How/Where do you actually market/sell your plugins?

[Chazrox]

@iamlamprey said in How/Where do you actually market/sell your plugins?:

Since you mentioned you can't afford paid ads, free organic content is the way to go.

Make a single educational / entertaining video using the instrument/plugin and post it to youtube, then cut sections out of it to post as short-form content on instagram, youtube, tiktok etc.

Repeat that several times per week for several months (or until you're making enough to do paid ads).

Then take the content that works (your most successful short videos), and turn them into paid ads.

I would add to this... use all of your resources. If you have friends/peer music producers, share your plugin with them and ask them to post about it if they like it. I'm a musician but I also have a handful of years of experience in Brand Marketing for some of the biggest island/reggae artist and we take advantage of cross promotion all the time. Gotta get creative and think of other things you can leverage in exchange for their review if money isnt available yet.

Im a believer in the power of grass roots culture. It works.
Find influencer/producers on youtube that give reviews on plugins. The good guys wont even accept your money for a review but they'll genuinely review it if they love it or hate it, but they'll never know if you dont send it. If you dont have a team behind your product, you're gonna have to be boots to the ground all by yourself until you can build a team. Outreach. Utilize social media, if you dont have many followers yourself, negotiate some deals with people that do. If you dont have the budget to pay people to review, find the ones who will do it for a free plugin/s.

Personally I hope to utilize my relationships with all of my industry peers, some whom have entered into the realm of streaming product reviews and workflows etc.. in addition to what has already been suggested on the thread which is alot of good advice. I just wanted to give my personal 2 cents onnit and possibly inspire some ideas. I wish the best for you brotha!

[Lindon]

@cassettedeath said in How/Where do you actually market/sell your plugins?:

Maybe focusing on SEO might help.

Anything on your site/page content. Does the site have words and phrases that people are googling?

You might dedicate a page on your site that you optimise for search engines.

Use main topic keywords (head terms)
The phrase ‘cookie recipe’ isn’t as specific as ‘gluten free chocolate chip cookie recipe’ - the latter is a long-tail keyword.

The broader the keywords the more competition you have.

Research what people are searching for then optimise content for those words and phrases.

“Buy audio plug-in”
“Best audio plug-in”
“Good synth plug-ins”
“Best synth plug-ins”

You could use hash tags on social media (don’t over do it as it looks spammy)

#ableton #musicproducer #studiolife #flstudio
#audiomixing #beats

Find some YouTubers and offer them the plug in for free/a discount for their subscribers.

All the best man - you got this!

So.... not wanting to be a nay-sayer - but being one anyway.... I've found any and all SEO efforts to be a complete waste of time, Googling for a generic plugin type isnt something I've found potential customers do, they seem to be following links from reviews mostly, speaking of which....

I've also found any YouTuber worth getting your product reviewed by wont be doing it for free, or for a free copy of your plugin.

Always interested in peoples counter experiences...

[aaronventure]

@Lindon said in How/Where do you actually market/sell your plugins?:

've also found any YouTuber worth getting your product reviewed by wont be doing it for free, or for a free copy of your plugin.

You get what you pay for.

As for SEO, for example I have a page which neatly lists ranges of orchestral instruments in MIDI and standard notation. This gets a decent amount of traffic and guess what, you can buy them right now! I know it's hard to find a trumpet that goes super high or a horn that extends very low, but I got one for you right here!

It's a very small piece and I guess the idea is that you have many such small components.

Once your products start being the talk on forums, you need to be showing up on Google's number one spot, though.

[johnmike]

@Chazrox said in How/Where do you actually market/sell your plugins?:

would add to this... use all of your resources. If you have friends/peer music producers, share your plugin with them and ask them to post about it if they like it

Everything everyone said is correct....the truth is there is no ONE WAY to success but rather the combination of all of these things mentioned...I quoted this line is because this proved to be the big starting point when you literally have nothing...you need to rally and lean in on your relationships and network...get your people to hop in and help by doing a video or 2 in exchange for the plugin... or incentivize by giving them a small percentage of sales- like 5-10% (have them use a coupon code so you can track it) ....another strategy ive found is to simply Go Live on Facebook, YouTube using something as simple as OBS(it's Free) showcase your plugin via screen sharing and clean and clear audio...Just go live and create and spend a couple hours just doing that...even if NO ONE is watching...that's not the point...the point is after you are done to take that long live video and chop it down into smaller pieces of content- Reels, Youtube Shorts, and even shorter 3-5 min landscape videos showcasing the plugin and all it's features...from my experience a good planned hour long live video can easily be repurposed into close to a dozen pieces of micro-content...take all of that and repost them ad-noseum on every platform...wash rinse and repeat the process until sales come in and you build up your mailing list and then as someone also said take the best stuff and run ads on it...My metric for running ads has been at bare minimum put in as much as your charge for the plugin...so if you sell it for $100...put $100 into an ad to get started...worse case you make one sale and make your money back...best case you make 10 sales and make $1000...then you just wash rinse repeat the process....

