John, I'd like to say that you've taken a good first step about expanding your business in asking/getting feedback from your current customers on ideas to help spread the word.  The best ideas about how to change/improve your business USUALLY come from them and most people don't realize it, so for that...*applause* :)

Now I can give you some of my advice as I have a degree in marketing/advertising and am also in that field and I hope none of it sounds harsh!!!  I'm just being honest with you, so please don't get offended in any way :)  From there you may take my advice or leave it...or we can discuss this more in depth if you choose (or you can get me a good deal on the system I'm about to purchase!). 

There are many terms associated with the word marketing and by what you're talking about I assume (and we all know what assuming gets you) you're meaning increasing the awareness to potential clients.  This is an area that I can see Aperion improving upon.  Of course that aspect ties in with the main question you asked us about overcoming the idea of making a significant purchase online with A. never hearing of the company and B. never hearing the speakers.  A lot of individuals won't do business with a company they've never heard of before (let alone can't see/hear/touch the product).  You all have been very fortunate to be as successful as you are with doing nothing but have your clients spread the word about the quality of your product, customer service and outstanding warranty.  Now word of mouth is great as you've been a part of!  But you're also coming to the realization that it only gets you so far.

As the world constantly changes, so must businesses to adapt.  The good news is, as the world changes more towards doing business online, this puts your company ahead of the pack in some areas since you do a ton of business there already!  So from that standpoint, way to go!  But from the standpoint that more and more businesses are doing business online and putting an emphasis on online advertising while keeping their regular advertising going at the same time, they are staying in front of YOUR potential clients by top of mind awareness and if those people don't know of the options they have, how many of them will go with Aperion?  Not many.  BUT, the ones you will get are the ones with that good friend who already has a set of your speakers, or happens to stumble across an article on Cnet (which happened to me as I was gathering info on the latest and greatest) and even then, it's a small chance they'll take the risk because...they've never heard of you.

I know this isn't much of a step by step way to answer the question you asked, but if you'd like to discuss this further, I'd be happy to pick your brain about specifics.  Let me know! 

Patrick Williams

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Do or do not, there is no try.

jedi1982 brings up some good points concerning name recognition. It seems that the evolving market for Aperion would be people that are entering the higher end market. They either have a HTIB and want something better or they're new to home theater systems and are off doing the months of research on televisions, AVRs and speakers.  The true audiophiles go the AV forums and there are active threads about Aperion.

The challenge is to reach those customers who A. never heard of the AV forums B. if they did go there wouldn't understand most of what people are talking about anyway and C. never heard of Aperion.

Back to the basics. Remember the 4P's from college? You have a good product that consistently gets high marks from people who know what they're talking about.  You also have it positioned above the HTIB market but below the very high end market.  I haven't seen the research but that sounds like the market sweet spot.  When I compared Aperion with other, more name brand companies (like Klipsch and Polk), your prices were competitive.  That leaves 2 P's - Promotion and Place. 

Your "place" is direct sales via the Internet.  Have you considered expanding your distribution to include specialty installers?  I live in the Phoenix area and there are a number of custom home theater companies that have a retail presence (mostly just a showroom and are small) and design systems for specific needs. One that I visted offers speaker systems that I've never heard of, but they sounded very good and I felt OK with them because the retailer has a good reputation.  I would think this would be a key area to investigate if you want to expand your sales.  They'll educate the customer which helps you on the promotional front.

Promotion is tricky and I suppose that's why it costs so much. Who do you promote to? High end audiophile types are already aware of your product.  People like me, non-audiophiles, don't read AV magazines or visit AV forums, However, we do searches on the Internet for reviews and that's how I found Aperion.  I don't know that I'd spend a lot of money advertising (in print or on the Internet) although I would pay for placement with the major search sites.  I'd focus on working with editors to get product reviews that will subsequently get published online.  You can tell me how great your product is and I'm not going to buy it 100% but, if I read 5 reviews from other sources that tell me how great your product is, I'm going to get interested. 

Hope this helps.

Joe 

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Joe
If you can't have fun doing it, it's probably not worth doing.

Joe, good points from you as well.  You brought up the challenge of reaching the different types of customers and also promotions (which that term could be taken many different ways too).  You are correct in asking how do you reach those different people and in what ways.  Those answers come to the surface when it's clear who exactly your target market is.  I believe Aperion needs to look at and find out just who exactly is their demographic.  Once that is made clear, they then can look at the different modes to reach that customer through promotions, marketing, advertising or whatever someone would wish to call it.

One other point you brought up that I'm glad you did..."You can tell me how great your product is and I'm not going to buy it 100% but, if I read 5 reviews from other sources that tell me how great your product is, I'm going to get interested," this is a concept that I push my clients towards with advertising.  You probaly already know this but in the ad world, we call it testimonials.  Testimonials can be very powerful especially from credible people and credible sources.  You've got to be repetitive in whatever you're promoting and co-brand/attach yourself with someone / thing.

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Do or do not, there is no try.

I agree with the previous idea to create a separate branch.  You need to be willing to expand if you want to.  I know your main goal is to produce an amazing product at a very reasonable price, and you succeed mainly due to selling all your stuff direct.  You already have the audiophiles via AV Forums and some non-audiophiles who stumbled across you while researching on Cnet.com (ME!).  You need to address the people whose idea of shopping for speakers is to go to Best Buy or browse through a major internet site.  You need to make yourselves more accessible to the general public by having a store near them they pass by everyday to go to work, that when it comes time to build speakers they think to try that place they pass everyday.  More likely than not, people don't do enough research to find you, more than likely they read the 3 reviews on the website if that.  By all means, keep selling direct, just start constructing some branches to get your company growing.

