

What I know so far about marketing a small software company - mmc
http://chrisashworth.org/blog/2009/05/13/what-i-know-so-far-about-marketing-a-small-software-company/

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patio11
You have no idea how many times I've seen variations on that sales graph -- a
few years in the coding salt mines with gradually increasing but sporadically
up and down sales, followed by new version and a step function increase.

Incidentally, contra the article, if you get advertising on the Internet right
its a fairly low-stress way to make a lot more money than you would otherwise
for a small software company. Sure, Google gets 50 cents on the dollar from my
last $1000 of sales every month... still, 95% gross margin exclusive of
advertising, you do the math. (This is a complementary strategy to wowing
customers and having an unpaid sales force of fans. You now have more
customers to wow and more unpaid fans. What is not to like?)

Another note against the article: if you're doing software over the Internet,
I beg you, please get over your hangups about SEO. You may think its about
being an evil spammer. It isn't. (Well, OK, it doesn't have to be.) You can do
great SEO for your business and still touch holy water without suffering 3rd
degree burns. (In a nutshell: publish useful stuff, get linked, win. You'll
note how this _dovetails very nicely_ with constantly positively surprising
people and extracting value out of folks who are unwilling to pay you money.)

I'm still in the salt mines but 3.0 is coming out any week now. I'm cautiously
optimistic. ;)

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davidbnewquist
The "Make your mistakes visible" advice seems to have merit based on the
offered axion: "Telling the truth even when you don’t have to is good evidence
that you’re trustworthy."

But I can't think of any marketeers that have taken this advice. I wonder how
effective it would be if Microsoft ran a campaign saying: "although we enabled
user account control by default to increase security, we admit that it came
across as 'chatty and annoying' for most users."

Such a strategy may be especially useful to reduce impact of a competitor
using a mistake in negative marketing.

~~~
Timothee
A friend of mine was talking just this morning about how he had thought about
keeping a blog to go along his learning of iPhone development but was worried
about being public about basic stuff, thus making him look bad. (like it
happened to a certain dev from Pownce) And even though I believe being candid
about what you don't know or your mistakes should be generally laudable
(because you're not pretending, are just honest about your pitfalls, and
willing to work on them), it can very easily backfire.

It's very similar when a company acknowledges their mistakes: some smart
people would look at it and praise the company for it, others will just
continue the bashing. It can work but it's tricky, and the bigger the company,
the trickier it gets.

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sachmanb
in a previous post about marketing, i placed a quote from bill hicks that if
your in advertising, kill yourself.

i like this guy, though. he's not marketing scum.

this leads to my question: are there terms that distinguish between what this
article is promoting, this idea of marketing and the more common ideas:
'public relations'/edward bernays/manipulation? Something other than 'being
cool' vs 'being a jerk'?

if not, if both are just 'marketing' - then a terms should be made to
distinguish the paradigm difference.

~~~
jmtame
i major in advertising at the university which started the first advertising
department of any ;)

much of what he's saying is taught in the books--the emphasis on making a
connection. the ironic thing is that 99% of all ads and marketing suck, so you
interpret that as a flaw in advertising schools. it's the classic debate of
"suits vs poets." suits just want to do something to get your attention, they
don't care if it's obtrusive. poets want to go crazy, but stay relevant and
humorous. not like a joke, which gets old. but they want you to look at their
ad or campaign and ask "how did they do that" or laugh and want to see it
again. part of marketing is about making a connection with the person on the
other end. it's ironic that the more you try and "define" these silly things,
like advertising, the less personable they become. it's like the academy is
trying to create some science around what started and flourished as an art
form.

there are scum everywhere, especially in advertising. but the top schools
don't teach you the crap tactics that car salesmen use. it's just like any
profession, you have good ones and bad ones. but yeah, it makes you want to
say go kill yourself to the people who put zero effort into the whole thing.
it becomes too much about sales and numbers for some people, and that becomes
obtrusive and annoying. advertisers almost always get flack because they're
seen as carrying out the corporate mission of increasing profits further. but
believe me when saying that most companies' best advertising and marketing
campaigns were created on the brink of product destruction, not as an attempt
to generate enormous masses of profit.

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guybrush0
All the lessons sound great, but in lieu of advertising or conferences, how do
you make the first 10 sales? The first 100?

Surely it's not sufficient to simply "build it and they will [magically] come"
unless your product is incredibly niche and solving a _very_ painful demand.

Is the author a superb personal marketer, or did he literally sell 2 copies of
his software to friends and then everything snowballed from there?

The sales graph suggests there's something else going on, and I really want to
know what it is!

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zaidf
Without specific anecdotes from his experiences running his company, this
reads like a chapter from preachy marketing book.

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trevelyan
interesting graph of timeline to profitability. would have been more useful
with actual figures, but the trend line is interesting too.

