Marketing data
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Hi guys, I was thinking could be a good idea to share our experiences or learning or results for products released with Hise. Like, conversion rates, what's working, what's not working.
To encourage anyone to go ahead and release quality products.
I've just released my first commercial VI and those are my traction tactics
-kvr marketplace
-email marketing
-faceebook remarketing
-press:
Bedroomproducersblog.com
Vstplanet.com
Computermusic.jp
-forums
Kvr
Gearslutz
V controlWill update with results
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Any paid ads?
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@tod-slaughter yes. Facebook remarketing is paid. Posted a video targeting subscribers list I uploaded to FB.
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Would love to know the response from that
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@tod-slaughter I made it wrong because was unable to track conversions the first 2 days. Despite this I can tell got 4 conversion coming from FB with a $20 spent
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$80 from a $20 spend?
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@tod-slaughter Yes. But keep in mind those guys already subscribed, or tested some beta free or something. Is not a cold first contact ad.
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They were pre-sold from your other past products. Nice
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I'd take 80 for my 20 any-day of the week :D
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@tod-slaughter Exactly. Thing is my list is small :( so I think I already converted many of those ready to pay guys
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@tod-slaughter LOL
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For a niche product at an affordable price I would thinks that's good
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@tod-slaughter learning every single day. Can't tell how it works with $100+ products
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@hisefilo Would love an update! All these years later I am beginning my journey
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@hisefilo Get endorsements.
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@griffinboy Sure!
It's been 6 years!!!! WOW
I can tell after all this time that Product is the key. If you have an outstanding product, marketing will work like a charm; if not, good marketing tactics won't be enough.
Let's say you come up with a VST plugin that has some disruptive technology (like an A.I.-powered sampler
). The press will be there, forums will talk about you, customers will pay, email lists will grow, and social media will replicate.My marketing tools are still the same: email, Facebook ads, press, forums, social media (not much, need to work on this), and resellers.
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@clevername27 never tried! I think I will. thanks mate
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@hisefilo
Thanks!
I shall have to do some research.I've had an idea for a sample based synth similar to the likes of Omnisphere that I've been working on for years. It just offers a bit more of a modern workflow, and a lot of randomisation and smart tools to assist the sound design process. I'm currently porting it to HISE.
I'm hoping that people will want it as much as I do, but who knows, it might be a giant flop :face_with_tears_of_joy:
At least I'll be set up with a lot of code that I can resuse in other products afterwards!
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just throwing my own experiences in the mix:
VI Control
VI Control has multiple Ad placements for very competitive pricing, and the quality of traffic they send is very high. Even just a T1 forum post can make a few thousand in a weekend if the forum deems it worthy
Revenue-Share Deals & Resellers
Nothing but praise for companies like VSTBuzz, PluginBoutique, LootAudio and AudioPluginDeals. They handle everything on their end and have always had excellent communication.
Youtube Reviews / UGC
I haven't had too many reviews, but any time I do they often drive a lot of high quality traffic. I plan on testing quite a few UGC creators on Youtube & Tiktok this year.
Facebook/Meta Ads
This ones a mixed bag, they can absolutely pump or they can suck your wallet dry. It depends a lot on split-testing hooks, audiences, creatives and basically every other moving part.
Advertorials
These are basically educational content where you demonstrate how you use your product to make a song. I don't have much experience doing them for VI's, but I have for other industries and they work very well, they're also free. I plan on delving into these this year as well.
KVR Email Blast
Maybe I just got unlucky, maybe some technical issue or something else happened, but I paid a few hundred USD (which is 1.5x'd here) and got about 15 page visits. I'll probably try them again in the future. Most likely a banner ad instead.
Paid Articles
Similar results to KVR. I think they get buried quite quickly on the larger websites. The benefit of these is you can add "As seen on: WEBSITE" to your store for social proof.
Affiliates
I'm categorizing this as separate to Resellers & Revenue Share. By Affiliate I mean a content creator who has an established audience. I haven't had much success with them, but I've also avoided any upfront payments due to budget reasons. I think they can work very well if you're prepared to test them similarly to Facebook ads.
I'd be interested to here everyone else's experiences
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Following up here with some more Facebook ads stuff:
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You can view competitor ads by clicking About -> Page Transparency - View Ad Library. Then sort by Active, the longest-running ads are usually the winners.
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Replicate before iterate. See what the top competitors are doing and emulate it with your own style / flair. Once you get some data in the ad account you can start to tweak & optimize.
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Know your metrics. The most important one is CAC:LTGP or Cost-To-Acquire : Lifetime Gross Profit. In plain English: how much money you spend to get a customer, and how much PROFIT (not revenue) that customer will generate over their "lifetime". If you don't track this, you won't get anywhere with any form of CPC.
In terms of my own (current) metrics, I average around a 2.5x CAC:LTGP using a 3% lookalike audience based on my existing customer list. This is restricted to the "big 5" (US, AU, CA, UK, NZ) countries and has a combined total audience of about 4.5 million.
I'm only spending $5/day on each campaign, and average around $15-$20 spend per conversion. With $0.60 CPC and around 100-200 store visits a day (not just from Facebook obviously).
I'm currently testing a single image+text creative, and a video UGC style creative, with a few (previously tested & optimized) headline & copy combos. I let the ads run for 4-7 days before looking at the individual metrics, specifically CAC and CPC to gauge whether that particular test is performing.
There's one page I'd like to mention, who I believe are absolutely crushing with Facebook ads, and that's S.K.Y. Studios. If you take a look at their Ad Library, you can see the "organic" style of content that doesn't come across as an advertisement and instead blends in with organic content on the platform.
I plan on replicating this style of content, potentially hiring a few UGC creators to split-test (yes, attractive people convert better, big surprise). My ideal CAC:LTGP is a 5:1, which would give me a little bit of headroom to scale the budgets (the larger the audience, the higher the CPC becomes, inevitably.)
I'll also throw a quick little tip: setup Google Analytics and use UTM links to track leads from other link sources (VC, KVR, Blogs etc). There's an in-depth writeup by Pulse here:
How to Track Conversions From Banners Ads (and Other Media) Using Google Analytics - Pulse Downloader
How to track conversions from banner adverts and other media using Google Analytics to get the best return on your marketing spend
Pulse Downloader (pulsedownloader.com)
This lets you know if you're really getting your money's worth from a banner ad, blog post or article.
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