decided to create the Webinar Connect software and how it fits in with some of the things I’ve been talking about, on this blog. I did this in the hopes that it would be interesting, even if you aren’t personally interested in the product that it’s about.
Question of the Week:
All the best,
Please leave a comment below.
Note that I don’t reply to all comments, but I do read them all. If I don’t reply to your comment, it most likely means that I agree with what you say and don’t have anything meaningful to add, myself. I appreciate and read all comments and your comments play an important part in what I write about, so keep them coming.
Spammy comments are always filtered or removed. No surprise there.
Note that I don’t reply to all comments, but I do read them all. If I don’t reply to your comment, it most likely means that I agree with what you say and don’t have anything meaningful to add, myself. I appreciate and read all comments and your comments play an important part in what I write about, so keep them coming.
Spammy comments are always filtered or removed. No surprise there.
Shane,
If you continue with the white background you definitely have to fine tune the lighting on your face. It’s much too stark. That being said, I much prefer seeing you with a “natural background”. You look more real. With Facebook likes, if the request is coming from a marketer that I already know and “like”, I have no problem clicking. We always get great value from you and if one of your missions is to increase your exposure on Facebook, that’s cool with me. I welcome the report on your Facebook experiment.
Thanks, Jeff
Hi Jeff,
Thanks for the reply!
The white background is something I want to use in a sales video and maybe on the public part of the blog, as well. You’re right, the current video doesn’t look good, yet. My biggest issue is that the preview screen on the camera, the preview in the video editor and the final video do not look the same. What looks fine in the editor often comes out wrong after rendering. Still need to figure that out.
Screw the white background – make a wall collage of Romanian Lei that spells out ballin’ and be done with it!
No, that would be too epic. The resulting traffic flood would overwhelm the server for good. Can’t risk that.
I was about to say almost everything jeff did. lol.
I personally would prefer to watch you chillin’ on the couch, but the polished / pro white background wouldn’t stop be from watching (I agree with Jeff though, fix the lighting on your face).
I can’t see myself ever complaining to hit the “Like” button in exchange for a 1 HOUR case study from a marketer who I know, trust, and…like. :)
I look at it as supporting you in exchange for the awesomeness you provide. As you alluded to, some people have the perception that the more free stuff they receive from you, the more you owe them. Those people either forget or are unaware that you’re running a BUSINESS here.
You’d be doing something wrong if there wasn’t any haters. ;) Please don’t stop your new social traffic experiments. I’m interested in watching/following.
Cheers
Jay
The couch is definitely the better setting for more informal stuff like the Sunday Updates. Won’t change that (this was just a test).
For sales videos, I’ll have to run a test with white BG vs. casual setting and see what happens.
Hi Shane
I’ve toyed around with the idea of offering free content in exchange for a “forced” FB Like, Google+ share etc, but decided against it as I don’t think it is good for my reputation to force people to like something that they haven’t even seen.
Can’t say that I’ll never change my mind on this, but it’s my current position.
Cheers
Peter
The way I see it, you don’t ask people to like something they haven’t received yet. The like isn’t for the freebie, it’s for the page. I.e. you like the IM Impact brand and in return, you get a bonus freebie.
If you create a squeeze page, you don’t force people to enter their details. If you create a sales page, you don’t force people to buy and give you money. If you create a facebook fan page, you don’t force people to like your stuff.
All of the above scenarios seem to be the same on the surface – they are all transactions. The consumer decides if the benefit is worth the cost and if so they proceed, if not they leave.
Beneath the surface, though, I think that the Facebook “dislike” problem probably stems from the verb itself. To like is a verb that expresses someone’s opinion – a very personal thing. To bribe someone in order to try and influence their opinion is quite an aggressive marketing strategy. Nobody wants to feel like their opinions have been “bought”.
Name and email details aren’t opinions – they are simply factual details – which is why a squeeze page is a bribe but in a different way, but one that doesn’t potentially infringe upon the integrity of the consumer.
Furthermore, take this whole “liking” business to the real world – someone who desperately seeks to be liked is regarded as egotistical, desperate, insecure and arrogant in most social circles. I’d imagine that some people don’t appreciate our Facebook marketing strategy because of this, even though the rules of the game with social media marketing are clearly different to the unwritten “real world” social rules that we’ve all built up in our lifetime.
A decision regarding an email submit or paying a given price for a product is quite different in my opinion from the ‘like’ on FB. Granted, if you are already involved with FB, it may be much more similar.
However, for those of us who view FB as a blight on society, requiring a ‘like’ is tantmount to a requirement to join FB; something we simply aren’t at liberty to do in good conscience.
It’s not a simple request to trade in a new currency. It is a demand to join a club in order to continue being part of the ‘in crowd’. It’s a form of peer pressure and is just as wrong here as it is concerning drugs and alcohol.
In fact, it makes my point about the evils of FaceBook, EXACTLY.
Just my two cents.
