With the current market conditions of excessive inflation, oversaturation of products and recession looming, now more than ever customers are being very careful with their money and beginning to spend less. Across the industry, many companies are seeing reduced customer spending and thus reduced revenue due to these factors. With this in mind, now is a good time to examine your monthly expenses to ensure you are running lean as possible and not spending frivolously.

Here are 5 suggestions for reducing expenditure in the common areas sample library or plugins companies spend their money.

1. File Hosting & Bandwidth

File hosting and bandwidth costs can be a large expense particularly if you are selling sample libraries which can be anywhere from 5GB to 100GB. The most common solution is Amazon S3 but at $0.02/GB for storage per month and $0.09/GB for bandwidth, the costs can add up quickly, particularly if you’re using it to distribute free products. Luckily there are a number of other options:

• Digital Ocean Spaces – Spaces is Digital Ocean’s “S3-compatible object storage” (ie. its own version of Amazon S3). It’s fully interoperable with S3 meaning if you currently use Amazon S3, its simple to swap it out for Spaces as it works in the same way. The pricing of Spaces is far less than S3, coming in at $5 per month for 250GB of storage and 1TB of bandwidth (the equivalent on S3 would be $95) and additional bandwidth costing just $0.01/GB instead of $0.09/GB. There are two small downsides to Spaces, the first being that you’ll need to copy all of your data from S3 to Spaces (which can take a while if you have a lot of files) and the second being that download speed can be a little slower on Spaces than S3, but generally speaking its similar.
• Bucket Blaze – If you’d rather not move from Amazon S3 but want to integrate a CDN to increase download speeds and reduce your costs without having to use Amazon Cloudfront (which can be very expensive), then Bucket Blaze is a service designed for this. Its compatible with multiple platforms (not just WooCommerce) and essentially becomes a wrapper around your S3 files, copying them into the Stackpath network cache then delivering them to customers from there instead of S3, resulting in costs being reduced by approximately 50% (bandwidth only costs $0.05/GB for CDN delivered files), far faster download speeds for customers and useful “per file” analytics so you can see which files are costing you the most each money, where your customers are based and more.
• Downloader Apps – Apps like the Pulse Downloader App can actually help save you money in a number of ways.

  1. Reduced bandwidth costs – if you’re delivering files from S3, Digital Ocean etc. you may be paying for up to 40% more bandwidth due to broken downloads from customers downloading large files via their browsers. Downloader apps like Pulse ensure that bandwidth is not wasted through its pause/resume functionality (restarting downloads from where they were stopped instead of restarting from scratch) and checksum verification functionality (ensuring downloaded files are correctly downloaded before extraction)

  2. Reduced customer support – For sample library companies especially, the most common customer support queries are “I can’t extract my software” and “Why can’t I use my product with Kontakt Player”. Pulse takes care of all of your download/installation queries, reducing those emails to zero resulting in lower costs on customer support.

2. Graphic Design

While a great graphic designer is an incredibly important asset to your company, you may not be able to afford to hire one at times or perhaps there may be some elements you would prefer to do yourself. There are a number of alternatives you can use to create advertising banners, product images and other graphic elements:

• Online Graphic Design Tools – There are lots of useful browser based platforms that provide you with simple to edit templates for banner ads, Youtube cover images and much more. While a graphic designer might be able to provide something better, if you’re looking to create them yourself without having to learn and pay for a tool like Photoshop these tools can get you most of the way there with little effort: Canva, Adobe Express and Snappa.
• AI Image Generators – These are already being used by a number of companies to create product artwork images and backgrounds for banners etc. to great effect. For example, maybe you want to make a banner advert for a piano sample library sale? Generate a background image using an AI image generator then put that into Canva to add text and buttons overlay . Our favourite so far is Midjourney but two other useful options to try are Nightcafe Studio and Starry AI

3. Email Marketing

The most common email marketing platform used by the large majority of companies is Mailchimp and for a good reason – its incredibly easy to use, has many useful features and integrates with every platform. However, once your email list starts to grow past a few thousand subscribers, the costs can become eye wateringly expensive. For example, 50k subscribers can cost you up to $700 per month. Luckily there are other options which are worth exploring!

