A Bonkersly Easy (and Simple) Way To Supercharge Traffic To Buy From Your Music Site. by Dominic Hough
Now testimonials have got a good reputation, generally...well see for yourself, this is one persons view of this actual article:
"Wow Dominic, I didn't realise how easy it can be to implement this music marketing technique!" R.Greggs, Chicago.
What is the problem with this? Well for one, it is made up. I just done it. And two...who on earth is R.Greggs?
Now this is what I automatically think of when I go through any site, be it musical or not. The problem come in the fact that most testimonials are just too distant.
Sure people can put a web address down and even a picture. It does actually help a huge amount. It makes you less distant, and now more reliable. However, we are now in the 21st Century and our selling techniques should really keep up with the technology on offer.
The technology? That is Flash. Now I have said in the past that a web site shouldn't be made out of Flash...with the main reason being the search engines will not pick it up. But Flash is such a simple tool that it must be integrated into our web sites for us to stand a slightest chance of selling anything.
So what do we need to do?
First up is to actually embed Flash into our sites so that it is easy to work, preferably free, looks nice, easy to set up and more than anything...fool proof for the user.
Now I have searched high and low for a flash player that meets those demands (I couldn't tell you how many I have downloaded), and I have found one. Now I think that it is a traversty that this software hasn't been shouted about.
The various players- MP3 or Video (which can be found here). All you need to do is download either a movie player, or an MP3 player, upload the various players components to your site, upload an MP3 or Flash movie file (FLV), then tell the Coding Wizard where everything is stored. It will automatically give you the code. You copy and then paste it in to the source section of your HTML where you want the player...and thats it.
Simple.
As a side note: You see we should do everything ourselves so that we are not reliant on any other service. Youtube has a habit of stopping videos overnight, their quality is poor and it looks like we are cheap. Sure use YouTube for traffic generation and generating leads, but I wouldn't use it to sell on my site - it isn't professional especially if you are selling DVDs or software. Doubts will go into customers minds about your products quality...and the sale will walk away. There are also dedicated movie sites that charge per month...but we want to reduce our money output. So what do we do?
So the best way is to be clever at the start and buy a web hosting package that is cheap yet plentiful. Just be careful about your monthly bandwidth. Most hosting companies now offer incredible bandwidth solutions/ month so you shouldn't worry about that. I am with Superb Web Hosting who give me bandwidth of 750GB/ month...which is more than ample and at a normal hosting price. I don't need specific video hosting, poor quality free hosting and I don't need to pay anymore cash...bargain!
Anyway what do we actually do with our Flash players?
Ahh, I am glad that you asked. Now this is what your competition are not doing. You see you could record customers reactions to your music (especially at a concert) and place these as testimonials.
Promote concerts by recording previous concerts/ Gigs. Then question some of the goers before and after to see what they think? Promise them a free ticket, T-Shirt, CD etc for their trouble. If you get some bad reviews (which may happen), edit them out.
If you are friendly with your testimonial makers, why not get them to do a short piece on your stuff? Only a handful (literally) of sites have done this. Completely novel- they have interviewed buyers of the product to see what they think. Now that "nobody testimonial" has become a someone. It doesn't matter now who they are. How powerful is that style of testimonial? It generates thousands of sales weekly for some sites.
You should be using the Flash players to play your music (please no reduced quality or 1 minute play versions). Now I have increased my sales by well over 100% by doing this technique. Throughout my texts I have placed an MP3. So instead of having a bulk amount of MP3s in one place - where they can easily be forgotten, I have placed them throughout and leveraged the same set of MP3s to a better advantage.
The Flash players should be used to interview your group or yourself. Because the Internet is so faceless, adding a "face" to your site increases your credibility ten-fold. If you are the head of the company/ site, have you on your sales pages stating what you are actually selling- pointing out benefits to the customer, backing up your text.
If you don't like what you look like, the Flash players should be used to play your voice to help and direct people into making the proper decision.
Got a video or DVD? Flash player it at a reasonable size and quality to demonstrate what you have. Sales will increase with a demo of what you have.
Always remember though, that some people do not want to sit down and listen to you stating what you can be done. They want to see what can be done...that is the difference. If you play the guitar...Flash player yourself playing a certain specific style on one page and another style on another page. Therefore if I want to know how to make Flamenco music I don't want to see loads of other styles before you get to mine. Don't speak the specific style, just play it (and make it sound cool, vibrant and listenable).
So as you can see, there are a huge amount of scope for Flash players and they should be right up there with your top music marketing strategies.