A Collection of Software Marketing Articles and Marketing Tips

The Main Benefits of a Social Media Campaign
Mon, 30 Aug 2010 14:45:00 +0000  
Before the social media’s popularity boom, a company which would like to carry out a SEO campaign could be narrowed to the main search engines such as Google, Yahoo and Bing, which represents the most important tools to look for information, products and services. Nowadays it isn’t enough anymore to keep up with competition on the search engines because social media is becoming too important to be ignored, and companies with a Facebook or a Twitter’s account will achieve better results in terms of traffic and in terms of rankings on search engine results pages (SERPs) than others.

Everyday millions of people from all around the world link to Facebook, YouTube and Twitter, and a lower number of them to other social networks such as Linked In, so it they can manifest the potential of social media for brand awareness and to channel traffic towards your websites. Also if your company has a Facebook or Twitter profile you can use them to promote your offers, promo codes, and special discounts, or simply to provide users with information and news about your products and services.

Social media is also important for SEO almost for two main reasons. Firstly, search engines likes websites which are updated with the latest technologies and which are ready to share information on the World Wide Web. Secondly, search engines and social media have started to cooperate, for example now Google displays users’ tweets in its search results, or Twitter is now a partner of Yahoo in order to create a social channel search engine, or again Bing released a new section “Bing Social” which will show all the information and links posted in Twitter and Facebook related to the entered keywords. These new partnerships trend between search engines and social media is a proof of the growing importance of social networks and at the same time it represents new opportunities for business online. In fact now a company with daily activity on social media sites, through posts and links, will have more possibilities to appear in the search results of the main search engines for its specific keywords, and in turns its visibility will increase and as well as its traffic.

Therefore there are enough reasons to consider Social Media Optimisation as an essential part of your internet marketing strategy, but if you still have doubts, please contact our SEO experts and our friendly guys will be glad to show you all the benefits of a Social Media Campaign!

About the Author:
Diane Forster
SEOJunkies
marketing@seojunkies.com
0044 845 373 0595

The Essentials in Successful Software Promotions - Video
Mon, 26 Jul 2010 10:42:00 +0000  

The following presentation was part of theSoftware Industry Conferenceon Friday July 16th 2010. The sound is recorded at a very quiet level so please turn up your volume.

Download Powerpoint Presentation

Part 1:




Part 2:




Part 3:

Do The Math– The Essentials in Successful Software Promotions
Mon, 12 Jul 2010 00:10:00 +0000  

This article will be presented as part of theSoftware Industry Conferenceon Friday July 16that 10:15am.

Download Powerpoint Presentation

Your inbox, letterbox and perhaps half the planet is flooded by promotional discounts. We’ve all seen the flyers, discounts, coupons and advertizing in all forms of media that give discount after discount, money off and money back, free giveaways and free products if you buy now.

Coupon clipping is back. After dipping in the boom years of the 90s retail stores like Wal-Mart are reporting 11% rises in coupon use since 2007. New websites like RetailMeNot.com and Groupon.com are making it easier to find and redeem promotional coupons as the shift from paper cutouts in magazines goes to digital copy and paste. It’s easy to see why, with a global recession consumers are looking to any cost-cutting measure that they can find.

So why is it that small independent software houses seem reticent to run promotions? Often when developers turn to marketing their products it’s hard, emotionally, to slash the price of something you’ve toiled over. Running a promotion is often perceived by software developers as somehow cheapening the product. There’s also the commonly held view that “I simply can’t afford to discount my software.” Profit margins in small software houses can be slim, so it’s understandable, but do the numbers back up these gut reactions?

The answer to this question has to stem from looking at the numbers, or“Doing the Math”. An independent software developer might have a yearly profit marginof 10%. They might reason that if their product retails for $30, and they drop the price to $15 then there is no way that they can make any real profit as their yearly profit margin is so slim, and the most theycould ever discount their product would be $3, or that 10% of profit margin that we have to play with.

Let’s run the numbers another way on this same scenario. Let’s take the yearly expenditure of the software vendor and divide it into some manageable chunks.

·Website Hosting and Hardware

·Supplies, Travel, Entertainment

·Advertising, Online and Off

·Marketing and Networking

·Research and Development

·Bug Fixing

·Licensing and Legal

·Customer Support

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We might determine that Research and Development is where the most time is spent, whereas the most money is spent on Supplies, Travel and Entertainment and Website Hosting and Hardware.

It’s also important to consider that time equals money; yes youcanput a price on your time! It shouldn’t be too hard to determine a reasonable hourly rate for your work within your company, just subtract the yearly fixed costs and yearly profit from your yearly revenue and that money is payroll. You can even work out a realistic hourly rate that you make, a useful project in itself.

So after a little back-of-an-envelope math you might determine some rough percentages as to where the time/money in your company is going. It might look something like this:

·10% - Website Hosting and Hardware

·15% - Supplies, Travel, Entertainment

·7% - Advertising, Online and Off

·5%- Marketing and Networking

·40% - Research and Development

·5 %- Bug Fixing

·3 %- Licensing and Legal

·15% - Customer Support

What we now need to do is determine where our fixed costs in our company lie, and where the variable costs are. Another way of phrasing this same question would be: If, starting tomorrow, we were to magically start selling ten times the amount that we are today which of these percentages would increase and which would stay the same. So let’s take a look.

In our dream scenario where we’re getting ten times the sales starting tomorrow by doing nothing at all we’re going to get ten times the traffic to our website. Taking a look at our hosting plan we’re in pretty good shape, we don’t need to spring for any new hardware, but as we’re good technologists we’ve planned for these kind of spikes. Now if this traffic continues we may want to get some faster boxes in there, but that’s all nice to have, we’ll consider Website Hosting and Hardware a fixed cost.

Supplies, Entertainment and Travel is even easier to determine as fixed cost. We might need a few more pens to keep track of all those sales coming in, but noting extravagant.

In our small company we have some long standing Google Ad-Word campaigns that bring in traffic, and we occasionally run a print ad in ASPects and a few specialist magazines. Again these costs are fixed, we’re simply paying for website traffic and in our magical mythical scenario these costs won’t increase.

Marketing and Networking at events such as the Software Industry Conference is undoubtedly important, but again it’s not linked in any way to sales. We’re not going to have to spend more, although we might be getting some more interesting leads from the increased traffic we don’t actually have to pursue them, so let’s assume this is fixed too.

Research and Development (R&D) is where the bulk of our time is spent working on new versions of the software, beta testing, creating new products, and essentially writing the code. It’s crucially important to realize that the bulk of this time does not relate to sales. Yes it relates to having better products that will sell more, but it does not in any way relate to how the existing product sells in the marketplace today. R&D is about tomorrow’s sales, not today’s.