Though it can take a little effort to integrate and is less feature rich than Mailchimp or similar platforms, Sendy is an incredibly cheap option to reduce your email marketing overheads. Sendy integrates with Amazon SES (Simple Email Service) to deliver emails via your Amazon SES account at a rate of $1 per 10,000 emails. There are no contact limits and you’re not charged for the number of contacts you have in your list – just the number of emails you send.

It takes a little work to set it up as its “self hosted” and you need to setup SES on your own Amazon account (its also worth paying for a dedicated IP address to ensure higher deliverability) but you can use a service like EasySendy who offered managed hosting meaning it requires less work to get setup or alternatively you can find a contractor on Upwork who can help you get it setup quickly and easily.

4. Website Hosting

If you’re using a self hosted eCommerce solution like WordPress, WooCommerce, Drupal, Joomla then you might be paying more than you need to for your website hosting. While many smaller companies use cheap website “shared hosting” plans mid to larger sized companies use dedicated hosting and a VPS to ensure high website durability and uptime. However, this can be expensive and there are plenty of less expensive and better optimised options available.

Our favourite option for this is Digital Ocean Droplets. For $5 per month, you can have a 1 click install WordPress droplet with 1GB CPU, 25GB SSD and 100GB of bandwidth and the best part is you can easily upgrade any element within seconds. Website slow? Just increase the RAM or CPU on the fly and its done within seconds

Digital Ocean is highly recommended for any self hosted website because they guarantee a high uptime in their SLA, its very cheap and you can easily upgrade/downgrade any element of the website resources at any time without having to change between specific plans – you only pay for what you need. Tip: add the free Cloudflare plan on top of your website to reduce the load so you don’t need to pay for more website resources.

5. Advertising Optimisations

For all banner ads, email ads, third party placements etc. you should track conversions accurately using Google URLs and Google Analytics. Once you’ve setup your Goals correctly in Google Analytics, this method allows you to see how much traffic is coming from a particular link, how many conversions its creating and the ROI from it.

So for example, if you’re running a banner advert on a forum, you should be doing the following so you can see the exact amount of revenue that advert is bringing you:

1. Setup the conversion Goal in Google Analytics (eg. if a user gets to yourwebsite.com/completed then you know they have checked out and bought a product)
2. Ensure revenue is setup for tracking in Google Analytics
3. Create a specific URL for your banner ad using Google URL Builder (eg. https://www.mywebsite.com?utm_source=kvr&utm_medium=bannerad&utm_campaign=julybanner&utm_id=kvrforumadvert)
4. Ensure that URL is being used for the banner ad link

Once setup, you can regularly check each of your campaigns / adverts to see what is bringing you in the most revenue and turn off ones that are not bringing you in enough revenue to provide a positive ROI. Here are some additional optimisations for other ad platforms:

Google Ads:

1. Setup negative keywords to ensure your ads are not being triggered and displayed for incorrect phrases. eg. if you’re selling audio plugins, but want to ensure your ads don’t show up for “photoshop plugins” on a broad match search term for “plugin”. Look at your search terms report to see every search query that resulted in your ad being shown, then ensure any incorrect triggers are added to your negative keywords list
2. Optimise locations – if you’re targeting all of USA for an ad campaign, you may find particular states have a higher ROI than others. Target those states and turn off the lowest performing states / countries
3. Use more exact keywords and long-tail keywords rather than broad match phrases. For example instead of “audio plugins” try “buy audio plugins online” or “top 10 audio plugins 2022“

Facebook Ads:

1. Ensure you’re using the Facebook Conversion API instead of the Conversion Pixel – the Conversion API gives you more accurate reporting in turn giving more detail metrics to gauge your ROI on so you know what’s working and what’s not. Alternatively use a platform like AnyTrack to get even more accurate reporting so you know where to stop spending money.
2. Optimise locations & ages – look at your conversions and see what countries the majority of your conversions are coming from, but also look at the gender and age group. It could be that when you look closely, Males between 40-54 are actually spending the most but you’re targeting all genders and all age ranges.
3. Optimise placements – again, you may find the majority of your conversions are coming from a particular placement or media type.

