I was asked by the owner of a Micro-ISV (that a very small independent software vendor) how exactly should he spend his time marketing and selling. He knew he should devote more time to it, but he didn’t know what specifically to do.
[UPDATE:Â The question came from Neville Franks, who produces Surfulator a great program for capturing and storing web pages]
This is a very common situation with people who are great at building products. The reason it’s common with software products, is that you (and by you I mean some very talented people) can build things nights and weekends without quitting your day job and without investing a whole lot of money. Products that take real funds, often require sales or other interaction with customer earlier in the process. But I digress.
Here’s what I told him.
The question you’re asking [what do I do with my time when I’m marketing and sellling] is like asking “What do I do to get a date?” The answer depends a lot on who you are, who you want to date, and what in fact you mean by a date. A 45 year old, suburban, divorced father of two who wants to develop a relationship with a woman that may lead to marriage will do different things than a 22 year old, single, goth lesbian whose idea of a date is a short, sexual encounter.
Dating is actually a good analogy for business. This is an over simplification but:
A market is a bunch of people who value your product more than they value their money.
Marketing is communicating with them (in every way – from the interface of your product to web sites, ads, etc) so that they become convinced of the value of your product. The result of good marketing is that they will contact you or at least be receptive when you contact them.
What’s important about marketing is knowing that what you do and say and communicate tells a story – whether you like it or not. To be effective it has to be a consistent story (would you buy a Tiffany’s diamond bracelet from a Sam’s club warehouse?) and it has to be consistent with what your market already believes. Some people will never be convinced to buy an American car, and some will never be convinced to buy a foreign one. For more on this, read Seth Godin’s blog for a while.
Sales is contacting them or responding to their contacts with you. The result of sales is actually getting them to exchange money for your product NOW.
So you have to spend time getting to know the people who could benefit from your product. Learn why THEY think it might help them and learn what convinces them of your value.
Just because you had a couple clients pay you to develop something doesn’t mean others in the same demographic would also be willing to pay for it. It’s logical that it would equate, but business, like dating, is not always logical. So get to know these people and learn.
You could start by talking to your current clients about why they felt the value was worth the money. See if they know colleagues or others who you might talk to. Use phone calls, visits as well as blogs and web sites.
Be open to seeing patterns that you didn’t expect. You might find people who “Should” love your stuff don’t. And people you never thought would, actually love it but for all kinds of reasons you never imagined.
When you find a vein, go with it. Make it easy for these people to find you and buy from you.
Sorry to be so vague, but without knowing more details it’s hard to give specifics.
Actually the vagueness, while not a help to him, makes this post useful to a more general audience.
Takeaways:
- Marketing is everything you do (from design to ads) that communicates to your market. The result of good marketing is that the right ones will contact you or at least be receptive when you contact them. And that the people who are not your market won’t.
- Sales is contacting them or responding to their contacts with you. The result of sales is actually getting them to exchange money for your product NOW.
- You have to spend time getting to know the people who could benefit from your product. Learn why THEY think it might help them and learn what convinces them of your value.
- You can’t ask the these questions directly because A) they don’t know and B) until you’ve gotten them to trust you, the won’t tell you the truth. This is what makes the whole process like dating.
Hi John,
Great post. Sounds a lot like the exchange we had recently. 🙂
Some background. I’m a full time, one-person software development, publishing, marketing and sales company. And of course provide great support. I’ve been doing this successfully for around 20 years now and have just two products.
My first product fits your “dating” analogy quite well and the techniques you outline corresponds to what I do. ie. The market for the product is easy to define and therefore target.
My new product (Surfulater) is a whole other story and marketing for it is proving very challenging indeed.
Surfulater is a product that can be used by anyone that spends any time using the Internet to look up or research information. It could be someone wanting information on a medical condition, planning a holiday, doing analysis of their competitors, doing school homework, writing a Sunday Sermon and on, and on. In a nutshell therein lies the problem. The potential customer base is incredibly diverse and saying its “anyone that uses the WWW” doesn’t really help, when you are trying to organize a “date”.
The reality matches what I’ve said. Our customers are from all over the place and are using Surfulater to capture and retain knowledge about all sorts of things, many of which I would never even have thought of. And the great news they all love Surfulater and think it is an incredibly useful program.
So where to from here. Well our discussions concluded that I need to try and identify some specific groups of people out of the diverse pool and work out how to get in touch with them. I’ve not had much time to do this yet, but I’m certainly going to try. We also agreed that I need to stop programming all day, every day and devote time to marketing, which I am doing, but not enough.
My initial reason for contacting you was a ‘cry for help’ which you generously responded to. The problem remains that there are many people out their with great products (forget ideas) who continually struggle with marketing and can’t find the assistance they need to get over the hurdles, and I’m one.
Time to wrap this up and go and do some marketing or maybe write some more code. 😉
On a final note here is another date story that’s well worth reading: http://blog.surfulater.com/2005/11/07/if-your-software-was-on-a-date/
The key to a successful relationship is definitely communication. I look at my mother and father who have been together for well over 50 years and if you ask how they did it. They will tell you they knew how to talk to each other. The same is true for a company it’s customers. If you don’t know what your customers want, and if your customers don’t know what you are offering, then you have a problem.
-Tim