When it comes to Bug Fixing as much as we want to pretend that our application is bug free we know it isn’t. More sales is going to mean more bugs coming in. Probably not by a factor of ten, but there will be some. We’ll put this as a variable cost.

Licensing and Legal is a small percentage, but for our application we use a few software components that we need to pay for, and as we’re selling more these licenses will go up, so that’s a variable cost too.

Last of all is Customer Support. It should be pretty easy to see that there’s a one-to-one relationship from sales to customer support. If our sales are going up ten times, then customer support time and costs are going up by ten as we get a slew of lost serial numbers and confused customers who don’t know how to download a zip file.

So after we’ve taken a look at our company we can determine that Bug Fixing, Licensing and Legal and Customer Support are the variable costs, and pretty much everything else is fixed. Adding up our estimates, we can determine that 23% of the costs are per-unit. If we step back for a moment and take a look atother industries we can appreciate how small this number really is. Software has zero manufacturing costs compared to physical good. We don’t have to deal with distribution costs either. By the mere fact that we’re digital means that our per-unit costs are vastly lower than most other industries.

When it comes to promotions what we’re doing is adding to our existing sales by promoting to people who might not normally purchase. We’re going to assume that we’re doing a limited time promotion and it won’t affect our baseline of yearly sales. We’re also going to be promoting to a different set of users, the impulse buyers and bargain hunters, rather than the more considered product seekers that purchase today. Because we’ve done the math on our company we know that these additional sales can actually be at 23% of the standard price in order to break even. We’ve decided to be really aggressive and offer a 75% discount giving us a slim 2% profit margin. This thinking is vastly different from the thinkingthat lead us to believe that we could only discount by 10% earlier.

The mechanics of running the promotion is going to take longer than this article allows however there are several key points to hit when creating an impulse buy promotion.

·Have an Awesome product - well hopefully we have that covered already!

·Make it easy– there’s nothing like an elaborate shopping cart process to lose an impulse buy.

·Have an‘Act Now’ price – at 75% off we sure do have it.

·Time Limited or Never Again– Force the issue with a countdown. If they don’t act now they won’t ever get the chance.

·Make them Trust the Promotion– Partner with a reputable company, make it professional and be transparent, a phone number goes a long way.

·Get the word out– Email your current customers and ask them to pass on the sweet deal, and utilize every social network and forum site out there.

·Make it Fun– People enjoy a cute promotion so get creative and get people talking about it.

Download Powerpoint Presentation

Software Industry Conference in Dallas in July, 2010
Fri, 11 Jun 2010 14:10:00 +0000  

The 20th AnnualSoftware Industry Conference(SIC) will be held on July 15 - 17, 2010 in Dallas, Texas at the Hyatt Regency DFW Hotel.

The Software Industry Conference is a three day event that culminates with a Networking Gala Dinner that gives software developers and publishers an opportunity to form partnerships and alliances. The conference also includes dozens of informative, educational breakout sessions covering a wide variety of topics that are critical to the success of Independent Software Developers (ISVs).

Do The Math– The Essentials in Successful Software Promotions"full scheduleand attend any of the seesions.

The conference includes more than forty educational seminars and presentations that are designed to help developers sell more software. Presentations by industry experts include topics such as profiting from Google Adwords, marketing more effectively, providing income-producing customer support, working with translation and localization services, sending press releases, developing Software as a Service (SaaS) applications, avoiding legal pitfalls, reducing chargebacks, and creating affiliate networks.

The conference allows plenty of time to network with other software developers and software industry service providers. The conveniently-located daily breakfasts in the Hyatt Regency DFW Hotel make it easy for conference attendees to meet and socialize with fellow industry members. You can even attend the annual meetings and luncheons of two industry trade associations, ESC and ASP.

The casual SIC conferences are known for their family-friendly atmosphere. Many software developers turn their trips to SIC into mini-vacations.

Registration at the door costs $299(US), or costs $249 if you register online http://www.sic.org/register.asp by July 13. Deeply discounted hotel rooms at the Hyatt Regency DFW are available to all conference attendees.

For more information about SIC 2010, visithttp://www.sic.org

# # #

Members of the press are invited to request free conference passes.

About SIC

The annual Software Industry Conference has been presented continuously since 1991. Each year, the conference focuses attention on the try-before-you-buy software development industry, its people, and the many fine applications that come from it.

The conference has grown dramatically since in recent years. In addition, the conference honors software developers with a series of annual awards, recognizing new and innovative software products created and marketed by smaller development companies.

Current sponsors for the 2010 SIC include Alta Web Works, asknet AG, Association of Shareware Professionals, Avangate, Inc., cleverbridge, Digital River, DP Directory, Inc., Elfring Fonts, Inc., Emurasoft, Inc., K Software, Lincoln Beach Software, NotePage, Inc., Paypro Global, Inc., Plimus, SoftCity, Software Promotions Ltd., The Utility Factory, and TRIUS, Inc.

For more information about SIC, visit http://www.sic.org/. To schedule interviews with Sue Pichotta or other conference directors, contact Sue on suep@siaf.org

Increasing Traffic by using Video
Tue, 04 May 2010 13:48:00 +0000  
The popularity of viral marketing has soared dramatically since the first signs of this popular online marketing technique back in the late nineties. You may think what has a virus got to do with marketing? Well a virus is not just an undesirable parasite that everyone tries to avoid it is an entity that multiplies rapidly and grabs everyone in its path. Viral marketing and viral advertising describes a strategy that uses people to pass on marketing messages in varying forms much like a controversial pyramid scheme which like a virus it uses strength in numbers to make itself known.

The use of online videos is one online marketing technique that falls under the viral banner, from creating a short and snappy online video about your company to creating a funny and entertaining video as long as its online it can go viral.

The key to making a success of a viral marketing campaign is to get as many people as possible to watch your online video. There are various techniques for increasing traffic to your video the first and in my opinion the most important is utilising social sites.

Submitting your video to online video directories such as YouTube and Search For Video amongst others will allow it to be viewed by millions. Submit your video to as many directories as possible in order to maximise your audience potential. Ensure you have also provided information about your company or a link to your website otherwise your video will be great entertainment but offer no benefit to your company.

Social networking sites such as Facebook allow you to create and join groups that you are interested in, once you are member you can suggest the group to your friends and they then suggest it to theirs much like the aforementioned pyramid scheme. For this reason add your videos to social networking sites and suggest as many‘fans’ as possible.

