GoodSoundClub - Romy the Cat's Audio Site

In the Forum: Playback Listening
In the Thread: How to make money in Audio

Post Subject: Strategy, marketing and legalPosted by scooter on: 3/31/2012

Hi Romy,
Sounds interesting. Whilst you are sorting out the technology / product / production ideas with your tech guys, a few thoughts:

1. Legal - Some law firms will offer special "discount" rates to startup technology type businesses. Of course the product/service will need to have some potential for significant sales, such that the law firm has the possibility to bill a lot of work at higher rates in the future. I worked with a firm in Chicago that did this and we received a lot of firepower and could focus funds on operations. Interestingly for us, one of the intellectual property issues was just not registering anything to keep the "technology" completely private. If the technology is easy to copy, then protection may be important. This turned out to be an excellent legal arrangement beyond just saving some money.

2. Strategy / marketing - prodigious amount of time and effort in planning the "firm's" strategy and "marketing" plan can make the difference between selling a little or selling a lot. The consumer products in your house are not there by coincidence; some people spent stupid amounts of time planning how to get that junk into your house.

I know this looks like a fluffy and trivial area when compared to the technical and operational hurdles you are battling. However, this is really what will make or break sales volumes. You can't outsource this initial work. Spend a while with a pencil mapping out the US (then international) landscape of:
--Target end customers (who are they, #, demographics).
--How do you get this stuff to them? retailers, distributors, advertising venues, conventions, magazine reviews, internet distribution, etc. Afterwards international markets.
--Is this just traditional "expensive audio" distribution or are you going more mass market to include electronics / consumer retailers?

===> How do you reach out to these distribution channels and customers, and eventually sell to them? Is that something that you actually want to do with your time?

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