Advise on how to market this website please?

[stoo]

I have created a simple website to sell Whiteboard Animation video's. My skills are improving daily and I feel the standard is good enough to market at this price. Many others selling at higher prices for same quality. Although there are some amazing quality for much higher prices of course! One day maybe!

So my thought process was (and I got quite excited at this) to gain re-seller's via an Affiliate program. I have a program set up to pay each re-seller a fee per sale and also to extend this to make money from each of their referrals.. to make it very appealing. I have also now doubled the commission rates to attract re-seller's, I hope.

I understand that these video's are very popular at the moment and many small to medium sized business owners could benefit from them. proven to increase click thru rates, more time on website and more interest in what the website offers, etc..

So what would be a great way to get my product in front of the people I need to? The affiliate route doesn't seem to work but it has only been 3 days and now the commissions are higher I will have to see.

Thank you for any advise.. and any feedback is appreciated with regards the website itself.

 

[fisicx]

its not going to happen the way you want it to. There are bucket loads of people offering this sort of thing and most are complete rubbish.

If you want to market your services try advertising. A £10/day spend just to test the water will be a good start. But don't advertise as a whiteboard video producer, advertise the benefits of getting a video made.

Join UKBF as a full member and you can get your site reviewed.

 

[stoo]

Yes, I like that approach to highlight the benefits of these video's..

I understand you can acquire these kind of videos from many sources but yet there are still not that mainstream.. and there is a vast market for them and actually 9000 people alone searching for whiteboard animation each month in Google. This, I would imagine would improve as they become more and more popular.

Although my skills are not amazing they are good enough and I have produced video's for a few medium sized businesses and they have been impressed. You can pay £1000's for high quality custom one's but they only really impress if the message is entertaining etc..

The fact is there are many people out there who haven't even thought about trying this kind of marketing and just like website design company's - there are MANY.. with the huge demand for them, ie Wordpress installation is so simple but many people can charge people lot's of money to do it

 

[fisicx]

Y...and actually 9000 people alone searching for whiteboard animation each month in Google.

You don't know why they did that search. Maybe they were looking for examples of the product or for an animation they have already seen. I doubt that many were looking to get a whiteboard animation produced. So 9000 searches is a bit of a red herring and it's an adwords tool so rarely translates to organic searches.

I'm not doubting your skills but people don't want a whiteboard animation, they want more money. Your job is to convince them that a whiteboard animation will have a good ROI. You will spend more time marketing than you ever will actually creating animations.

And WordPress installations are simple I agree. But getting properly configured isn't easy unless you have done it many many times. Most people just install a theme and a bunch of plugins and hope for the best. This usually results in a bloated mess.

 

[stoo]

Yes, that makes sense. The problem I have, is that I don't think like the majority of people. The reason I actually became able to produce these video's was because I watched one and wondered how they was produced, mainly because I was amazed by the one I saw. I didn't even know they was called "whiteboard animation" and this is the case for many people I guess - so the searches in that respect would be from people that find out they are called this, in some way. it is not really a term people would search without having seen one and found out the name. Explainer Video is another term (not checked for volumes) I do agree however not all will be looking to purchase.

After saying that, many people are buying these from cheap service provider websites and I get many inquires on some of these sites.. without being in the 1st 4 pages on the most popular! So it is defo a service in demand.. albeit for a cheap fee!

I know that these video's do engage some people more and can really help to get the message across.. although the video content does still need to be entertaining..

What i don't understand is why people do not simply sign up for free and at least give selling these a go.. it cost's nothing to share content onto Facebook. So it is this part I struggle with

If I could get 10- 20 people to join, share and they get few each to join share.. refer etc.. that has got to be the best way to market this kind of product? Well that is my thought process.. in reality it is very difficult

 

[fisicx]

They don't share because it's not something they think their friends will be interested in. It' costs nothing but there is no benefit for anybody.

There are some really good whiteboard explainer videos. For example:

. They make money from advertising. What doesn't work so well is a whiteboard video marketing a company. It's been tried before and just didn't take off.

So if you are good at making the videos, why not just make them and publish on youtube. They will get shared and followed and you can make a tom of money through the accompanied adverts. It worked really well for Simon's Cat and a whole bunch of video bloggers.

 

[stoo]

Thank you for all your help, it is very much appreciated.

I love the Youtube idea and it is something I will certainly try

 

[Jtabb7]

I really like your video's and think you have alot that you could offer small/medium businesses in terms of helping them use video to promote their business.