Another way of increasing traffic to your online videos in adding a link to your video on all of your outgoing email messages, the law of averages suggests if you are exposing as many people as possible to your video the likelihood of people watching it and proceeding to your website will increase.

Employing viral and social media optimisation techniques can be extremely rewarding when done well and in some instances when not auctioned correctly can offer no benefit at all.

SEO Junkies are experts in online marketing whether it be social media optimisation or search engine optimisation we have many years experience, we know what we are doing and we do itwell. Take a look at our website or contact your own SEO Junkie for more information today.

About the author:
Diane Forster
http://www.seojunkies.com

http://articles.softwaremarketingresource.com/2010/01/anti-w..
Mon, 18 Jan 2010 16:25:00 +0000  
’ words can help you to achieve your goals for ebooks.







The next step to take with the free ebooks that are available is to begin to link them to your personalized favorites. For instance, once you have built your set of followers for reviews, then you can begin to review affiliate programs. Since you are now a trusted and reliable source, many that are following you will turn to the same advice for promotions of products that you find valuable. Doing this will help you to gain not only a level of expertise with your understanding of different ebooks and products, but will also start to bring new levels of income.

If you have an interest in information, as well as free ebooks online, then beginning to build a secondary income by reviewing what is available can then help you to become a reliable and trusted source for the Internet. By doing this, you have the ability to guide others within your personal expertise of reviews, while building into a secondary income.

by Jonnthan Travis jonytrav[at]gmail[dot]com

Introducing BoomerApp.com Software Rebates
Mon, 19 Oct 2009 04:00:00 +0000  

BoomerApp.


So, what makes BoomerApp unlike all the other software websites out there? We think a lot. Firstly we can offer software deals that areup to 100% offof the regular retail prices.


It all works withmail-in rebates



for freeinstead of redeeming your rebate, the choice is yours.


BitsDuJour. The rebate deals only lastone week


FastSpringhandles all the payments, and provides a next-generation e-commerce payment processing, merchandising, and fulfillment solution. Our partnerRebate Deliveryhandles all of our rebate processing, bridging the gap between online sales and traditional mail-in rebates.


The rebate deals go live today, so stop byBoomerApp.comor followBoomerApp on Twitter

Writing Web Copy
Wed, 30 Sep 2009 15:22:00 +0000  
The most perfectly crafted web copy will not do much for us if we do not take the time to do some Search Engine Optimization on the final design and layout of our webcopy.

Most of us, after spending some time working on writing copy, become myopic, and loose the ability to be objective about our work. I mean really, we spend a day or two writing and editing the perfect sales pitch. We run it by some family members and friends who tell us it is the coolest thing since sliced bread. We are convinced the copy writing effort will pay off. In the back of our mind, we wonder if it might even be Award winning copy. And it very well may be. In fact, we assume the copy cannot get any better, so we turn it over to the engineering staff to be put up on the website....Hooray!

But now, guess what? It is time to brace ourselves. Do we know what is coming? Our baby....the work we gave all our mental energy to, is about to be picked at, teased apart, added too, modified with new key words, optimized, with new paragraph headings added, and perhaps even a new title. Our masterpiece is coming under the SEO spotlight. The thing we did not realize is that the quickest way to cripple our advertising message on the internet is to forgo the search engine optimization of our content. What is the key phrase density? Do the meta tags meet the goals of the SEO team? What is in the top line of text? Will it need to be changed? At this point, we find ourselves compromising. Why? Because web copy and search engine optimization are two critical partners in our future profitability and success. We cannot do one without the other and expect our website to generate real profit.

If we write an article or web page that has a Key Phrase focus, it will sound odd, forced, and not quite right in the readers mind. The compelling and urgent copy that will cause the reader to move to a“Call to Action” will not be there. It is best to write a compelling, heart felt article that helps the reader, by providing information, solving a problem, or taking them to our shopping cart. After the copy is done, let the SEO experts review, suggest, and improve the copy, to reach the goalsof the copy that were set out in the first place.

The perfect copy writing is producing copy that is compelling and leads readers to a call to action, and also makes use of all the SEO tools available. This is where discipline and experience come into play, Those new to the business fail to realize the importance of combining expert copy writing with expert SEO to create the perfect blend.





Killer Copywriting + SEO = Higher Sales Conversions!

Pat Holman is the CEO ofiXod Conversion Marketing, an Internet Marketing firm.
Pat Holman

ASP Launches New Blog
Thu, 03 Sep 2009 20:42:00 +0000  
Read the ASP Blog here

Affiliate Site Blueprint
Tue, 25 Aug 2009 16:01:00 +0000  
Dr Andy Williams is offering a free Affiliate Site Blueprint.


The following videos are part of the Affiliate Site Blueprint Course that you can download or read online.

Video 1: Getting Niche Ideas
This video explores a number of ways to find ideas for your niche sites.



Video 2: Merchant Reconnaissance
This video shows you how to check up on merchants in your niche. Are there any, and are they any good?



Video 3: Is there a demand?
There’s no point creating an affiliate site if there is no demand for the products in the niche. This video shows you how to check the demand of a product (and niche) before you do all of the hard work.



Video 4: Keyword Research
How do you know what people are searching for? This tutorial shows you how to use the power of Wordtracker to find exactly that.



Video 5: Deciding on main pages
This video looks at how to choose main pages for your website.



Video 6: Creating a Site Blueprint
This video looks at setting up a site blueprint, so that your site can be mapped out before you start the hard work of adding the content.
Being organized in site development will speed up development time.



Video 7: Finding Low Competition phrases
This video shows how you can easily find the low competition phrases in your keyword research database. These low competition phrases make excellent starting points in building a site as it is possible to rank highly for them relatively quickly.



Video 8: Question Phrases
One of the best ways of ensuring your content is valuable and informative is to answer real questions asked by real searchers. This video shows how to find those phrases.



Video 9: Sources of real questions
This video shows you a number of sources of real questions people ask in your niche.



Video 10: Finding theme words in your keyword research
Proof that themeing your content is coming in a later video, but for now, how do you find the best words to use to theme your content? Well this video shows you one method that uses your existing keyword research.



Video 11: Mining Top Ranking pages for theme words
In the last video I showed you how to find theme words in your keyword research database. In this video, I show you how to mine the top ranking pages in Google for a much more comprehensive list of highly targeted and relevant theme words.



Video 12: Exporting a Site Blueprint
This video shows you how to export a site blueprint from KRA Pro so that you can do something useful with the blueprint– create the content.