[JulesV]

I must definitely warn you about resellers, never work with ADSR Sounds!

From what I have heard from my acquaintances, they have a really bad reputation. They have unpaid invoices for developers for months, they are the kind of people who exploit people's labor.

[dannytaurus]

@griffinboy Don't judge any of my current plugins too harshly They were all built with Maize Sampler so the features are very limited and there are several bugs and annoyances.

That's why I'm moving to HISE, so I can get more features and more stable plugins.

Regarding the paying portion of a mailing list, I agree and I can tell you my list is about 10% payers and 90% folks who came via the freebies. But being able to market your paid plugins to folks who came in through freebies is great, especially if there's an upgraded paid version of the freebie, as is the case with several of mine.

[ustk]

Currently prospecting/applying for days for resellers and working on my online presence, ads, FB...

RANTING MODE ON
Found one that is asking for a 50/50 split, and the transaction fees of 5% on your side...
Question: Should I work for other people while I can barely eat?
Ok they help you to build your online presence... But multiplied with the amount of plugins on their catalog, I am not sure the total time and effort they spend on your promotion can compete with the 12h/day your product required during months...
Anyone thinking there's a honest reason behind or are they just sipping a cocktail on the beach? "Yeah... no prob... cocktail's on me bro..."
RANTING MODE OFF

[d.healey]

@ustk said in How/Where do you actually market/sell your plugins?:

Found one that is asking for a 50/50 split

That's steep, highest I've accepted is 60/40 in my favour, and I think that's steep too. In my opinion 25% (after taxes/fees) should be the maximum but I'm not sure of any resellers who are that reasonable.

[ustk]

@d-healey Yeah I am to accept a 60/40 as well...

To add to this, I just ran an ad campaign with one of the tenor plugin reseller, big mail campaign + permanent banners, cost me an arm, a kidney, and half a leg => not a sell. FB seems to compete better regarding cost/sell. Well, anything's better than $/0, right?

[d.healey]

@ustk said in How/Where do you actually market/sell your plugins?:

I just ran an ad campaign with one of the tenor plugin reseller, big mail campaign + permanent banners, cost me an arm, a kidney, and half a leg => not a sell.

How long did you run the campaign for? Did you runs tests of different creatives and offers? Was it a good offer?

[ustk]

@d-healey The email was an easter email, one shot, the offer is aligned with the concurrence (i.e. brands from the same email) at 70% off. The banners are still running for 3 months, as the offer does.

On the other side, I must say that I get some demo engagement, and since the demo duration is 30 days, I haven't yet made these conversions to full licenses, obviously.
Speaking of which, anyone has an idea how to get the customer who used a demo that expired and didn't buy a full license to send a reminder? I mean, not manually (I use WooCommerce, License Manager and mailchimp)

I am step by step building my mailchimp list and will run a new email of my own in the next days.
I am starting to think my product ain't sexy enough, but I'm still in the fight

All of this might be (and probably is) a combination of factors, website, product niche, marketing knowledge, new on the market, budget... As soon as I grow a wee bit, I'll for sure engage people to help in those specific domain as one (at least me) can't be good everywhere

Did you runs tests of different creatives and offers?

What do you mean?

[d.healey]

@ustk said in How/Where do you actually market/sell your plugins?:

Speaking of which, anyone has an idea how to get the customer who used a demo that expired and didn't buy a full license to send a reminder? I mean, not manually (I use WooCommerce, License Manager and mailchimp)

Get rid of mailchimp, you're burning money :)

Install FluentCRM and FluentSMTP and combine it with Amazon SES.

@ustk said in How/Where do you actually market/sell your plugins?:

I get some demo engagement, and since the demo duration is 30 days, I haven't yet made these conversions to full licenses, obviously.

You need a sales funnel to automatically prompt people to purchase after x number of days. Then if they still don't purchase after x days you send them a coupon, then x days later you send another reminder. Also after x days you request them to write a review of your product.

@ustk said in How/Where do you actually market/sell your plugins?:

What do you mean?

Try the same ad with 3 different images and see which performs better.
Then take the one that performs the best and try it with 3 different ad titles or text.
Then take the one that performs the best and try 3 different landing pages, etc. etc.

Keep narrowing it down until you find what works, and then when you do you can put your ad money into the correct place.

[ustk]

@d-healey said in How/Where do you actually market/sell your plugins?:

Get rid of mailchimp, you're burning money :)

Hell it's not cheap!
I have FluentSMTP already, I'll try to make these run as you said

@d-healey said in How/Where do you actually market/sell your plugins?:

You need a sales funnel to automatically prompt people...

I have to learn this

[hisefilo]

@ustk Try Sendy.co with Amazon SES -- super cheap and reliable. You'll need to deploy it on your own cloud server. For sending 20,000+ emails per month, it's unbeatable.

[d.healey]

@hisefilo Does it have a campaign builder for creating funnels and automations?

