Inbounders is a series profiling people and companies who are accomplishing great things through inbound marketing. We’ll chat about strategies, vision, tools, tips and more.

John Tibbs is a full-time singer/songwriter from Indianapolis, Indiana. He has traveled the world playing music, gave away an album for free and recently launched a Kickstarter campaign to fund a new EP in the fall.

What made you want to give away an album online? It seems to be getting more and more popular for independent artists to release free music.

I believe in my music. I believe that if you are in my target demographic, and I can make it accessible to you, you will like what you hear. Free music is the best means for marketing a brand in this industry. A lot of people get upset and they think that we are hurting artists. I believe that’s a false idea. It can only help create true fans. In fact, 90% of artists/bands money made this past year was on the road. Quality recordings help get people in the seats. For today’s artist, it only makes sense. Every song you record doesn’t have to be free, but there has to be some give and take. Create exclusivity for your hardcore fans. That’s what I love about being independent … You can try anything out! Free music was a gamble for me. Thank God it worked.

How did you go about publishing and marketing the album online?

I used Noisetrade to distribute the album. It is so easy to use. It’s even easier than iTunes. I selected them because that’s where the traffic is. They’ve given away over 1 million albums.

We did a lot of promotion through email. I handle all my email lists through MailChimp. Again, another user-friendly service that is invaluable to me. I have roughly 100,000 people I’m connected to on Twitter and Facebook, but my e-mail carries more engagement and action then either of them.

This goes back to the free music. I’m able to keep building up my email list when people sign up to download my new songs. If I didn’t exchange music for email, then I would have never had as many opportunities to engage with people via email.

Did you target any other stores or platforms for distribution?

This EP is actually in every digital store for the sake of accessibility. Many people prefer to buy it on iTunes because of the compatibility between their mobile devices. I now have the physical CD for sale at my merch table on the road, too. I use to have download cards that I would hand out, but I found that people would prefer to buy it at the table for a few bucks rather then go back to their house, find the card, and download it. I have an email sign up list at our table too, so I am still growing that means of communication. It’s really great.

You are super active on the big social media channels (Twitter, Facebook, Instagram). Do you have different strategies for marketing on each? Which has been the most effective?

Yeah, they’re all different mediums and need to be treated differently.

Instagram is very ‘behind the scenes’ and private. It has an intimate and exclusive vibe to it over the other outlets. It lets you see my view at a ball game and what shoes I run in. The term ‘fan’ is becoming extinct, while ‘friend’ is more valuable. Instagram helps you create personal relationships with many people just by allowing people into your lives.

I love Twitter – it’s fun. It allows you to share information in a very easy and real way. It also allows you to spread news, and fast! I reach about 1 million people a month through Twitter alone. And it’s free. Think about that.

Facebook is great for a couple reasons. First off, everyone is there. I can reach both pre-teens and grandparents all with the same post. The other thing that Facebook does well is their advertisement system. They’ve done a great job monetizing the company. For a couple hundred dollars, I have a guaranteed reach of my audience. That’s apretty inexpensive way to reach 50,000 people. It’s a great means to advertise to the masses while still remaining targeted.

What is the toughest part about releasing music for free online?

I do this full-time. It’s my job. I’m not just looking to eat. I want to provide a quality living for my family while also growing this career and brand. The toughest thing is to get over yourself. You invest your heart and sweat and money into something and give it away. That’s a humbling place. You have to trust in other people, in God and in your craft. Surprisingly, it’s been about 7 months and I’ve recouped my expenses on the free EP via tips and digital sales. That’s crazy. And again, it’s rapidly grown my career. I released a single and sent out an email and it got on the top 50 Christian/Gospel iTunes chart. That would not have been doable without free music. And the EP has really increased my bookings, which again, is how I eat.

Was there a particular moment when the power of inbound marketing and the web surprised you?

One time I tweeted saying I was looking to fill some dates in a certain area. I had 15 quality dates booked out of that one tweet! When that happened, I knew things were going to work out.

Everyday questions are easy to answer:

• “Will I like those shoes?”
• “Will that be a good dinner?”
• “When should I start getting ready to go out?”

We have tons of experience that has informed our answers to questions like these. We get a feeling one way or another, immediately. Yes, I will like those new Nike basketball shoes, no I will not like liver and onions, and I should start getting ready about 20 minutes before we leave.

We rely so much on this feeling-intuition that we use it in business decisions. What should the new website look like? How many people can I hire this year? Should we have a face on our billboard? Easy questions to answer quickly, right? You probably have a feeling on which way you’d lean on each one.

In complex decisions, though,  our handy human intuition breaks down. The Harvard Business Review published a blog post two years ago that has been getting some traction again recently titled, “The Future of Decision Making: Less Intuition, More Evidence.”

The thesis of the article is that human intuition is only useful in situations with obvious cues and a feedback loop. Like choosing a shirt – you can approximate what the shirt will look and feel like, remember similar shirts, then assess your presumptions when you wear it. Another example the article uses is firefighters predicting how flames will spread – they have seen similar flames before, have internalized how the flames move, and can predict what will happen next.

But making intuitive decisions in today’s complex, fast-moving, data-driven society isn’t always smart. Just because Apple’s stock is plummeting and you’ve seen it plummet before, doesn’t mean you’re qualified to say what happens next.

There are plenty of great examples of this in the Internet marketing world. Your gut won’t tell you that an ad crafted in MS paint may have the highest click through rate or that changing your signup button from green to red can increase conversions by 21%. Your Internet marketing strategy needs to rely on data over intuition to constantly improve your campaigns.

One area of your business where numbers are ripe for the picking is Google Analytics. You have free access to a wealth of tools so that you don’t have to rely on your gut. Here are three easy, numbers-based changes you can start optimizing today:

1) Optimize your Contact form/checkout page completion rate

You can make a huge impact on your leads/sales by tweaking the last page before conversion. For ecommerce sites, this is the checkout process. For lead gen, it’s the contact page. Look at the content report in Google Analytics and find your relevant pages. Then click the navigation summary report to see the percentage of visitors that viewed the form and converted. Do A/B tests with Google Content Experiments to test different versions of the page, in order to improve the completion rate.

2) Fix homepage bounce rate

Your homepage has one goal – get a click to another page on the website. Your homepage bounce rate tells you how effective your homepage is. Anything over 35% can be tested and improved.

Do you have one service that makes up a ton of your revenue? One hot, bestselling product? Feature it on the homepage. Or make the homepage a roadmap for the rest of the site: add in a three-column graphic that points to three popular areas of the site. The point is to get people off of the homepage and into the sales funnel of your website. You can debate about how the homepage should look forever, but the true test of effectiveness can be found in the numbers.

3) Do usability testing with 5 people

Usability guru Jakob Nielsen found that testing with more than 5 users is a waste of time, and your efforts are used to find the same types of problems over and over again. So if you can recruit 5 people to complete a usability test on your website, you’ll find nearly all of the errors hampering your conversion. Here are some tips on conducting a usability test.

Remember: business decisions are not place for your gut feelings!

Hopefully these feel-good photos gave you a good gut feeling, and you like this post now!

photo credit: Neticola cc
photo credit: kevin dooley cc
photo credit: The U.S. Army cc