Video 13: Proof that themeing works
This video shows real data from my own sites highlighting the effectiveness of themeing in getting targeted traffic to your web content.



Video 14: One Large site? No problem.
Do you want to build one large site in your niche? This video shows you how to select the main categories for your site.



Video 15: Smaller Niche Sites?
If you want to build smaller niche sites, that’s easy too. Just specialize in a small part of the niche – this video shows an example.



Get the Affiliate Site Blueprint

Affiliate Summit Wrap-Up
Fri, 21 Aug 2009 00:23:00 +0000  

Last month was theSoftware Industry Conference(SIC) in Boston, which is the must-go conference for independent software vendors. Mark your calendars now for SIC 2010 in Texas and you might just catch a presentation on software promotions by yours truly!

Avangatehave shared:

• Online Reputation Managementfor Software Authors by Adriana Iordan
• Social Media MarketingFor Software Authors by Adriana Iordan
• Best Cure For 2009New Revenue Streams by Casey Potenzone

This month we were in our home town of New York for theAffiliate SummitDigital Riverfor throwing their exclusive cocktail party just for us software people to get together. The rest of the conference was the traditional booths and seminars.

The Affiliate Summit publishes their own survey of over four-hundred and fifty affiliates after the event. The report features dozens of charts of data, based on the responses from the participating affiliates. Also included, an uncensored view into the opinions of affiliates on a variety of other subjects. Affiliates were asked to share any complaints, ideas, suggestions or opinions they have regarding affiliate marketing. Plus there are some great resources for affiliate marketers: a glossary to explain industry terms, as well as lists of suggested message boards, blogs, and Twitter accounts that you should know about.

You candownload the reportor visit theaffiliate survey website.

Software Industry Conference 2009
Fri, 31 Jul 2009 19:16:00 +0000  
2009 Software Industry Conferencewas no disappointment. With some great speakers and great company it was an excellent chance to put some faces to names that we knew only by email and newsgroup postings.

• Association of Shareware Professionals
  
• Avangate
  
• cleverbridge
  
• Digital River
  
• Shareware Promotions Ltd.
  
• Softonic
  
• Tucows

http://articles.softwaremarketingresource.com/2009/07/dont-r..
Thu, 23 Jul 2009 14:57:00 +0000  
Stand on the Shoulders of the Giants

In this time and age, each and every company is trying its best to be different. Innovation seems to be the name of the game and entrepreneurs are literally scratching their heads to be original, creative and off beat in their sales and marketing strategies. And of course, the call of the times is to have a unique selling proposition, out-of-the-box strategies. But I can’t help but wonder why entrepreneurs single-handedly have to do all the spadework. Can’t they take reference from the past? And most importantly, doesn’t this question call for a passing thought at least?

In simple words, the entrepreneurs need not‘reinvent the wheel’ again and again. Just look out, what your peers and predecessors have done. Examples will be in plenty. If that’s not enough, check out some renowned books written by distinguished sales and marketing gurus. Almost all the marketing strategies will find a mention here.

Have you heard of the phrase‘standing on the shoulders of the giants’? The dictionary meaning says “Using the understanding gained by major thinkers who have gone before in order to make intellectual progress”. Don’t you think this is the best way out.

Some of the well-known books thatentrepreneurs can peruse include,

-The E-Mythby Michael Gerber

-Magnetic Marketingby Dan Kennedy

-Meatball Sundaeby Seth Godin

-Duct Tape Marketingby John Jantsch

All of them are great read; hopefully you like them and most importantly help you expand your Business.


Bridging the Gap between Actual Offer and Sales Copy

You are all set to open your sales innings on an encouraging note. And you have already crafted a grand sounding sales copy for that purpose. The best things being you are pretty sure that your copy will strike a chord with the prospects.

But as someone said, Man proposes and God disposes, your sales efforts fall apart like a pack of cards. The buyer has out rightly rejected your offer. But wasn’t your sales copy fool-proof, then why was this red-light shown.

While not disputing for a moment, about the brilliance of your sales copy, however, there may be a combination of factors that may have contributed in this deal going awry.

Flaunt your price-tag- Never, be ashamed about the price of your products. Customers or prospects simply don’t flip through the pages, ignoring the price element, for the simple fact that price has a fundamental role to play, before a sales deal is finally closed. If your sales copy is really good, then be rest assured that you have hit the bull’s eye. However, don’t go about feeling sorry for you have given your product a price tag that it’s worth of.

Clear-Cut Offer- Be sure that you mention the price. Furnish complete details of the products and services you are offering and any additional bonuses you are planning to unfold in the future.

Purchase Options: Give the prospects a variety of ways to order: phone, fax, mail, online. The more diverse you make, there are chances that you will receive more offers.

Payment Options–Present different kinds of payment methods. Purchasers are keenly interested in knowing the various payment options available.

Contact Information: Some brilliant marketing messages have been dumped as the prospects have failed to find the contact details




How to attract Your Prospect to the Sale

Did you ever try to figure out why your customers are not reverting back, when you are sending them some attractive marketing offers? May be he (she) hasn’t even taken the pain to read your offer. But what more can you expect from the customers, who are flooded with more than 3,000 marketing, messages. So it is but natural for them to dump each and every marketing offer that comes their way

There are certain marketing filters you need to take into account, before the customers start reading your copies and are ready to communicate with. Here are the steps:

Step 1-Know your customers- This makes the message more targeted and helps you draw his (her) attention. And your customers or prospects will get a feeling that you deeply care for them.

Step 2-Keep a tab on the customers- Make it a habit to take follow-ups with your customers, probably you will be able to strike a better deal.

Step 3-Give value to your customers- Every marketing message thatyou are putting out should be from the prospects viewpoint. It should bring profits to the prospects first. Moreover the message that you send should do a little more than what you sell. It should educate, engage, entertain and helps your prospects some way or the other.

Step 4-Give customers due importance- Once your prospects fall in to your trap, see that you keep in touch with him(her) on constant basis. New customers and the old customers need the same kind of attention. Shower them with your attention, and see how your fortunes turnaround.

About the Author
This article was provided by Mayur Dicosta frommade-from-india.com

UpClick Brings 0% Fees to Software Sales
Thu, 09 Jul 2009 19:23:00 +0000  
UpClick




You are right. There are a bunch of payment processors in the market already, but we see ourselves as much more than a basic payment processing platform. UpClick offers software vendors a one-stop solution for selling online with an economic model that makes it a no brainer for them. Before UpClick, there were basically two types of payment processors that software vendors could choose from: on one side, they could choose companies that offer a commoditized product where differentiation is low and the only factor is pricing. On the other side, they could choose a value-added ecommerce platform that (on average) cost between 7 and 15% to use. We have a different approach. Our emphasis is to create value for our customers by offering the best technologies and practices, maximizing their Average Revenue per Order with optimized cross-selling and by offering a dynamic affiliate marketplace.




