Marketing your own products: setting up a website that sells

In a recent post, I wrote about the different steps I am using in a marketing plan to promote my self-published book, Anxious but Happy.  The ‘key’ to all this effort is the website, since this is the sales page – or sales ‘person’ – that is working day and night to connect with people and explain why my book is the book that they need.

Now, I’ve left out something important here.  In addition to the book, I’ve also written a ‘how to’ manual about how to overcome panic attacks and anxiety disorder, and the manual is called ‘From Anxious to Happy’.  I also recorded the majority of the information in down-loadable MP3 audio files for those who prefer to listen as well as read.  In order to make this ‘package’ as valuable and useful as possible, I’ve also included a guided meditation session (audio) and a report I’ve written on how to turn a possibility into an actuality. Turning possibility into actuality – or making dreams come true – is exactly where people with anxiety should be focusing; in fact, it’s where we should all be focusing.

Anyway …

I set up a website to promote the entire package – but this was ages ago – and before I really understood the value of using a content management system to build a website.  So, in the last few days I’ve completely re-built the site in preparation for a heavy SEO campaign to get the site ranked in Google.

Video

Now, with something like anxiety I thought it essential to include a video on the website.  Video is immediately engaging and can convey important messages in a short period of time.  Video’s are also very effective at helping to build rapport with the visitors to your site.  I’ve been doing video marketing for a while now, and I use a very casual and authentic approach – just as if I were talking to someone in person.  I set the video to ‘auto-play’ when you land on my site, as a couple of good friends with million dollars businesses tell me that the best sales conversions happen your video automatically plays when the page opens.  You can check out the video at my new site, www.fromanxioustohappy.com.  Keep in mind that at the time of writing, the site was still in development and may not be complete when you visit.

So, how did I do the video?

1. I recorded the video on a digital video camera that uses flash memory.
2. I stood in front of a white background and with the camera on a tripod and started talking.  I had about 4 points that I wanted to cover and wrote these in large writing so I could refer to these if necessary.  I didn’t need the notes once I’d warmed up.
3. I then uploaded the video into iMovie on my macbook and edited the video to include the sections I wanted (iMovie is incredibly easy to use)
4. I then exported the video for web-streaming and saved it as a .mov  file.

Now, here’s where it gets a little tricky.  If I were to put up a .mov file on my webpage, only people with QuickTime (by Apple) would be able to watch the video.  That’s no good for me, because most people use Internet Explorer and don’t have QuickTime installed.  So, to get the most coverage, it’s best to convert your movie to flash, which has the .flv extension.  There are a couple of ways to do this.  First, you could upload the .mov file to YouTube and this would convert the file into .flv.  You can then just embed the video from YouTube into your webpage.  Another alternative is to use software to convert the .mov file to .flv and stream the video yourself, which is what I did.  But, things aren’t always straightforward are they … the quality of the final version is no where near what it was, so I have to get better at converting video formats.

Now that I have the video on my webpage, it makes sense to put it in as many other places as possible – in other words, to syndicate.  So, now I’m off to upload my video to a range of video sharing sites – including my YouTube channel – and write a press release, and write an article …

So, you’re getting an inside look at the promotion of a product using internet marketing.  To follow along and watch it all unfold, all you need to do is subscribe to my RSS feed.

Tagged as: landing pages, sales page, self publishing, video marketing, website