Marketing and Branding - DIY or Hire Someone?
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Hey hope this is okay to have a discussion on this here.
Lately been having some struggles selling my FX plugins and wondering if I should save up to hire someone, or continue to do it DIY. How many of you are going the DIY route? Have you had success converting customers in such a crowded market? If you're hiring someone, at which point did you make the decision to do so?
I think a big part of it might be my no-refund policy since I don't use any license protection. But with the whole GDPR thing on Facebook ads (my cost-per-unique link click went from $0.80 to $4+ on some ads), and just my lack of knowledge on where to advertise (I've been using VI Control for Kontakt libraries, but I think FX plugins might not be so sought-after there), getting a positive return on adspend has been very difficult.
I'd love to see more marketing discussions on here, I think they're just as important as the development side of things in terms of making a sustainable income stream from HISE.
Cheers :)
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@iamlamprey Since you are a developer and you are passionate and serious about selling and earning from your Plugins, it's the perfect time to do proper marketing and branding.
Making VST plugins, R&D, GUI R&D, Current Plugins trending(R&D), Marketing, Website
maintenance are very tedious job. And now a days many amateurs ( I mean very novice students etc) are making plugins and selling too. So it's a huge competition out there.
You have a solid knowledge of DSP etc, so I will recommend you to invest your brain only on Development. Hire someone who is an expert on marketing and selling. Otherwise it will be hectic to handle all things alone.
So, go for good marketing strategy and hire some one who will take care of your USP. -
There are many ways to sell your products, even between do-it-all-yourself and hire-a-marketing-person.
You may see many many of us here sell on our own sites AND through distributors. Add in a few distributors and you'll see sales lift a fair bit.
-- if you need some introductions let me know in a chat.
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Why in a private chat? @iamlamprey has created a public opinion post. All discussions should be public and visible to all.
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@Tania-Ghosh said in Marketing and Branding - DIY or Hire Someone?:
Why in a private chat? @iamlamprey has created a public opinion post. All discussions should be public and visible to all.
because I would be handing out email addresses of individuals and organisations that have not agreed to make them public. Feel free to discuss whatever you want here, but I'm going to respect peoples privacy (especially people who are not in this thread, don't use this forum, and have never done so or wanted to...)
HISE Development for hire.
www.channelrobot.com -
@Rudra-Ghosh Do you have any advice on how to shop for someone, what to ask to ensure I'm getting a marketing plan appropriate for a niche like ours? Another issue I personally have with hiring someone is that I'm also just as passionate and interested in the marketing side of things, and would love to learn it properly, and finding someone to give away their secrets is (understandably) more difficult than just paying someone to do it for me.
@Lindon Thanks for that, I'm on one at the moment and experiencing a similar thing (Kontakt instruments sell quite well, but VST plugins have 0 sales despite being included in marketing emails etc). I'll message you :)
I understand both sides of the public vs private debate, in a perfect world we could talk and openly share industry contacts and advice, but doing so would not only further saturate the less obvious markets, but also violate the individuals privacy. I know I personally wouldn't want unscolicited emails, but I'm also very antisocial in general.
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because I would be handing out email addresses of individuals and organisations that have not agreed to make them public. Feel free to discuss whatever you want here, but I'm going to respect peoples privacy (especially people who are not in this thread, don't use this forum, and have never done so or wanted to...)
No Problem, share your contacts, email list privately but share your experience strategy over here.
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@iamlamprey If you are interested in marketing side too you can run your plugins business as one man army. May be it will take some time. But surely you will get a breakthrough. Kontakt is the most searchable things on internet so basically what happens when you make a library or instrument for Kontakt (e.g Ethnic Flute for Kontakt by Iamlamprey) the search engine will be optimized for Kontakt rather than your name and branding. When you make a VST/AU plugins with your name the challenging task is to get listed/indexed properly to the search engine. Here comes SEO (Search Engine Optimization). If you have a website do list your products and SEO it properly. For your convenience I can suggest some SEO plugins(for Wordpress Yoast SEO, SEOPress, SEO Squirrly and Rank Math)
Then comes the referral link, 3rd party collaboration, branding etc. If you used to list your products to Facebook you can create back links of your website product url to Facebook. Back link is also very essential to boost traffic.
Later go for email marketing, Index searching penetration.
Finally advertisement and create A/c in plugin boutique, KVRAudio etc.
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@iamlamprey IMO building a fantastic product comes first.
Marketing will just make you succeed faster. But if your product is a beast, users and YouTubers and resellers will come to you. -
@Rudra-Ghosh Yes I'm familiar with SEO, in fact I have the top rankings for a lot of relevant searches (using an uncommon word like Lamprey in the brand has helped a lot with that!). What are your thoughts on paying influencers on Youtube or TikTok?
Some of my biggest traffic/sales spikes were when a Youtube reviewer found my products and decided to make a video on them (not even on a massive channel, the video only has a few thousand fews). The main issue for me is finding someone who'd be willing to accept a flat payment and not do some sort of revenue split/affiliate marketing deal, which is just a headache.
@hisefilo Definitely! I've had almost 100% positive feedback so I like to think my products aren't the worst things ever.
I'll be honest but I've definitely been lazy with the marketing side of things, mainly just the occassional forum post or sale. -
https://www.iamlamprey.com/ is your site right?
The crucial thing here is the Alexa rank. And unfortunately you have zero value. You have to take care it. And since you are familiar with SEO you will need to gather plenty of Organic traffics.
So, yup... My opinion for Tiktok and Youtube is..... Definitely... At the end you will have to showcase your products. The better you showcase the greater amount of people will be involved with your product. Right?
So make make Teaser/First Look/ demonstrate videos of every product.
And @hisefilo is also correct.
I am not a big fan of paying influencer on YT or similar. If you wanna pay do make YT ads or Instagram ad of your products. -
And @iamlamprey one thing I will highly recommend you that is AU & Mac VST-VST3 plugins. Which I didn't find at your website. Besides PC ,MAC and AAX formats will boost your selling.
And select distributers wisely. Remember Team R2R,Audioutopia are hungry.
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@Rudra-Ghosh Yes that is my site :) Searching "lamprey vst" "lamprey kontakt" "lamprey plugin" my site has the top rank for all of them on Google (incognito), followed by affiliate stores and reddit links back to the store.
Does the Alexa rank show my store on related searches or something? I've never heard of it until now but I also haven't actively cared about SEO for a year or two so I'm sure things have changed.
Yes I'm already saving for a mac computer to compile for it. As far as I know I can't even target platforms anymore with Facebook ads because of the GDPR, so it's definitely impacting my targeting.
Have you had much success with Google/Youtube ads? I've been heavily considering it over Facebook/Instagram lately.
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@iamlamprey said in Marketing and Branding - DIY or Hire Someone?:
Does the Alexa rank show my store on related searches or something?
Alexa ranking is per home page url and DA basis. So once it will be in alexa your other urls will be listed automatically.
If you ask me, I never created ads on Youtube, FB Instagram etc.
I am an Indian music producer and DJ. So (before audio programming) during my collage days I worked for many Bollywood movies as co-musician and producer. so once I moved towards Audio plugins development with the tag "DJ Rudra Ghosh" that helped me to get initial traffic and subscribers.
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@Rudra-Ghosh I see, thanks for explaining that. Looks like I have some work to do :)