No catch. We indeed absorb the payment processing costs and the costs of first level customer service. We make our money in 3 ways:

- We enable merchants to cross-sell products from other UpClick Merchants on their check-out pages. When this happens, we take a small commission and the two merchants split the remaining revenue.

- We offer consumers complementary products -- such as CD backup of the software they bought -- at the time of check out and/or after the transaction is approved, and split the proceeds with the merchants.

- We charge a small $1 fee for transactions generated by our affiliate marketplace (compared to up to 30% of the commissions charged by other affiliate networks).




Yes! The reaction has been tremendous and our value proposition gets our potential customers’ attention every time. Of course, we understand that changing to a new platform provider is something customers do prudently and often only after testing. However, we’re seeing a lot of traction and are actually exceeding our forecast




We have a long list of features and the best way to see all of them would be to visitour website. Even with all our features, one thing we’re especially proud of is our extremely simple interface. A software vendor can sign-up, upload his product and license keys, and get our innovative buy buttons to put on his site in about 5 minutes!


5. Besides the big "0%" is there anything that differentiates you from the most established e-commerce solutions such as Digital River and Plimus?

Pricing of our services is of course the obvious one, which helps our Merchants save money. But, we also enable merchants to make more money as well, through our cross-selling capabilities and our affiliate network. Merchant A can dramatically increase his average revenue per order by offering to his customers a product from Merchant B at the time of check-out, creating new revenue for both of them. Another differentiator is our geo-targeting tools that allow merchants to customize pricing per currency (ie. $19.99 in the US or 19.99 Euros in Europe, instead of the typical straight conversion that would give 14.39 euros). There are many more features that differentiate us, and as I said earlier, despite the feature-rich platform, we’ve very easy to use.


6. Is UpClick just for software sales or does your system allow selling of other products?

Our expertise is in software sales, so for now, that’s where we are focused However, we also support some related products such as ebooks, and have plans to eventually expand into membership sites (content, newsletters and even Software as a Service) and maybe some other product categories.


7. E-commerce continues to grow, even in this sluggish economy. How do you see the next twelve months playing out for software developers?

The software industry is a great place to be. It is still a growing industry. The international markets have been an area of strong growth for North American software companies and will continue to be. Consumers are buying their software online now more than ever and that trend will continue in the next 12 months.

That being said, the online selling of software is extremely competitive, but we believe that we offer the tools to allow companies of any size to compete internationally.


8. With new business models such as SaaS (software as a service) and web applications, do you see desktop software, and desktop software sales, as having a limited lifespan?

Very interesting question. Obviously SaaS is a growing segment and one that is getting a lot of attention particularly in certain markets such as Asia. We don’t see this as a threat since we will be supporting both business models in the future. Having said that, we don’t see the downloadable software market as disappearing any time soon. We believe there will always have a need for software to run, protect and maintain your machine.


9. As you work with a lot of developers, you must see people making the same mistakes over and over again. If you had one piece of advice for developers what would it be?

Keep it simple. Most of us working in technology have a tendency to try and build too much functionality into our products to a point where they become too complex for most people.




UpClick is a proud sponsor of theSIC. We will have a booth and I should be giving a presentation on Localization and Cross-Selling. We’ll see you there!


About the Author
Michael Dadoun is the COO and co-founder ofUpClick

Pay Per Click Marketing
Fri, 03 Jul 2009 02:26:00 +0000  

Why is Video Marketing so Highly Recommended?
Fri, 19 Jun 2009 21:40:00 +0000  
Video marketing is considered to be one of the exceedingly clever ways to capture the attention of the potential customers. Like a blockbuster movie, if the video has an explosive start as well an explosive finish, it will undoubtedly leave a greater impact on the minds of the visitor. And of course, it brings to the table, the most fascinating aspect of TV advertising and Internet’s most praiseworthy characteristic, interactivity.

If the internet surfer finds the ad really attractive then there is a high probability that he/she will be very much drawn to the offers that you are putting across. In fact, in the recent years, online video marketing has emerged to be the most cost-efficient technique as compared to regular TV ads, given its production cost and market penetration.

On-line Video Marketing - A Definition

On-line video-marketing is a progressive marketing strategy employed by companies to advertise products and services, by use of catchy, short videos. The objective is to create awareness about a particular product and thereby allure clients into buying them. Did someone say picture speaks a thousand words?

Exclusivity of Online Video Marketing

Since the advent of TV and PC, reading has become a passé en masse. Since information is delivered at a faster rate through images rather than through text, it is natural for people to lunge for the best and smartest means of marketing communication that is video marketing.

The biggest advantage of Internet Marketing videos is that they can put the point across to the prospective customers’ much faster vis-à-vis the traditional text format. This will save the web users from the grueling ritual of going through the whole text, in an attempt to cull out the imperative details. On the other hand, videos will help deliver the same message in half the time.
When to Use Video

Video marketing plays a prominent role especially when a company aspires to promote its products. This helps in getting touch with the customers faster than the visual advertising screened by televisions. And with large number of people turning to internet for information, internet marketing videos are playing a gratifying role in satisfying the appetite of web users need for something new, useful and exciting

Benefits of Video Advertising

If you intend to use video in your marketing campaigns, then it’s a real good idea, since it manages to leave a lasting impression on the clients as compared to other types of advertising. It attracts the web users easily and delivers the message at a lightening speed than simple text messages.

A video displays product’s use and usability. Moreover, the presence of human face and a pleasant voice will both add to its selling quotient. By using this technique, the prospective customer can easily relate to the company and the product as well.

A Few guidelines

Well, just making a video and enlisting it in a video directory won’t take you places. You need to go the Search Engine Optimization way, if you wish to turn the tables in your favour. Remember, videos are sort of big fishes for the search engines, so take your time and make a video that is sheer search-engine friendly.

Modern technology provides you with various opportunities to track traffic and analyze results. So spend some time to study the success rate of the videos, whether it is being instrumental in boosting profits of your prospects. Also, look for tools that will help you identify the time the prospect has been playing your video before tuning it off. How many prospects get drawn to your site after watching your video, posted on a different site? Now how many visitors can be converted into customers and so on.

While making the video, in addition to the visuals, the content aspect should also be given due importance. Providing in-depth information via content is as important as the visuals to attract visitors to your products/services.

