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 & resources.
Thanks HN folks!
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!
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!
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.)
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.
- 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.
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.
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.
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.)
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.
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!
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.
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.