

How should I spend $3000/month on marketing? - scottmagdalein

I'm building a web app and have budgeted $3000/month for marketing. The app is an applicant tracking tool, which is a market with plenty of competition.<p>I'm also thinking about bringing a partner on board to help guide the marketing portion of the business to make sure it's done right because I'm clueless in that area. Looking for advice, insight, warnings, and links to more information &#38; resources.<p>Thanks HN folks!
======
mahmud
How can you have a marketing budget and not a marketing strategy?

How long have you existed? what data have you collected? what worked and what
didn't? Whoever you bring on board as a marketing expert will ask you these
questions (if he doesn't, you don't hire them.)

If you're just starting, you need to ask "who did we develop this for"? Then
go where your supposed clients are. The simplest thing you can do is use
Adword's Keyword Tool to see how sought after your keywords are. Google your
product description and look at the top 20 competition websites. Analyze the
sites and see what language they're using, collect synonyms, different
phrasings and popular descriptions (all done with firfox plugins, btw.) Then
search those keywords in the Keyword Tool.

This will give you a bird's eye view of how your competition is spending its
Google advertising money (you will see them in the ads on the right after you
search.)

You now have enough data to form a rudimentary strategy.

The fact that you like this skill in-house is not very reassuring. No one you
can hire will care enough about the product to put in the grueling research
hours necessary to make your product a success. You might be better off
forming partnerships or joining a CPA program; at least the scalpers will push
your app for a commission, though they might drag your brand through the mud
in the process.

If it's your job to _spend_ the $3k, please don't throw it away just to seem
like you're doing something. Get a marketing person on retainer + commission,
skimp on the retainer but go heavy on the commission; that guarantees they
have enough incentive to come on board and go for the long run. Pay their
early commissions with little fuss, and maybe pull in some multitier
incentives (though all of this could be avoided if you developed the talent in
house, and pushed your product like crack, with solid quantitative data in
hand. Otherwise your marketing strategy is "Pay and Pray".)

Good luck!

~~~
scottmagdalein
The marketing budget is the most I'm willing to spend to get going while there
still aren't any customers. This is all coming out of my pocket, including
design, development, hosting, and other costs for some of the premium
features.

I'm clear on my audience (HR leads at medium- to large-sized businesses
looking to reduce costs and increase efficiency for this part of their job
responsibilities.

I'm already casually doing what you suggest with Adwords research using the
adwords targeting explorer. The other advice about forming partnerships or a
CPA program (what is that, btw?) is intriguing. Thanks!

~~~
mahmud
Forget everything else I said in this thread, the most cost-effective thing
for you to do now might be to contact this guy:

<http://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=patio11>

He is _good_. "I hate him" good.

P.S. CPA means "Cost Per Action", it's a compensation method for sales leads
based on a final action (sale, signup, etc.)

------
scottmagdalein
So, it looks like there are two main options so far; (1) search and (2) direct
sales.

This product will be offered as a SaaS product and be priced between $50-$500
per month. Most of the competition is enterprise level software that's sold
directly to their customers, although there is big money being spent on search
advertising (between $15-$20 per click) in this market as well. Because it's
direct sales and custom software packages, it's difficult to gauge pricing
across multiple competitors. Also, since many of our competitors offer
applicant tracking as one piece of larger HR software suites, it's difficult
to gauge user experience and user satisfaction with these tools.

Does that information help at all? I'm still very interested in more feedback.
I know the HN community has a ton of super-smart folks that have either been
in my shoes or are just smart enough to figure it out.

------
gscott
\- AdBrite.com is excellent. Put your budget to just $5 a day or so and do
text links across there network and you get super cheap clicks and they are
pretty good clicks.

\- Revieme.com is good. You can create a "campaign" and then pick a key phrase
like "applicant tracking tool" for $10 each blog they write about it. Works
really good.

\- text-link-ads.com is worth spending several hundred dollars a month on. The
static links do seo wonders, I have moved up from the 3rd page to the first
page doing this and for a client I am spending over a thousand dollars a month
with this service on different keywords and it is doing really well.

\- Google adwords is important and managing your budget is very important when
using adwords.

~~~
mahmud
The first three items on your list are what I would consider a bad idea. Have
you seen AdBrite traffic? The guy is marketing an HR product; classic business
software (might be much better off with adwords, specially for gmail; HR trade
publications, and finally _direct_ marketing to big companies.)

ReviewMe? Glorified link-building. He is better off pitching $500 to sponsor
an HR conference, and get his name published for free by the industry, and his
brand shown to actual attendees. Or similar gimmick.

text-link-ads.com? Just guest-write articles for industry magazines and blogs.
If anything, that will force him to think about the product more seriously and
research the industry. Marketing business software is not for the lazy.