Experts suggest of using videos on the first page. It’s like a business card. Tucking your video away in some corner of your website will not help your cause. Make it noticeable. Also, give your visitors the scope to skip your video. May be there’re not in mood to view it, and the last thing you want is an upset visitor.

Optimizing Videos for Search Engines

* Optimize, both for video search engines, and content search engines. The best approach being to use meta tags for the content (text) of the page where your video is placed.

* Names of the videos should be relevant. Giving an out-of the-box name, which is not related to the video, will not help in SERPs.

* Utilize keywords both in the video titles and their descriptions as this will help video search engines index your video files and link it to your web pages.

* If you are link video from other pages of your Web site, then use anchor text.

* Ensure the video files that are been submitted have a proper extension.

* Keep it short. If you can, just take 2 minutes to inform.

* SEO professionals suggest making individual video site maps, which can be submitted to both video and content search engines. Both SEs will index these site maps.

* Incorporate RSS feeds. Metadata can be incorporated here.

* Research, test, measure, report and optimize.

Endorsing your Video

• The best way to popularize your on-line marketing video is through “submitting”. The prominent video hosting sites include, YouTube, Yahoo Videos or Google Videos. The biggest advantage being that your videos will be hosted for free and they won’t take up any of your site’s bandwidth.

• Keep circulating your videos. If you want to climb up in popularity rankings, then let users link to your videos. Viral marketing video is the best means to make companies and their product and services known across Internet users.

• Add phrases like "Tell a friend" or "Visit our Web site" at the end of the video.

Conclusion

To sum it up, use online marketing video in addition to traditional TV ad campaign. Both online and broadcast should endorse one another. For one, on-line marketing videos help in information sharing, more accurately and efficiently. In addition, videos can be the single-most differentiating factor between yours and your competitors business.

The internet marketing video should be short, so that web users don’t get bored and feel enthused of what they saw. And remember, the video ads should be significantly shorter than TV ads.

About the Author

This article is written byMade-From-India.com

Building Customer Loyalty Through Meaningful Version Updates
Tue, 09 Jun 2009 19:26:00 +0000  





Your goal should be to generate as much positive buzz for your new version as your original application did when it was first released. Think about how Apple does this with its music players - even though the first generation of iPods can play music just as well as the new ones, there remains a rabid hunger for new iPod hardware because Apple is committed to continually improving its user experience.

TrialPay, The Interview
Wed, 27 May 2009 16:25:00 +0000  
We spoke exclusively to Alex Rampell atTrialPay




In a previous life, I founded a software company and ran into the problem that every software company encounters: though millions of customers may download free or trial editions, only a very small percentage of customers upgrade to the full version. I ran a few promotions where customers could get his company’s software for free by signing up for a music subscription or DVD rental service—and sales more than doubled, as revenue from these transactions paid for the software.
The success of this promotion provided the inspiration for TrialPay: a bad customer for one brand may be the ideal customer for another company. The key was figuring out which customers were good candidates for which offers. TrialPay’s proprietary optimization engine connects shoppers with ideal offers and pays the merchant out of advertising revenue. Everyone benefits from this arrangement. Merchants make more sales from their current traffic, advertisers acquire new customers on a pay-for-performance basis and shoppers geta free product with every online transaction.

2. How long as TrialPay been going?

Since 2006

3. Give us some numbers, are people really using TrialPay?

More than 7,500 online merchants use our e-commerce solutions, including AVG, McAfee, Lavasoft, Trillian and more. We also work with more than 2,000 blue-chip advertisers, such as Gap, FTD, Netflix and Discover Card. More than 30 million users from around the world have registered with TrialPay.

4. TrialPay is being used for other things beside software sales, such as subscriptions to magazines. Do you see software as your focus, or just a piece in the puzzle?

We got our start in software, which will always be an important part of our business, but we’ve since expanded to serve nearly every industry. TrialPay is an effective sales and promotions tool for any type of digital good sold online, from software to dating site subscriptions to online gaming subscriptions. We’ve also worked well in the food industry—Restaurant.com and Papa John’s have both seen great results with TrialPay.

5. Are small software vendors seeing success with TrialPay, or is it just for the big players?

It’s not the size of the software company that determines success with TrialPay, but how aggressively and creatively the TrialPay payment option is implemented. For example, we have very successful software vendors of all sizes that offer TrialPay as a payment option to anyone who attempts to download a free version from their site. On the other hand, we have much less successful software vendors—large and small—that only offer TrialPay via e-mail to small groups of expired users. So it ultimately depends on where the software vendor is displaying the TrialPay option (i.e. on their homepage, in a download interstitial, as an in-product upgrade) and the amount and quality of traffic the TrialPay option is displayed to (i.e. to all Web site traffic or to a small e-mail list).

In particular, the“Download Interstitial” touchpoint has done exceptionally well. For example, go to www.lavasoft.com and click on the large green “Download Ad-Aware Free” button at the top right. This action will take you to the “download interstitial” touchpoint. TrialPay helps Lavasoft convert customers before they have a chance to download the free version of Ad-Aware by offering a compelling way to get a full, free upgrade. Lavasoft was the originator of the download interstitial touchpoint, and pretty much every software company we work with has followed suit. The results speak for themselves! (see theLavasoft case study)

6. Are you considering integrating your service into existing e-commerce platforms?

TrialPay works with any e-commerce system, from standard online cart solutions to in-house e-commerce systems. Our plug-and-play platform is second to none in scalability and performance.
In addition to our ability to work with any e-commerce platform, TrialPay has direct relationships with Kagi, asknet AG, Mercantec, E-junkie and more, which enables simple integration for all clients on these platforms.

7. What new innovations can we expect from TrialPay?

We will continue to introduce payment and promotional tools that help any online seller increase the probability of conversion and maximize the profit of each transaction. Our new Purchase Incentives Platform is a good example of a new initiative.

8. Will you be changing your system to move into non US and European markets?

We are already in non-U.S. and European markets. We provide local, relevant offers in more than 100 countries, and localize the checkout process in ten different languages. Also, we allow our merchants to set different price points for any region of the world without showing those price discrepancies to their customers

9. How has the economic downturn impacted software sales from your point of view?

I think the economic downturn has caused customers to look for more affordable solutions for everything they buy, including software. And through TrialPay, shoppers can get a free product with every purchase. TrialPay had its highest sales day and most profitable quarter in the midst of a holiday shopping season with the worst sales drop in four decades—which validates this claim.