However, I feel you go straight in for the sale on the website before you have built the customers understanding of the benefits and solution that your service could offer them. It goes straight into price.

I think you could try guest posting on business blogs writing articles about the importance of video's which could in turn bring traffic to your website.

This would help with the education and building a demand for your service.

 

[Big Idea SEO]

SEO is one of the best ways to get a site ranked and stay there,but there are plenty of other ways some are free,but its never ending promotion.
we can do your seo for you,could even do a deal where you make us a video for one months seo .
your website needs to be mobile friendly as most people now search on a mobile device and google will knock you down the ladder if it isnt.
face book and other social media is free and great way to advertisie ,email marketing,
We thought about getting into videos my idea was to make a video with a businesses branding then offer it to the company ,once they see what they get i think you will sell alot ,my idea ))) ) ,every one loves a video.

 

[stoo]

I really like your video's and think you have alot that you could offer small/medium businesses in terms of helping them use video to promote their business.

However, I feel you go straight in for the sale on the website before you have built the customers understanding of the benefits and solution that your service could offer them. It goes straight into price.

I think you could try guest posting on business blogs writing articles about the importance of video's which could in turn bring traffic to your website.

This would help with the education and building a demand for your service.

Thank you for your feedback it really helps. I am going to change the homepage to explain the importance of using videos like these to promote their business. I am also going to take your advise on the writing articles to also explain this in the hope to gain clickthru's to my website.

I think the reason I chose to get the price in their early was because it is a cheaper price than many other websites offering a similar service but I do understand this can seem pushy without them even knowing the actual reason to buy one.

Thank you so much once again

 

[stoo]

I do understand the importance of SEO and I was hoping to not require it with using others to resell this product. However, I am pretty good with SEO myself and I am going to make a start on trying to rank for "whiteboard animation" with only medium comp it shouldn't be difficult, especially with writing the content for articles for the above reasons. Thank you for reminding me about SEO

 

[adam2804]

Hi Stoo,

In my opinion you've got a great opportunity to get your work out there through so many platforms, including youtube, tumblr, behance, etc. If people see good work, you never know where that can lead. The Adwords route is a good, direct one and the majority of people who are looking for a provider will go there.

I think the good margin/clients are the ones who never knew they needed an explainer video until they saw a good one.

I think it's a great area to be in now, and the explainer video on your homepage is becoming pretty standard. So good luck and I hope you do well.

 

[stoo]

Thank you adam2804 - I am going to promote my video's on tumblr right away, thank you for your advise and encouragement. (it is much needed)

I am looking for people like you to join my affiliate program and promote this along with me.. it really is a great opportunity in my own personal opinion.. simply sharing my website and earning lot's of money for doing it -

I am also in the middle of a more customised video.. with more animation, to separate it from the more average video's being sold cheap. It is going to have sound effects etc.. more like a cartoon effect but still in the whiteboard niche that seems to appeal.

Thanks once again

 

[fisicx]

I'm sat here in a traffic jam so I thought I'd take a look at your site. I've got a reasonable 4G signal but it's been 3 minutes and the animation still hasn't loaded. So you need to get this sorted. What sort of compression are you using?

And (don't take this personally) you skill is creating videos not web design. The theme is all wrong, get someone to help you with site development.

 

[stoo]

Thanks fisicx - that really helps. I recently uploaded a much larger video file.. I will use youtube from now on for hopefully much faster loading.

The website design is a premium theme.. just Wordpress of course. I like it to be honest but with your comment I will need to gain more feedback now - it all helps none the less.

 

[stoo]

Sat here bored myself until I finish work and go out for the weekend. I thought I would take your advise and noticed your link to exactly what you said I needed.. such a coincidence - so I took a look. aerin.co.uk - some nice information. The theme is not my cup of tea but I can only presume it is effective

 

[fisicx]

It's very effective. You browsed and read the information and the fact you didn't really like the theme didn't matter. If it had mattered you would have left the site. It's something to consider, the theme really doesn't matter if the content is good.

If you want a project, convert some of my articles into whiteboard animations. Upload to YouTube and I'll add them to my site. You get exposure and we can test to see if they make any difference to anything.

 

[fisicx]

It's very effective. You browsed and read the information and the fact you didn't really like the theme didn't matter. If it had mattered you would have left the site. It's something to consider, the theme really doesn't matter if the content is good.

If you want a project, convert some of my articles into whiteboard animations. Upload to YouTube and I'll add them to my site. You get exposure and we can test to see if they make any difference to anything.