~~~
gscott
Adbrite is great, costs 1/4th of Google. I spend about $500 a month on Adbrite
and about $14,000 a month on Google Adwords for the company that I work for.
Will I ever spend more on Adbrite then Google, of course not but sales are
made from Adbrite ads and at the end of the day money talks.

The poster mentioned being in a competitive marketplace. You have to pull out
all of the stops if you want to come up high in the same searches as long
established competitors

Am I saying don't sponsor some event? Sure go sponsor an event. But what you
need is the phrase you want to come up highest in the link text that people
are linking to your site on, it is really the best way to displace other
links.

Since 1996 I have done a lot of different things for marketing but really when
you are in a pinch tightly focusing on just the things that will raise your
actual ranking quickest is best then go back and underpin that rise in rank
with more long term items.

Also, I love Amazon Mechanical Turk. I have spent about $800 on tasks at .05
to .10 cents each and it is huge. I have nailed number one rankings so hard I
am pretty sure they will never go down.

~~~
mahmud
You obviously know your stuff, but for selling business software, and by that
I don't mean a <$500 shareware, it really doesn't make sense to waste money on
peripheral advertising when you can go for the jugular and sell to your firms
directly. For HR software, go to Monster and Indeed and build a list of
companies advertising more than 5 jobs and not using a recruiter. There. Done.
Now sit down from 9AM to 2PM and call them, one by one. 2PM - 5PM you do
emails and follow ups.

Incoming links and pagerank do jack squat for you if your clients have a habit
of purchasing software solely through trusted vendors and relationships. You
really are better off offering a 40% commission to mid-sized computer support
companies and focusing on one city each month, instead of getting 100 blog
articles written about you. At least then you can develop a
training/certification program and allow support companies to call themselves
"Licensed $FOO Vendor"; your buyers wont worry about support, since the guys
in their neighborhood can help them with the HR product, and you might even
get link-backs from the support companies themselves.

Btw, I really urge you to blog about your marketing experience. My ex-
employer's budget was $4k/daily, and I don't think they got much out of it (it
kept the business solvent, and they made the money back, but not by much.)

~~~
scottmagdalein
So you know, my software will cost $50-$500/month and be offered as SaaS on a
per-position basis aimed at medium- to large-sized companies. Does that change
how I should market the product?

~~~
mahmud
Yes it does. Your leads will not becoming from HR department heads and
managers only, but developers tasked with the development of HR-related
application. Which is good, because the dev-segment tends to be more vocal in
plugging good software, and you would be a shoe-in if you can give them what
they need.

I can give you two pieces of advice: research, analyze and reverse engineer
the business operations and historic growth of successful B2B SaaS providers,
such as SalesForce. You are in for more interesting times than you can imagine
at the moment.

My second advice would be to find and follow successful "community
ambassadors" and founders of SaaS companies, watch what events they speak at,
grab any presentation decks you can get (I will highly recommend Mashery and
their macho CEO Orin Michels; that's a cat worth emulating, imo.)

Walking around with money in hand is a surefire way to lose. The more DIY and
stingy you are the more successful you will be selling this. You need to
indoctrinate your developers as well; inspire them to think big and do more
with less and less.

Also, don't hesitate to solicit private advice from people who aren't selling
you anything.

------
byrneseyeview
I assume that this is like, e.g., Taleo or CATS. If so, you're lucky because
most of the competition sucks. Unfortunately, switching costs are high.

I would suggest Adwords and/or SEO, depending on whether or not you have free
time. For Adwords, you can probably A/B test your way into getting whatever
audience you're targeting (in-house, individuals, big companies, etc.). SEO is
more time-consuming, of course, but it can get you a ton of credibility. Links
are endorsements; getting a link from ere.net will boost your rankings _and_
impress recruiters you talk to.

Actually, shoot me an email. I used to be a recruiter, and I currently do
online marketing. We should discuss this!

------
Julianhearn
What is an application tracking tool? Are people searching for this type of
product on google in any great volume?

If yes focus on seo with a little ppc in the short term. If not you will have
to identify where your target market hang out and then work out how to get
exposure there.

------
Figs
Well, you could give it to me, and I promise I will speak highly of you for
doing so! :D

However, I don't think that would help you much in actually marketing your
product successfully. I think first you should figure out who you're selling
to.

------
fastspring
Google Adwords. And try a small ad in a very targeted publication.

