Using Audio In Your Direct Sales Business

The use of audio to sell products is so powerful, I am often tempted to include only this one page for the entirety of my blog post. In a nutshell, you are going to have a tough time getting anywhere without it.

If you don't know what audio is, here's a quick introduction: Audio can be anything from singing children on the radio at an ice cream store or someone reading out loud over the airwaves. The most common type of audio that a direct sales business would want to produce and/or distribute is called an "affirmative message." This means that it sounds like someone telling you something in person that you want them telling you - like how much they love their job when they talk about their product. [But not in a cheesy infomercial kind of way, a more subtle and easy to understand way]

The power of audio is in its ability to stay with us long after we've heard it. The average person hears millions of pieces of information every day, but how much of it do you actually remember? According to the US Army Material Command, the average human being can only process about 7 pieces of information at a time before moving onto something else. With audio there are very few distractions that can pull our attention away from it - so when you apply an affirmative message over and over again for a long period of time there is no doubt that you will be getting your message across loud and clear.

So if you want to sell your products, you need to start using audio in your business. There are many ways to use audio, but they can be broken down into two main categories: 1) Creating recordings of yourself talking about your products and distributing them online, and 2) Hiring a voice actor or actress to create the recording for you .

Creating Your Own Affirmative Message

What You Will Need: Audio Recording Equipment, Training or Talent, Content for Recording.

If you have training or talent for recording voice overs then this section is for you! If not, then I'd suggest looking into hiring someone who knows what they're doing . Everything else is pretty simple:

1. Start by finding a good recording environment such as your kitchen or garage. You will want to find a location that you can use and doesn't cause interference with other sounds that can interfere with the recording equipment.

2. Set up your recording equipment and record yourself talking about your product/s. Be sure to do an initial test recording so that you can gain some insight into how the quality of the audio will sound like when it's finished.

3. Finally, pick the content that you want from your recording and edit the audio to only include those things. Consider adding in some background music or sound effects if you think it will improve the quality of your recording.

Professional Voice Over Recording

What You Will Need: A script, a microphone, training or talent, a recording software such as Audacity , and finally a voice actor or actress to record everything for you .

If you don't have training or talent for voice recording then getting in touch with someone who does is definitely the best choice to make. [If you want to check out some voice over actors and actresses, someone mentioned a great site in the comments here] Voice acting is a very lucrative career and there are many very talented people who would love to work with you. Here are some steps you will want to take:

1. Script out all the things that you would like recorded, making sure that it conveys everything that you want it to say. You can have as little or as much detail in your script as you would like. Don't worry about how long it is; just be sure to note what each person should say and when they should say it .

2. Get a high quality microphone for recording (I use one from Blue Microphone).

3. Once everything is all set up, have each person record the script one after another. It's best to have everyone in the same room when doing so, so that you can make sure they know what they're saying and when to say it.

4. Using the software Audacity or something similar, go through your recording and clean things up like background noise or ratty audio quality. Always be sure that your pitch is right as well! You can do this by having someone else listen to it and giving you their honest opinion on how they think your pitch sounds like. If they are hearing something other than what you intended them to hear then you need to redo that section of your recording .

5. If you decide to use music and sound effects, now is the time to add them in.

6. Add in any voice over artist introduction or way of saying goodbye. [Consider using a soft bass at the end of each recording so that it's easy to tell where one recording starts and another stops]

7. Render your final audio, which is where you put everything all together into one clean recording. If you have any problems doing so, then there are plenty of resources online that can help.

Now that you've got your recordings complete, it's time to get them ready for distribution. This can be done in a few different ways which I'll cover in the next section of my post…

Distributing Your Audio Affirmative Message Through The Internet

I'm going to go over a few different ways of distributing your audio, but I will save the best one for last. Here are the four main ways of distributing your audio:

1. Upload Audio to Your Own Website

You've probably seen this a lot before, where someone will have a video or audio file on their website that doesn't seem to be doing a whole lot for them. This is because the site owner didn't know how to do any SEO - so they put the files up but they don't get any traffic from it. The best way to solve this is by actually putting your audio into a page that is already getting traffic and pushing it through there - which will drive more traffic back to you.

Conclusion: Remember to do your SEO first, then your marketing strategy!

2. Post the Audio on YouTube

The second option to use is posting it on YouTube. It's hands-down the best way to get people to come looking for a product in your niche. This is because it's a video format and you can use annotations, commentaries and other cool reasons to bring attention to it as well. You can also do this by using audio only - but if you're going this route you won't be able to use any type of annotation or annotation graphic that will allow you more than one sentence at a time.