Additional Tips:

• If you use WooCommerce, you’ll know plugins can be pretty expensive to buy and keep up to date when you have a number of them installed on your website. You can use a platform like Cheap WooCommerce (completely legal) to get your plugins for a lot cheaper reducing your upfront costs.
• If you currently use a downloader app like Continuata, we can offer you one year free use of Pulse (excluding your own bandwidth costs) if you change over to Pulse. This can save you a lot in fees over the course of a year.
• With current inflation and recession fears, customers are more scared than ever to make purchases. Offering payment plans like those from Paypal, Klarna or Partial.ly can help improve your conversion rates for customers.
• Don’t forget to checkout our other articles on 10 Ways to Increase Your Revenue and The Beginners Guide to Running Facebook Ads.

A/B testing (AKA split testing) compares two versions of a landing page or marketing asset and measures the difference in performance. Basically, it’s a competition. You’re letting two elements battle it out for the top spot. You never test more than one variable at once, otherwise it’s impossible to distinguish what’s driving the results. Knowing which variation works better can help inform future decisions when improving your website copy, email content, or any other aspect of your digital marketing strategy. It’s an essential practice if you want to increase sales and sign-ups. Led by the data, you’ll be able to craft better campaigns and drive more conversions over time. Here are twenty different tests that you could run to try improve your conversion rates across your ads, emails, or on your website.

Facebook A/B tests

• Automatic vs edited placements

Facebook Ads Manager sets all campaigns to ‘automatic placements’ by default. Try running 2 identical campaigns but edit the placements on one of them. Many marketers would argue that the newsfeed is the best placement for driving conversions. This is a good placement test to begin with in comparison to automatic placements.

• Test multiple audiences

If you’re not testing your Facebook audiences, you’re missing out on some juicy conversions. Narrowing down audiences that give you a great return on investment takes plenty of experimentation and tweaking, but it’s totally worth it. Try A/B testing different interests, demographics, and custom audiences to get a clear picture of your best converters. 

• Single image vs carousel 

One of the best features of Facebook ads is its creative formatting options. But how do you know what works best for each campaign? Keep everything the same except your creative style. A/B test carousel, image, and video ads options to draw helpful, data-based conclusions about performance.

• Long vs short headlines

You’ll see a mix of long and short headlines on Facebook ads. That’s because the best length really depends on each campaign and audience. Pit multiple headlines against each other to consistently improve your conversion rate. There’s plenty of tests to choose from like: long vs short, emojis vs no emojis, the wording of your offer (½ price vs 50% off), etc.

• Long vs short videos

This generation has been mocked for their short attention spans, but that doesn’t mean only short videos produce conversions. Maybe your audience will enjoy a richer, more informative video or perhaps short and sweet is the way to go. Test, and you shall know for sure.

Google Ads A/B tests

• Short vs long headlines

It might be tempting to use up all the space for your Google Ads headlines. The reality is, some campaigns might perform better if you make them more concise. As long as you’re only changing one element at a time, you can test anything: adding your brand name, different CTAs, benefit vs feature-based language, and much more.

• Automated vs manual bidding strategy

Do you tend to stick with the same bidding strategy for every campaign? It’s good practice to compare a few bidding strategies frequently, as each strategy can produce dramatically different results. You could try one campaign using target CPA and another with manual bidding, for example. Give the test enough time to find a winner, and you’re on your way to getting more sign-ups and sales for less!

• Dynamic vs non-dynamic text

Your campaign may benefit from the use of dynamic text. This is when Google pulls in a combination of headline and description text based on the user’s intent. It can increase the relevance of your ads, therefore increasing the chance your audience will convert. The important thing is that you’ll know for sure once you give it a go, rather than relying on your gut feeling.

• Two landing page versions 

Where your audience lands after seeing your ad is incredibly important. Can changing one element on each landing page really create more sign-ups or conversions? Give yourself more data to work with by testing this out and seeing how your visitors react. Something as simple as adding a product demo video or button colour might resonate better with your visitors.

• Different targeting options

When you know what specific audiences are giving you more clicks, sales, and sign-ups, you can concentrate your efforts on the right people. Without adequate testing, you’re pretty much going in blind. For example, if you’re selling an 808 bass plugin, maybe 18-24 year olds are more interested in the product than 40-60 year olds? Based on the results, you can give more budget to the best-performing audience and exclude groups that aren’t worth your while.