10. How do you see the software sales landscape changing over the next five years?

It’s becoming increasingly hard to convince shoppers to pay for digital content. As more of these products become free (from free software included on a new computer to free content available through online media outlets), shoppers’ demand for free digital content will continue to rise.


About the Interviewee::
Alex Rampell is co-founder and CEO ofTrialPay

Improve your Apps Using Non-Technical User Feedback
Tue, 12 May 2009 17:57:00 +0000  
From time to time, we get so caught up in the technical details of software development that we forget that potential customers, seeing the application for the very first time, may not have the same level of understanding and familiarity as we do. Seeing your build in action, debugging it, and running through the program again and again, for days and weeks on end, brings a certain level of knowledge and intimacy to your thought process. It

It’s beneficial, then, to occasionally test your software interface using folks who have absolutely no idea what your application is supposed to do. Without a proper introduction, run the program for someone, put their hand on the mouse, and then sit back and watch what happens. Observe how they interact with your program, listen to their questions, and pay particularly close attention to anything that frustrates or confuses them.

Does the layout of your user interface allow your user to find functions intuitively? Do the field names on your screens make sense to non-technical people? Did you start calling a form name by the name of the variable that’s populated by it, and continue to do so today, even when a plain english label would make more sense? Does the person intuitively understand how to perform basic functions without asking you how it’s done, and do those basic functions invite the user to explore more advanced ways of using your program?

Listen to the feedback provided by your testers. You may not think that a particular feature was sufficiently important to include in your build, but if its absence is repeatedly mentioned by several different testers, you can bet that potential customers will also want to see it. Be prepared to swallow your pride and implement a feature that you, personally, may not see as useful, but that your target audience wants. Consider the impact of not including it - you get your way, sure, but who knows how many potential customers will elect to use a competing software product that is similar to yours, but has this one additional feature that they really want?

You may not always need to completely overhaul the design of your user interface. Based on the feedback you receive from non-technical user testing, you may be able to address some issues adequately just by clearly explaining a process, feature, or technique in your end-user documentation or embedded application help.

Association of Shareware Professionals - The Interview
Sat, 02 May 2009 17:07:00 +0000  
As a member, and recently director, for theAssociation of Shareware Professionals

1. What is the ASP and what does it stand for?



ASP members pool not only knowledge about selling, but also managing e-commerce, customer service, program anti-piracy, and many other challenges facing the Independent Software Vendor (ISV). Many of our developer members have few or no employees beyond the owner, so we specialize in bringing together micro-ISVs (uISV).

What the ASP stands for is embodied in its Code of Professional Conduct, which all members subscribe to. That code includes obligations to the public, customers, and the Association and fellow members.



The ASP was originally discussed in February 1987 during a convention in Houston Texas for Public Domain and Shareware Programmers, Software Librarians, and Bulletin Board Sysops. By September of that same year, the ASP was created, had 63 members, and established its first slate of Officers and Board of Directors.

Many things have changed in the ASP since then. Most notably, disk vendors and BBS operators have vanished, and the Internet has transformed shareware marketing into a 24/7, always available world-wide business based on the free trial models started here in the ASP. Originally a US-centric organization, ASP influence is world wide with over half our membership based outside the United States..

3. How does the ASP help software professionals?

Primarily, the ASP helps software professionals by providing a forum for discussion among peers. The ASP newsgroups are closed and confidential.
Many consider the newsgroup discussions the primary benefit of the ASP. The actual benefits are specific to each discussion.

However, the common membership outlook is that our businesses sell software, and growing those businesses underlies most discussions.



Members often offer each other member discounts. You do need to be a member to take advantage of an offer. but not to make an offer. However, it is very advantageous to be a member when making an offer because the feedback the offerer receives by following and participating in discussions about the offer is very valuable.

the time at all. ASP members will let you know about problems with your site and application simply by asking.

It is helpful to know what services are available, and just being part of the ASP community allows you to find out what is available, and what others have done and are doing to advance their businesses.

4. Is the ASP just for developers?



Just being a developer in itself is not a reason to join the ASP. For example, some developers give away their software. The focus of ASP members is on selling software and software sales, increasing sales, pricing, anti-piracy, e-commerce providers, marketing, trial period restrictions, effective customer service, and other concerns which matter to software businesses.

5. Tell me about membership; why should I join?

If your business is based on profiting from the sale of software, the ASP is focused on your needs. Membership consists of networking with others whose business is also based on profiting from the sale of software.

The value proposition here is whether the ASP can benefit you in excess of what you invest in ASP membership. .... or whether it can save you enough time not repeating the mistakes of others. So, even if your software business is still in the planning stage with zero sales, an ASP membership can benefit you by getting your first product released to market sooner and/or with fewer mistakes.





There are many decisions a new software company must face. Many ASP members are facing those questions right now, and are grappling with the answers.
Many other ASP members have been through these situations, often multiple times, and are more than willing to share their experience freely with other ASP members. Many of our members are not developers at all, but are industry members providing the services you may need. The ASP gives you a chance to meet these people, and approach them at a level beyond what you might accomplish on your own.

You should join the ASP because it makes good business sense to make the contacts and learn from others, rather than going it alone or depending on free resources that are not dedicated to serious businesses.

6. What initiatives is the ASP working on?

We have an ongoing web site project which is bringing new capabilities to our members. In 2008, we added many new search capabilities to our website, and extended our newsgroup access from NNTP-only to a seamless NNTP plus web-based interface.

For 2009, we are releasing a new ASP blog written by our members and starting an outreach recruiting project to insure ourmembership numbers do not decline during these times of economic challenge.

7. Given the rise of social networks such as Facebook, how does the ASP fit in and compete?

The ASP fits in by having ASP groups on Facebook and LinkedIn. ASP members also discuss and evaluate these social networks, providing effective hints for their use or warnings of traps, all from the perspective of sales, selling software, and the software entrepreneur. In particular, ASP members engaged in social networks typically evaluate these networks for the marketing benefit they provide, and all members benefit from such discussions and evaluations from uISV perspective, which are not typically found on the social networks themselves.

The ASP competes because the private Members-Only discussion forums are valuable. Members also receive a monthly newsletter and exclusive discounts, which are only offered to ASP members.

8. How is the ASP changing?

The ASP is continually changing in response to the needs and composition of its members. Trends in progress that we see are increasing internationalization and deployment of cross-platform applications. Some members are seeing sales slowdowns due to current economy while others are not affected. ASP members are learning what works and does not work as members report in on experiments they conduct.

One of the ways the ASP is *not* changing is its focus on helping microISVs launch and grow their businesses.