Hi Shane,
On the white background, personally I preferred it when you used your red boxed book-case as your background (not your window curtains!). I think a little rouge might help if you have to ‘go white! :) Actually, you look somewhat pale faced, and this might be just the lighting, but make-up does go hand in hand with video!!…
I didn’t think twice about the ‘liking’ thing – What’s a little ‘like’ for getting all this fab content? But I suppose if someone does not know you, then that would be different. However, you could consider it a bit like a membership area – where certain content can only be accessed by your ‘members’ i.e. those who have ‘liked’, and other stuff could be the ‘getting to know you ‘area’. Not sure if that is possible – I am sure that would work.
I am finding what you are doing really interesting because I give away free holidays to my list. They get an opportunity to win holidays in competitions I run. I have asked my list to support local campaigns, as part of the entry criteria – and about 80% of them do! I am now wondering if I can set up another competition where they ‘have’ to ‘like’ my new FB page, and see how many go for it. I’ll keep you posted if I find a way to do it.
I’m doing a .pdf set of notes on your case-study video too! Perhaps I should wait for yours before I finish mine? Or I could send you what I have so far, if you like. Either way, a very useful case-study… so thanks… I am using it to help develop a product in the Trading Futures market.
Michael
I used to do quite a bit of marketing for a travel agency and as part of their Facebook marketing campaign we gave away a holiday to New York at 2,000 likes. People simply had to like the page in order to be entered into the competition. I seem to recall that Facebook require page owners to gather more than just a “like” to be entered into a competition, but we only found this out after the competition had run its course so it didn’t affect us.
Anyway, bottom line is that people will most certainly like your page to be entered into a holiday giveaway competition – that’s for sure – so I definitely think you should give that a go!
Interesting post and fits in with a marketing method that I am just starting out on.
The business model being that you provide free content, that being ebooks, videos, audio and images. The free content has links in back to your content and can have affiliate links in.
Obviously you get paid from any sales from the links in the content. So what is new there you say!
Plus in this model you get the free content from a site that rewards you if people join as free members to the site to do the same thing. So the idea is that people give content away for free and get rewarded in a couple of different ways. Also you can publish your own content to give a way.
With regards to giving away the free content I was wondering whether to asked for Facebook likes, etc, or not. I guess I will need to test the waters.
Peter
I recommend focusing on building a mailing list as your primary asset. Facebook, twitter etc. are nice, but they are not nearly as valuable as a mailing list.
For me, my goal is to get as many of the right readers as possible on to my mailing list and then get those subscribers to also join my on social media. Ideally, the social media stuff will attract new readers and new subscribers.
hi Shane, i couldn’t see the background at all, it was just all white :-)
i also prefer the “chillin on the couch” look
cheers
Syd
Hey Shane,
I know you have heard this in the other comments:
I love the fact that you are experimenting with the different backgrounds, it can be hard to get lighting right. So I do not mind being a part of your test group. It is fun to follow someone who is learning as they go, like me.
I am also pleased with you experimenting with getting Facebook likes. Aside from paying for them via Facebook ads in previous projects, I have had a tough time of it.
Keep it up, you are always a wealth of info for building an online business.
Hey Ken,
How did the Facebook ads work out for you? That’s something I also want to test, to grow the following.
Glad you like the experimental style. :)
Hey Shane,
They worked pretty well. I did a modest experiment of $3.33 p/day and received, on average, 1 to 2 new likes a day. I did that so that if anyone ventured onto my fanpage, they would see that I had, at least, over 100 fans. Once I got to about 130 fans, I stopped.
Thanks Shane, I also preferred the red bookcases in the background. It was a great background, and it branded your videos. I always expect to see them in a video from you.
I get what you are saying about people resisting some form of selling or having to like, or optin… But, in my experience this is usually less than 5% of the people getting the message. And those 5% tend to be the same people.
Cheers
Ian McConnell
Western Australia
Regarding the painting on your backdrop Shane, I think it’s called “Pack of Polar Bears on Ice Floes Attacking Villagers Wearing Sheets in Snowstorm”.
Nice reproduction. I saw the original in a roadside art museum once on holiday.
Aha, we have an art afficionado among us! Well recognized!
Not sure what to think. ;-) You are not offering WSO dimesale products so I am not sure who is pissed and why. Now to discuss only using facebook DOES fly against your hybrid plugin that provides choice – email or FB. So to me this has to be a big WTF LOL. All appearances of mind altering materials being consumed. LOL BTW email is still 90% of the worlds communication. Wack-a-mole FB evangelists want you to think otherwise. Maybe FB devotees are 100% FB. The rest of us mostly use email. Good laughs today. Thanks.
Hmmmm white background… kinda has that “god effect” going on. You look so much more saintly. LOL
always cool observes from the Shane lab. Merci… white is absent all color black is afull spectrum of color maybe a colorful mix up is good to try
Hello Shane,
I am so used to get information from you for free that I won’t buy if you try to sell it to me. Don’t know why,
Hi Shane,
during my time spent with internet marketing I’ve tried to sell various quality products for as I think a very low price compared to the value.
All those products didn’t work out and I didn’t manage to sell nearly as many copies as I wanted to and as my opinion on the product’s potential would estimate.