Hey Gurus. Has aperion ever considered a "refer a friend" program? Maybe by aiding in the decision making of friends/strangers to purchase aperion speakers, aperion could provide some cash back (3-5%) toward the purchasing of open box speakers? I don't suggest limiting it to 5%, but thought asking for 20% was a tad bit excessive. I realize that it's a bit of money for aperion to loose but if owners could only use it on open box items it might be better for business.... sell more new speakers through referring friends and then we could help take some of your "clutter" off of your hands. Just a thought as i've had a few "movie nights" with my new speakers to show them off and a number of people are interested in getting real speakers. 

 

In terms of references, have you guys sent the new line of speakers to cnet.com yet for review? Thats where I began my research and moved from them to searching av forums. I figured they were a good place to start and I liked seeing Aperion on the top of their speaker list, only now all they have is the old system for individual speaker reviews.  

There is a link right on Aperion's home page for the review of a new system @ CNET.

 http://reviews.cnet.com/separate-speakers/aperion-intimus-5b-harmony/4505-7869_7-32981518.html?tag=prod.txt.7

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Scottiemon

Hey Scottie. I know they did the whole system, but I was talking more about the individual speakers...the towers alone for example. They had reviews of some of the single speakers I think on cnet from the classic line.

Hi,

new customer here, just ordered a center and some bookshelves for mains. First off, let me say I have been looking at upgrading my speakers for probably a year now, and eventually settled on Aperion. No other company impressed me as much: the clean, beautiful website, light-hearted attitude, and glowing reviews made me fall in love with this company...and I don't even have my speakers yet!

Obviously, the challenge for a direct sales company is overcoming the lack of a physical audition. Humans are very emotional creatures and we like to touch, smell, taste, see, and of course, hear products before we commit to them. The 30 day risk-free audition does wonders here. However, there has to be trust in the company that they will follow through on their word.

A yet-to-be implemented feature at a competitors website is a system where customers can open up their homes and let prospects audition speakers of existing customers. It takes a great company and a dedicated community to make this work, but I believe Aperion could pull it off.

Customers would opt-in to the program, make their general location public information (not a specific address, we don't want to aid burglary), and maintain a list of their Aperion inventory. Prospective customers could search by location or product to find an existing customer and then establish a date and location for an audition. Perhaps in return the existing customer would receive coupons/rebates/reward points towards future Aperion purchases. Aperion would have the largest showroom in the industry, it's just spread out amongst existing customers.

 Thanks for listening, 

-Grant 

gkelly:

Hi,

new customer here, just ordered a center and some bookshelves for mains. First off, let me say I have been looking at upgrading my speakers for probably a year now, and eventually settled on Aperion. No other company impressed me as much: the clean, beautiful website, light-hearted attitude, and glowing reviews made me fall in love with this company...and I don't even have my speakers yet!

Obviously, the challenge for a direct sales company is overcoming the lack of a physical audition. Humans are very emotional creatures and we like to touch, smell, taste, see, and of course, hear products before we commit to them. The 30 day risk-free audition does wonders here. However, there has to be trust in the company that they will follow through on their word.

A yet-to-be implemented feature at a competitors website is a system where customers can open up their homes and let prospects audition speakers of existing customers. It takes a great company and a dedicated community to make this work, but I believe Aperion could pull it off.

Customers would opt-in to the program, make their general location public information (not a specific address, we don't want to aid burglary), and maintain a list of their Aperion inventory. Prospective customers could search by location or product to find an existing customer and then establish a date and location for an audition. Perhaps in return the existing customer would receive coupons/rebates/reward points towards future Aperion purchases. Aperion would have the largest showroom in the industry, it's just spread out amongst existing customers.

 Thanks for listening, 

-Grant 

Welcome to the forum Grant. 

It's funny you mention it, because I just had a conversation this morning with a prospective customer on this very topic.  Maybe we could start a thread with people that were willing host demos in their homes.  Of course you wouldn't want to posts any specifics on the public area of the forum, but you could just say what city or state you were in and then if people were interested they could PM you to try and get together.  What do you guys think about that?

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Jason Hicks
Aperion Audio Guru

Anybody that wants to come over and check out some lossless uncompressed Blu Ray Pirates of the Caribean on my Modest setup is more than welcome to.  Just make sure your ready to place an order the next day!  That is as long as i get first dibs on discounted towers

I'd be more than happy to open up my home to prospective buyers the only thing I would worry about it making sure I represent the speakers well enough.  Making sure they're configured propertly, answering their questions, etc. 

Now, if you'd like to "certify" my setup and maybe set me up with some other Aperion models (for comparison purposes only of course) then I'm in. 

Just kidding, I'd be more than happy to.

Bryan

I actually took my 5B's and 5C's to a friends house for him to audition.  I think it worked better than him coming to my house for the following reasons:

 

1.) He has a different AVR than me with different specs and having him hear the speakers on his own system gave him a great comparison to his own speakers.

 2.) His room is bigger than mine and the acoustics would also be much different.  Besides I was actually able to hear my speakers in a bigger room to really show off their soundstage.  

3.)  He also was able to sources he is very familiar with like music, movies, and games.  Ofcourse he could have braught these items to my house but the first 2 reasons outweigh that argument.

 I would rather bring the 5B's and 5C over someone elses home to audition but that is just me.  Ofcourse I am well aware that a person may not have an AVR suitable for these speakers to get a true audition, and I suppose in that instance the customer based audition would be more suitable.

 By the way.. My friend was very impressed with the speakers but at the current time they are out of his price range.  :(

Man, I love you guys.

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Cheers,

John Wanderscheid