A PAD file is an industry standard description of a software program. There are hundreds of sites listed athttp://padsites.asp-shareware.org/which accept PAD descriptions to populate their listings.

Getting listed on a download site can sell more software, simply by putting it in front of more potential customers. However, filling out submission
forms for hundreds of sites is a daunting task. PAD automates that
process. Just create one PAD file, and then submit that to the various site PAD-enabled download sites.

The ASP defines the PAD interchange standard. That standard is undergoing continuous evolution, and the ASP Pad Specification Committee is responsible for that effort. The specification and other resources are available for free to the public athttp://www.asp-shareware.org/pad/.

10. Where can people find more information and meet ASP members?

The ASP web site at
http://www.asp-shareware.orghas complete information.

You can also find out a great deal about our members year-round by visiting the ASP download site, where we feature software produced by our developer members and links provided by our industry members (http://downloads.asp-shareware.org).

If you want to meet ASP members, there is really no substitute for joining the ASP and becoming a member yourself athttp://www.asp-shareware.org/join/join.asp.

11. I hear the ASP will be at theSoftware Industry Conference(SIC) this summer. Are there any special events planned?



We host an ASP luncheon, which is open to both members and non-members, and sign-up is handled as part of the conference registration process. During the luncheon, we traditionally recognize our hard-working volunteers. The 2009 ASP Hall of Fame inductees they are announced and introduced as well. Past ASP Hall of Fame inductees are listed with biographies on our website athttp://www.asp-shareware.org/membership/asphof.asp

SIC spans 3 days while ASP membership term spans 365 days. You owe it to your business to get the year-round focus on growing your business that an ASP membership provides.

Increasing Revenue and Distribution Channels Using Network Sales
Fri, 01 May 2009 14:56:00 +0000  






E-Commerce providers, such asPlimus

How to Use Twitter to Effectively Market Your Software Application
Tue, 28 Apr 2009 17:15:00 +0000  





Twitter represents a real opportunity for small shop developers to promote their software, but only if your relationship with the Twitterverse is carefully established and cultivated. There is a world of difference between "marketing on Twitter" and "effective marketing on Twitter". Here are some tips on doing it the right way.

1. Register, then Follow Your Key Demographic





2. Be Open, Be Yourself, and Use Twitter as a Sounding Board



You should start your Twitter account well before you plan to launch your software application, keeping your tweets professional (no vulgarity, for example) but personable, dropping hints about yourself in ways that demonstrate that you have quirks like everyone else. In other words, be a person on Twitter, and not a corporate presence or a PR intern or a robot that spews status reports about the latest build. When you reach a level of comfort with Twitter, and have developed some followers, start tweeting about your application, and how its development is progressing. It even helps to tweet about drawbacks, hurdles, and disappointments in your software development. The point is this - get people interested in you, and they will also become interested in what you do.



3. Promote Your Launch and Encourage Feedback

ay and you should have fun with it.



Using these tips, you can continue to accumulate greater numbers of followers, keep your existing customer base updated on your progress, provide immediate customer service, and generate buzz leading up to the release of each new version of your application.

Ad-supported Software, the MediaCell Interview
Mon, 27 Apr 2009 19:24:00 +0000  
We spoke to Josh Fox, marketing professional and founder of MediaCell about an alternative way to make your money from software sales: Ad-supported Software.

1. Tell us about MediaCell and what you do?


2. How does ad-supported software work as a business model?



YES!

4. Lots of companies are experimenting with bundling software, as an Independent Software Vendor how would I go about doing this?
Provide as much accurate information about download activity as possible before getting started (volume and top 5 countries especially), as well as marketing methods currently employed or planned. A company such as Media-Cell will be able to determine the best fit for the publishers with this data, as well as give free advice for marketing and distribution based on a wealth of experience. We can also provide boilerplate scripts so the bundles can be built and approved quickly.

5. There are several companies who offer toolbars that you can bundle with your software, can you tell us about them and how that works?


6. How do you see the online software sales landscape changing, especially given the economic crisis?


7. How does software bundling play into international sales, does it work well in emerging markets?
Publishers in emerging markets have shown by far the most enthusiasm for this model, particularly those with applications that are popular in the countries that pay well, typically US, Canada&EU.

8. Ad-supported software clearly works well for online software as a service, do you see it working inherently better for that model?
I would say yes, but some hardware companies have been getting into a similar model for quite some time now. An example would be new, brand-name PCs being distributed with trial or lite versions of software titles.

9. Some people may view using ads as a turn-off to customers, what rules can you tell us for getting it right?


10. Do you see ad-supported sales superseding regular software sales any time soon?
From what many publishers have told me personally, this has already happened. However, this may depend greatly on the type of software being offered.


Josh Fox works forMedia-Cell.net

The Faces of Technology Journalism
Thu, 09 Apr 2009 08:35:00 +0000  

Tips for Software Marketing in a Slow Economy
Wed, 08 Apr 2009 12:05:00 +0000  
The slow global economy presents some unique software marketing challenges. Not only do software firms have to deal with the industry transition to software-as-a-service (SaaS), but the recession is dealing many companies a double whammy!

What are some winning strategies for software marketing in a slow economy?

Bottom line, your goal should be to do more with less… and then do even more with even less. But that does not mean cutting back on getting your message out there. Instead, you just have to figure out some more creative ways to do it more cost-effectively.

Here are four tips for software marketing on a budget during slow economic times:

1. Drive Viral Marketing Through Current Customers.

Start a referral program. Re-engage current customers for feedback to make your product or service even better.

2. Show how your Product Saves Money.

Does your positioning need an overhaul? In a recession, customers care about today’s bottom line. They are not investing for the future. Write an article describing how your software saves them money (or stops them from wasting it) and post to online article sites, in your newsletter and on your website.

3. Sponsor a Competition.

This doesn’t have to cost you much money. Offer a bonus of some sort, and a spotlight on your website to the winner(s). The type of competition you run will depend on your market segment. For example, if you sell nutrition software you could run a competition for the best, most nutritious recipe. Promote it to blogs and magazines in your segment.

4. Lockin with a Free Trial.

Many software companies now offer a free trial of their product. The challenge is how to upsell trial users to paying customers. It is important to figure out a creative way to lock in the user. Makeit painful for them to stop using your software. Make it easy for them to pay on a low-cost subscription basis.


Joanna Lees Castro is owner ofSoftware-Marketing-Advisor.com, a resource for software and services companies wanting to grow their business strategy, marketing and sales capability in a services-oriented world.

For additional tips on software marketing in a recession and to vote in our poll go tohttp://www.software-marketing-advisor.com/marketing-in-a-recession.html

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