Now testimonials have got a wonderful reputation, generally…well see for yourself, this is one persons view of this actual article:
Wow, I didn’t realise how easy it can be to implement this music marketing technique! R.G, Chicago.
What is the problem with this? Well for one, it’s made up. I just done it. And two…who on earth is R.G?
Now this is what I automatically contemplate when I go through any website, be it musical or not. The problem comes in the fact that most testimonials are just too distant.
Sure people could put a Internet address down and even a picture. It does actually help a huge amount. It makes you less distant, and now more reliable. Nonetheless, all of us are now in the 21st Century and our selling techniques ought to really keep up with the technology on offer.
The technology? That’s Flash. Now I’ve said in the past that a Website shouldn’t be made out of Flash…with the central reason being the search engines won’t pick it up. But Flash is such a easy tool that it must be integrated into our Websites for us to stand a slightest chance of selling anything.
So what do we need to do?
1st up is to actually embed Flash into our web sites so that it’s easy to work, like ably free, looks nice, easy to session 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.
You need a player- MP3 or Video (which may be found at this address: www.jeroenwijering.com. All you need to do is download either a movie player, or an MP3 player, upload the many players components to your web site, upload an MP3 or Flash movie file (FLV), then tell the wizard (which may be found at this address: http://www.jeroenwijering.com/extras/wizard.html) where everything is stored. It’ll 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 all of us ought to do everything ourselves so that all of us are not reliant on any other service. Youtube has a habit of stopping videos overnight, their quality is poor and it looks prefer all of us are cheap. Sure use YouTube for traffic generation and generating leads, but I wouldn’t use it to sell on my web site – it is not professional only 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 likewise dedicated movie web sites that charge per month…but all of us want to lower our money output. So what do all of us do?
So the perfect 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 businesses now provide incredible bandwidth solutions/ month so you should not worry about that. I am with Superb World Wide 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’m 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 gigs by recording previous performance s/ shows. Then question some of the goers before and after to see what they think? Promise them a free ticket, T-Shirt, compact disc etc for their trouble. If you get some bad reviews (which may happen), edit them out.
If you’re friendly with your testimonial makers, why not get them to do a short piece on your stuff? Only a handful (literally) of websites 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 does not matter now who they are. How persuasive is that style of testimonial? It generates thousands of sales weekly for some website s.
You should be using the Flash players to play your music (please no lower d quality or 1 minute play versions). Now I have expanded my sales by well over 100 percent 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 freely be forgotten, I have placed them throughout and leveraged the same set of MP3s to a better advantage.
The Flash players ought to be used to interview your group or yourself. Because the Web is so faceless, adding a “face” to your website stimulates your credibility ten-fold. If you are the head of the company/ website, have you on your sales pages stating what you are actually selling- pointing out rewards to the customer, backing up your text.
If you don’t like what you look like, the Flash players ought to be used to play your voice to advocate 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 recall though, that some individuals 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 do not want to see loads of other styles before you get to mine. Do not speak the specific style, just play it (and make it sound cool, vibrant and listenable).
So as you might see, there are a very big amount of scope for Flash players and they should be right up there with your top music marketing strategies.