Email A/B tests

• Email Headline

The headline is the most important part of your entire email marketing campaign and if you get it right, you can dramatically increase your open rates. Asking a question or piquing the customers interest with an unusual headline can increase open rates (though its effectiveness may reduce in the long term). For example: “Can you have enough piano sample libraries?” (instead of something more mundane like “We released the black grand piano“) or “Is this the weirdest sound design plugin we’ve ever created?” (instead of “The Morph plugin is now available at $99”) Every customer base is different so you need to balance your email headline with what your customers expect from your brand – ie. don’t be too serious if your brand is fun and don’t be too whacky if your brand is professional.

• Send without prices

This sounds counter intuitive right? But it actually works…most of the time… This is an unusual split test to run and can have varying results. Some customers get annoyed if you don’t include the price in your email, but at the same time, your click through rates (and thus overall sales) will increase as people will have to click through to your website to see the price. This generally works best when running a sale – the customer can see its 70% off in your email, but needs to click on the “More Info” or “Buy Now” button in the email to see the final price. Again, it can upset some customers so you’ll need to see if it works best for you.

• CTA button text

You might not think so, but there’s a massive difference between ‘Subscribe’ and ‘Sign me up’ CTAs. Maybe your audience likes the first button more because it’s succinct and professional. Perhaps they’ll enjoy the more personal approach of the second CTA. These subtle changes could be the difference between 20 and 50 subscribers.

• Different times

Consider testing sending your emails at different times of the day or week. With most major email platforms, you can split test this automatically – try allowing your email platform to automatically send at the best time (this is generally based customer timezones) vs when you think would be best. Alternatively try sending emails on a Monday vs Friday or Wednesday vs Weekend –  you might be suprised with the results.

• Personalisation

According to a study by Campaign Monitor, click-through rates increased by 14% in emails using personalisation. It’s not a one-size-fits-all strategy, however, and can actually deter a portion of your audience. Try it out for yourself today by adding your recipient’s name into either the subject line or the body text and see if this boosts your open rate.

Website A/B tests

• CTA placements

Does CTA placement really matter? The answer is absolutely. It needs to stand out in all the right places. Should you put it above the fold, below it, at the end? All of the above? This truly depends on your own website. Try testing the same landing page but with the CTA above or below the fold and continue with other variations until you have the winner.

• Banner images

Your website’s banner image is the first thing your visitors see so you better make it count. Many business owners stick with the same website banners for years, maybe it’s time you tried something new? Psychologically, everything from the colours to the size of your banner image can affect how users engage with your website. You could try the same image but with a different background colour, or demographic of people for example. Get creative and reap the rewards of your thorough investigation. Use Canva if you don’t want to spend money on a designer. See these 20 conversion-boosting hero image examples for inspiration.

• Short vs long copy

There are multiple approaches you can take when it comes to A/B testing copy. One of the simplest tests to run is to show one version with succinct copy that gets right to the point and another with more informative text. Here’s where you can determine what people like and apply the same theory to your other pages. You can also test the tone, headlines, and product descriptions for a more conversion-driven experience.

• Different Currencies

Sometimes its easiest to sell in your own currency only, but depending on when your customers are located, you might be losing out on potential sales if they don’t see the price in their own currency. For example, maybe you sell in GBP but the majority of your customers are actually in the US so you should actually price in USD? The best option is to offer multiple currency options (see example by Plugin Boutique below)  but if that’s not possible, its a good idea to test with different currencies to see if one resonates best with your customers. Alternatively, take a look at your Google Analytics information to see where the majority of your customers are located and make a decision from there.

• Sign up forms

If you’ve installed a pop-up form on your website, evaluate the best display trigger and time for your audience. Too early and it might annoy users, too late and they might miss it. You can also test multiple texts, images, form fields, and incentives to decide the best route to take. If you’re looking for more sign-ups, testing the form is crucial, so don’t leave it out of your testing strategy. Additionally, try only placing popup forms on specific pages rather than your entire website – like your freebie page only or just on your blog?

Want better results? Start testing!

As you can see from the above examples, there are plenty of split tests you can be running at all times to make incremental improvements in your metrics. The simplest ones to start with are email and Facebook/Google ads. You’re looking to level up your sales and marketing – why not level up your customer support too? The Pulse downloader app streamlines your product download and installation process for customers which in turn reduces the time you have to spend on customer support – allowing you to spend more time on the things that matter like creating new products and sales/marketing. See our pricing information here.