Toms Tech

Let’s face it, keeping your marketing mix fresh can be a real challenge.  You’ve done the article marketing thing.  You’ve planned email marketing campaigns, promotions, joint ventures, linking, ebooks, advertising, giveaways, and maybe even direct mail.  What’s left?  What can you do to interact with your customers, engage and excite them, and encourage traffic and promotion?  The answer?  Audio marketing.

Here’s how audio can enhance your online business marketing plan.

Marketing with audio enables you to personally connect to your audience.  Ever turn to the last page of a book to see what the author looks like?  I do that all the time.  What about visiting a web page and searching the about us page so you can learn a little bit about who runs the business?  I do that too and I’d like to think I’m not just a voyeur and that I am like most people and I want to connect a little bit with the companies I shop from and interact with.

When you provide an audio on your file, you give visitors the opportunity to hear your voice and connect with you for a few seconds.  You can use your audio file to say hello, to tell them a little bit about yourself and why you created your company or to jump right into a sales pitch and tell folks why your product or service will change their lives.  When they hear it from you, they may be more likely to believe it.

One suggestion when you’re creating your audio file is to consider making listening to it optional. I only say this because many people surf online when they’re not really supposed to.  Maybe their at work or at the library or even at home while they’re watching television and the last thing they want is to click on your site and have your voice, as wonderful as it is, break the silence.  It’s a dead giveaway to their boss that they’re not working and it can be irritating if they’re surfing in a quiet location.

When you include an audio file on your business website, consider your visitors and maybe add a button they need to click on to listen to it.  Another option is to test which works better, an audio that begins 30 seconds after they’ve arrived on your site or an audio they have to click on.  That way you know you’re meeting your customer’s needs.

Another reason to use audio is that it is a fantastic medium to offer free products like an audio tutorial. A free MP3 is an excellent trade for an email address.  Additionally, there are now many information based websites that offer tons of written content and also tons of audio tutorials.  Visitors can click on the links to listen to the material and learn, they can download it to their computer to listen to later or they can transfer the audio file to their MP3 player and listen to it when they’re in the car.  They can also share it with friends and increase the exposure of your company.

Audio tutorials are excellent however what about audio books, audio reports, recorded interviews, recorded workshops and more.

Audio is incredibly cost effective.

In fact, there are many tools on the web that make creating an audio file and embedding it on your website virtually cost free. Audio programs like Audacity, which is an open source program, enables you to record telephone interviews or conference calls and save them as MP3s.  You’ll need a few tools like a simple converter but they generally cost less than $50.00.

Additionally, it only costs you to produce the file once but you’ll be using it hundreds, or maybe even thousands, of times.  AND when you create an audio file in the form of a CD giveaway the production costs are extremely minimal.  That being said, the majority of people prefer digital audio files which is more cost effective for you.  One thing to consider when creating an audio file is that it needs to be quality.  If people cannot hear you or understand you, or they’re hearing your dog barking in the background, then you’re going to lose credibility and the effect you’re going for.

One of the benefits of audio is that it is easy to convert print into audio.  For example, let’s say you have a report that has done well as a content piece, transferring it into an audio file is as easy as speaking into a microphone.

When recording print copy, it is important to make sure you sound natural.  A great way to do this is to read it aloud a few times to get the hang of the copy and then ad lib.  Read the copy like you’re talking to a friend.  Add contractions, pauses, and even a joke or two where appropriate.  If you’re not comfortable with this task or the project just isn’t turning out how you want it to, consider hiring a voice to record the copy for you.

It is also really easy to take an audio file and transfer it into a print product.  For example, you can interview an expert and market that audio, have it transcribed and sell the transcribed product or give it away as a separate promotion.  Your only cost is the cost of transcription – about $15/hour.

Podcasts are growing by leaps and bounds, now you can easily reach your audience weekly via your voice, rather than via email Ezines.  Podcasts are viral and can be shared and recommended by fans and they’re an excellent, cost effective way to communicate with your audience on a regular basis.

There are so many reasons to use audio to market your business.  It’s cost effective, easy to use, interactive and it enables you to communicate directly with your customers on a more personal level. It’s a great tool.  Include it in your marketing plan today!

The beauty with audio books is that you have more than one option for listening to them.

For those of us who like to be given lots of options for doing certain things instead of being forced to adapt to just one choice, you definitely have lots of options for listening to your audio book.

If you are someone who likes listening while seated on your favorite couch or seated on your desk, listening to your audio book on your cassette tape player (if the audio book is in audiocassette format, of course) is the option for you.

But if you have a desktop or laptop computer, you might prefer listening to your audio book from here.