That happened to every product so over time I got that “fear of selling” more and more and I charge less and less but still I don’t have success with it so what should I do, with every product it goes more and more to the “bottom”.
Greetings
Hi Matthias,
That’s an interesting problem. There are two important things you need to analyze:
1) Was the main problem that you didn’t get much traffic to your offers or that the traffic did not convert into sales?
2) If it was a conversion problem, did you reach the right audience, with your products?
Let me give you an example from my own portfolio of products: Webinar Connect.
For Webinar Connect, the conversions have been very low… except if you take one factor into account: the conversion rate among prospects who already do webinars as part of their marketing is extremely good. Prospects who don’t do webinars generally don’t buy the product.
That’s in the nature of the product and what we need to do is get the right audience in front of our sales message. If the conversion rates were bad with the right audience, I’d change the sales message.
The very last thing I’d do is lower the price (in fact, I’d test increasing it, first). I know the product has inherent value (for someone who uses webinars) that far exceeds the asking price.
What you can do to tackle this problem is add some kind of a feedback device to your website. If you aren’t using WordPress, Qualaroo is a pretty popular, universal option. Ask your visitors why they aren’t buying. Invite them to ask you questions or leave comments. This can help you find the cause of low conversions.
If it’s not a conversion, but a traffic problem, then that’s a different story.
If it’s a traffic problem, here’s what you should do: focus on finding a good affiliate partner who agrees to a promotion. Ideally, I’d do a webinar promotion, but that depends on the type of product you’re selling. The point is to focus your efforts on one simple goal: find a qualified affiliate partner to promote your product for you. Just one. Someone who can send at least a couple hundred visitors to your site. Keep at it until you have that one promotion.
That gets you some traffic and once you have the traffic, there are two possibilities:
1) You make sales and this proves that people buy your product and motivates you to get more traffic.
2) You don’t make sales and now know that you have a conversion problem (see above).
I hope this helps.
The way I’ve been looking at things in the past couple weeks is really the power of mailing lists. But building large, valuable mailing lists is made easier when you put your content/products in front of a lot of eyes.
I find Facebook is a great tool for building an engaged audience and keeping them happy, but the hardest part about Facebook is building that following. The Facebook like plugin/case study makes it seamless for someone to willingly opt into your Facebook radar.
Obviously one thing that needs to be taken into account is that a smaller barrier also means less focused traffic. If it’s easy to get in, you won’t be able to identify immediately whether the person who liked you was marginally interested, fully engrossed in your content, or somewhere in between.
But it does give you a massive opportunity because once they are in the radar, you can start communicating and refining that list. You’ll now have a chance to identify those potential readers/viewers who opted in and are actually valuable to your bottom line.
Once you’ve found those people, spoil them with focused, targeted content and they’ll love you for it. Tailor your Facebook page towards these people and you’ll find your Facebook conversion rates going ever increasing. If you’re lucky enough to have your content go viral, and you have a clear focus, who knows what limits you might be able to reach?
This all hangs on that first outreach though and the Like program makes Facebook outreach incredibly easily and highly efficient. Facebook users seem to be often blessed/cursed with short attention spans meaning you need to hit them quick and hard, otherwise your opportunity to keep them around is missed. And if you have no outreach and no idea what assets/content of yours are valuable, how will you ever be able to make effective business decisions and know where you should be focusing your time/resources?
Hi Shane
Perhaps it would be interesting (and a little amusing) if you could split-test the “Like” the page Facebook test. Maybe Test A: “Like” the page to get this report and Test B: Don’t “Like” the page in order to not get this report. Test B would definitely have confused me enough to hit the “Like” button.
As for the video background, maybe you sitting by a warm fireplace in a rocking chair, Val Doonican style or you on giant over-sized arm chair Ronnie Corbett style. Guess you’ll just have to split test that one as well.
Seriously though, this blog is going from strength to strength.
Well done,
Paul
haha, that’s brilliant! Not sure if it’s optimal for engagement if you confuse people into liking, but it would be fun to do, nonetheless.
I think you could actually split test the page content, but you can’t measure the like as a conversion goal, as far as I know.
Hi Shane,
I don’t like the white background. It makes you look cold and creepy, and we know you are not that! LOL
Concerning Facebook, I got to the page, saw that I had to like and clicked away. Why? Because I don’t necessarily want all my friends to see what I like or don’t like. Strange? Yes. But it’s true. I also don’t follow everyone on Twitter that I watch or read their tweets. Twitter has the feature where you can add them to lists “anonymously” and I like that. Don’t want to world knowing what I’m doing all the time.
So the Facebook thing had nothing to do with you, it’s more Facebook privacy issues that I have a problem with.
That’s an intriguing insight! I wonder how many other people would react in the same way.
As a facebook novice, when I clicked on it, privacy or the fact that it would show I liked it to others didn’t even factor into my consideration. All I wanted to know was what’s behind the ‘like’. Obviously that has a lot to do with what I know about Shane and the videos he makes.
It makes me wonder what information I’d need to know about a product or person before I’d actually click on it because I did have a second of hesitation. I likely wouldn’t have done it if I knew nothing about either product or person.