Marketing Noise Cutters

Time to leave the MVP version of https://noisecutters.com behind us and build something nice.

And it brought great results: the sign-up rate immediately went up by 22% (n=300 so far)

Whenever I build an MVP, I don't completely care what it looks like. As long as it doesn't make me cringe, I'm ok with it.

And there's a simple reason for that: I am testing whether it's something that people want. If the design isn't that great, but people still sign up, it is probably something I should dedicate more time to.

I'd rather test something that I put an hour in building, than build something for 10 hours only to find out there's no audience for it.

So, that's what I did.

Here's the MVP design:

Here's the much-improved design:

Old conversion rate: 17,58%

New conversion rate: 21,52% (That's a +22% increase!)

Now, I need to run this change a bit longer. And obviously a full new web design is always something that doesn't really test individual components (which, if you're going to run A/B tests, I much more recommend than just doing a full redesign - but for MVP purposes, this works fine).

Every big thing starts small.

When I started https://noisecutters.com I set the goal of getting 50 subscribers in the first month. I am now at 60.

My main reason for this goal is to validate whether this was something others would be interested in.

The concept is simple: collect 3 fantastic marketing case studies every week that really go in-depth and teach your marketing, and send it by email.

I'm a huge fan of this type of content myself, but just like with every idea, you need validation first.

Most people want to learn more about marketing, even if they're already an expert. I've been doing marketing for 10 years but still look for great new information every day. At the same time, I also enjoy teaching people how to get better at marketing.

For ideas like this, I set a monthly goal, and if I manage to make it with minimal marketing, it's something I can dedicate more time to.

I find it much easier that way because you tackle several problems:

1) Getting discouraged because you're not getting hundreds of subscribers a day

That's the point. I'm not trying to get hundreds of subs every day. I am trying to get 1.7 subscribers every day or ~12 a week. So every week I ask myself: what is something I can do this week to get those 20 subscribers?

2) Am I really building something people want?

This is entrepreneurship 101: figuring out if your idea is something you should dedicate more time to. Diving into a new idea for 40 hours a week is good for some people, but you're much better off just testing things first. Starting small will give you initial validation.

3) What is really working for my growth?

In order to go to 100, 1,000 or 10,000, you first need to figure out what you need to do to get to just 10, then 50. Then the next milestone. Overnight success is overrated and doesn't exist. One does not magically grow to 10,000 subscribers in a day. Going for 12 subscribers a week is much easier than going for 1,000.

4) Is it something I should spend more time on?

I'll be honest: the first week of starting NoiseCutters I was doing a lot better than I have been in weeks 2 and 3. I got too much on my plate with other things. In the end, there's no way to clone me yet, so I have a limited number of hours each day and need to make the most out of it. So I went back to the drawing board, scheduled specific times to work on it again, and continued my growth plan.

5) What marketing channels are performing well?

Here's a list of channels I have used so far:

• IndieHackers (obviously)
• Posting static versions of the newsletter on my main Twitter account with a link to subscribe
• Write a 2,500+ article on getting 3,400+ sign-ups through Quora (still haven't massively promoted this)
• Reposting my own content to Reddit
• Reposting the links to the case studies to Reddit
• Link to it in Slack and Telegram groups I am in
• Send it around to friends, clients, people that I know would be interested

Honestly, most of this was just getting bits and pieces together, trying to quickly do this with minimal effort. Because I know that when I approach it better and put more effort into it, I will get a lot more out of it.

50 Subscribers in a month with minimal effort allows me to get to 250 subscribers in the next month if I dedicate more time to it.

So, that's the next goal: hit 250 subscribers before the end of the year. By experimenting with other marketing channels and leveraging the ones I am already using, I should be able to hit that goal on December 31st.

If you have any questions, feel free to leave them in the comments. I'll be here in the comments to answer them 👇

After a few weeks of preparation, I decided that today was going to be the day to launch Noise Cutters at https://noisecutters.com.

The most important part was to highlight what the newsletter is really about: finding actual great content and cut through the noise by ignoring 99% of the marketing articles out there.

I also spent quite some time creating a launch strategy to reach my target audience and to boost those early subscriber numbers.

When you think about it, it's absolutely ridiculous that it took me so long to find 50 great articles.

I had to spend 9 hours Googling, going through Reddit, Quora, Twitter, Facebook and other platforms in order to find a few dozen case studies.

While looking for these case studies, I found so many low-quality articles that it just reaffirmed my initial reason to start this newsletter: low-quality articles are everywhere; high-quality articles are just too hard to find.

Let's change that and help people find the best content every single week.

While looking for inspiration for myself in order to get new insights and improve my marketing results, I had a very hard time finding great content.

It reached a point where I was just pissed for a few days because all this low-quality content keeps being pushed everywhere, yet the great content is really, really hard to find.

Marketing is something beautiful. The transparent marketers are really the frontiers of this market. They know what's working, they test it, and they share their results.

It's time to cut through the noise in this marketing content space and help people find great content. So Noise Cutters was born.