Most PCs have Digital Audio Players for playing audio books. If your PC doesn’t have any (very unlikely), you can still download them completely free on the Internet. The 2 best digital audio players that you can download free from the Internet include:

RealOne Player: It can be downloaded from their website:-

http://www.Real.com

Windows Media Player: It can also be downloaded from their website:-

http://www.Microsoft.com

But if you would rather listen to your audio book while doing your household chores, dancing, exercising, jogging, commuting to and from work, etc, then you would need portable audio playback devices that you can carry around and listen to, preferably with earphones.

With the ever expanding market of portable audio playback devices, it goes to show that more and more people are now using them, because of the wonderful benefits they provide.

The most common form of these portable audio playback devices are the normal audio CD players or CD-ROM devices. You can carry these around with you while you do your household chores, exercise, jog or commute to and from work.

The more advanced form of these portable audio playback devices for playing audio books, especially those for listening to downloadable audio books, include:

– Audio-ready PDAs (Personal Digital Assistants). Some of these PDAs include Casio CASSIOPEIA and Compaq iPAQ. Both can be pretty expensive, costing as much as about $500 for the Compaq iPAQ and about $400 for the Casio CASSIOPEIA.

– Compatible Portable Audio Players. Some of these include the Creative’s NOMAD Jukebox 3 and the SONICblue’s Rio 900. These are cheaper than PDAs. For example, you can get the SONICblue’s Rio 900 for about $250 from sites such as Sonicblue.com

Finally, like I said at the start of this article, whatever tool you decide to use in listening to your audio books will depend largely on “how” you prefer listening to your audio books.

For example, for the “young and restless” teenagers they can’t do without the PDAs. I bet you wouldn’t too if you were their age, right? But for the “aged and rusty” who just prefer the ease of being seated on their favorite couch, nothing can be better than listening to their favorite audio books from their “good old” cassette tape player!

The Moving Picture Experts Group Layer 3 Audio or MP3 is a digital audio encoding format which is used to store songs and other audio files. The format uses a psychoacoustic model that discards less audible sounds and records more audible sound in an efficient manner. The format is successor of Perceptual Transform Coding (PXFM) and Optimum Coding in the Frequency Domain (OCF) codecs. MPEG1 codec was first published in 1994 while MP2 codec was published in 1995.

The ease of sharing music files popularized the use of MP3 format among the users. This ease created problems related to copyright infringements. Therefore, many online music retailers use their proprietary formats to counter this problem. They use an encrypted digital rights management format that prevents the users from using the music in a way that has not been authorized by music record companies. The quality of sound of a digital audio format depends upon its bit rate to a greater extent. A lower bit rate results in low quality sound. A much lower bit rate may result in compression artifacts. Such artifacts may make those sounds audible which were not present in original music or production.

An MP3 player is a portable digital audio player that stores and plays audio files. Most of these devices use rechargeable batteries and support video playback functions. The players have been categorised on the basis of their storage media. Flash based players hold digital audio files on their internal flash memory. The players consume less battery power as they do not have any moving parts. Some commercial flash based players may have up to 32 GB of flash memory. Hard drive based players read audio files from a hard disk drive. These players come with massive memories. Some of these players may have up to 250 GB of memory, which is large enough to record an entire music collection on a single player.

The third variety of MP3 players is known as CD MP3 players. These players have the capability to decode and play MP3 files that have been stored on a compact disc (CD). The immediate predecessors of these players were MiniDisc players. These earlier players have no support for digital file formats. SeeHan Information Systems produced the first digital audio player on commercial basis in 1997. The player was sold under brand name MPMan in South Korea during 1998. The player was later licensed to Eiger Labs by SeeHan.

Car MP3 players are specially designed to work in a car. These players allow people to enjoy quality music during their travels by road. The players perform many useful functions for the users. They provide the users with a list of their favourite play list and also keep track of their calendar events. These players are made compact so that they can easily be fitted into the available limited free space of a car. The iPods specially use MP3 format as it allows the device to play hundreds of songs at a stretch. Most of these players have USB, SD and iPod connections that add to the versatility of these devices.

Most of the current portable MP3 player come with programmable track memory that allows the users to keep track of their songs. Most of these devices also feature AM/FM tuners and digital anti skips memory. Samsung has launched some of the best selling digital audio players in recent years. Some of the best selling Samsung MP3 players include Samsung YP-P2 Touch Screen 4GB Multimedia Player, Samsung YP-U3 Stick 1GB player and Samsung YP-K5 2GB player. All these players feature TFT LCD display, FM radio and support Multi Language options. The devices come packaged with genuine accessories like an ear phone, a USB cable, CD and stand. The players come with Samsung’s standard 6 months warranty.

Sony, Blaupunkt, Kenwood and Sanyo are the leading manufacturers of digital music players. These companies have rolled many new models of best MP3 players. The devices produce high quality sound by eliminating unwanted sound. These portable digital audio players have redefined the ways people entertain these days.