[hisefilo]

@d-healey not really, it's just an mailchimp replacement. You can segment users but you cannot automate

[Matt_SF]

I had a chat with @ustk yesterday on this topic but I'm sharing here what we talked about.
I'm no expert in marketing but I gathered a few things here and there along the years.

Goals

Your main goal, obviously, will be to generate traffic on your website to:

1. Increate your brand's awareness,
2. Get subscribers
3. Generate sales

1. How to generate Traffic ?

There are several solutions to generate traffic, but the main ones would be:

1. SEO (Search Engine Optimization)

Optimizing the SEO of your website will improve its visibility in search engines.

PROS:

• It's free
• It will consolidate your online presence - provided you're offering quality plugins, and writing hig-quality content.

CONS:

• It takes time to generate traffic
• You have to do it right, otherwise you'll be ranked on the 7th page of google search

In any case, you'll need to build your website/content while following SEO good-practices. Even if you're making ads or using a 3rd party platform, you want your website to be found quickly by everyone, IF you want your brand to be recognized and be seen as solid and professional.

2. ADS

You can create ad campaigns on several platforms (Youtube, FB, Instagram, TikTok).
This will cost money but can lead to a significant number of sales.

PROS:

• You're targeting people that are aready 'interested' in audio plugins
• It can generate a high traffic boost

CONS:

• Costs money
• Require skill, optimization and time.

3. 3rd party resellers

I'm not using any 3rd party platform to disctribute/promote my products so I don't have insight on this subject but others have already responded.

PROS:

• You'll reach a broader audience
• You don't have to think about promoting your product (== you save time)

CONS:

• Commissions are usually significant

2. What to do when you're getting traffic?

Once you've began to get people to come over to your website, what you want is to get their email address.

Why? So you can market your subscribers to generate engagement, feedback and of course, sales.
Statistically, email marketing is still the best marketing channel to generate revenue.

1. How to encourage people to give you their email address?

The main ways to do this:

• offer a free product to subscribers only
• offer discounts
• offer 'high-value' content (i.e. courses, pro tips, tutorials, etc...)

As discussed with Greg, what you can also do is to plan a 'LE' version of your plugin.
You can offer this 'LE' version for free to those who join your email list, then later, release the 'FULL' version and encourage people to upgrade their 'LE' version.

The thing with email marketing is that you really have to take care of your subscribers. Depending on your audience, you won't be able to optimize your ROI if you only send them promotion emails once every month...
You'll benefit from creating a relationship with your subscibers, offering advice on [your area of expertise], giving behind-the-scenes stories, asking them question/feedback, etc... And here and there, offering discounts and promoting your products.

I'll stop now.

PROS:

• Can significantly generate revenue over time (people who already bought from you are more likely to buy again)
• Doesn't have to cost much money
• You'll create a community of sorts and satisfiez customers will likely talk about you to other people

CONS:

• Require writing skills, analysis skills, a lot of planning
• Takes time
• Takes a lot of time

I'd strongly advise to have your email marketing set up completely before conducting ads or going to a 3rd party reseller.

3 Conclusion

There are still many many things to say on this topic (I didn't mention social media content creation). I over-simplified everything in order to keep this post short not tool long...
I probably forgot a bunch of things, but feel free to ask if you want to dive deeper. As I said, I'm no marketing expert, this comes from my own experience and some online resources I gathered over the years. Feel free to correct/complete what I wrote!

Edit: fixed grammar and typos

[Tangerine_Sounds]

@Matt_SF All really good points.

Again, Im no expert but I've read / listened to a few books on the subject.

For anyone completely new to all of this there are some influencers in this field you could look at:-

• Graham Cochrane. His focus is on creating courses and online communities but also building an audience through email. Check out his book 'How to get paid for what you know'.

• Gary Vee (Vaynerchuk). He is big on organic social content to drive awareness. Check out his book 'Day Trading Attention'

• Alex Hormozi. His book '$100M Leads' is all about finding an audience and selling to them.

That's probably enough for now.

My struggle is how to apply the principals to a specific niche.
The authors I have named are not targeting musicians as their customer base (actually that's how Graham Cochrane started but he's kind of moved on from that).
A lot of the advice is to find a problem or pain point that your customers want solving. You could say that for musicians that problem is 'I want my music to sound awesome' and our solution is 'buy my plugin'. But there's a lot of competition out there so its difficult to stand out.

Ultimately there is no 'one size fits all' formula for any of this so its about trying different things and seeing what works for you.

[hisefilo]

My 2 cents. I insist. If you create a plugin that reads your mind and makes drums grooves just by thinking about it, all marketing techniques will work. If you do a sampler with a string pad. None will. Product is the key in my modest opinion. I prefer to use my limited time for creating.

[d.healey]

@hisefilo said in How/Where do you actually market/sell your plugins?:

Product is the key in my modest opinion

I would take that further and say it's the audience.

If you don't have people who want to buy then it won't sell. So you could start with the audience and work backwards to a product.