Marketing Mistakes

[Keith Maurino]

What's the biggest mistake you've made when you set out to market your software?

[PCSpectra]

Not marketing to the right people. I'm a software developer not a marketer...so I only know about programming forums and highly technical communities. Advertise to these people and all that happens is you have your ideas borrowed and lots of technical related questions, nothing that actually generates income.

[Ken Hughes]

No marketing at all - thinking that me knowing how good the product was would mean that customers would beat a path to my door to buy it.

Lessons Learnt : Define your target market early on, make sure it is big enough and work out a plan for communicating to that market (possibly - start communicating now, get involved even before you have the product, this allows you to get a better feel/handle on your target market)

.. KJ

[Andy Brice]

Thinking that I would have to go through retailers to sell reasonable volumes. Thankfully I realised my mistake before I wasted too much time and money. Google is my friend (mostly).

[Anna-Jayne Metcalfe]

For use I'd say it was a) thinking that a (very severely restricted) Free Edition would act as a promotional tool for the paid product editions, and b) not taking the time initially to learn more about marketing.

We realised our mistake on the first one when a large corporation tried to refund an order (in the resellers words) "because they had discovered there was a free version". We've since changed the licencing terms for the Free Edition to non-commercial use only, but to be honest I'm thinking we should drop it altogether on the next major release.

We realised how big a mistake the second item was when we went to ESWC 2006 and heard what Dave Collins had to say. *

* Is that worth a free beer at this year's ESWC? You never know, but it doesn't hurt to try... ;)

[Marcus McConnell]

Spending too much on print ads. I'd avoid print ads until you know you're big enough that the cost doesn't scare you. Start with small ads every month or every other month in a highly targeted niche magazine and see if it works. Try to get a magazine to write an editorial article or review of your product if you agree to advertise. You'll get better return on the article than most ads.

[Elian Chrebor]

Thinking that one-shot ad could be efficient. Because of a very tight communication budget to promote a major release, I decided to spend a few hundred $ only to sponsor one single newsletter from a major targetted community website, to insert one single print half-page ad in a well known targetted magazine etc... Conclusion: Using ad (electronic or printed) is a long time effort if you want it to be efficient. It will surely bring you a mot of customers as soon as you're able to pay the price. If you can't pay the price, do not use classic ad!

(Note that a very interesting blog post by Brad Mc Gehee about the use of ad on targetted websites can be found somewhere on simple-talk.com. It explains all that in a better english than mine ;))

[Mark Dalgarno]

Exhibiting at the wrongg events. A quick way to burn cash...

[Anna-Jayne Metcalfe]

harrybusinessmarketing said:

I don't have any idea on that.I read that one site.This site provides a significant list of B2B marketing sites they have discovered on the Web - in which they find to be of most interest.

I must admit that every time I come across one of those marketing sites where they throw lots of text at you (usually with red headlines and exclamation marks) without actually telling you what they are selling I just switch right off (Just show me the USP and the price, OK?).

Unfortunately, most such sites seem to be guilty of such ghastliness....

[David Locke]

Selling to Geeks doesn't work even if it's development tools.

Free only works for geeks in the technical enthusiast market, which occurs long before you go into a horizontal market. IT is a horizontal market. Free only works if you have exit barriers. You are supposed to get evangelism for that free gear. Free never works in mass market B2C markets. SaaS is just like a B2C market, as it is price-based competition.

SaaS takes new functionality to commodity markets before the value can be extracted in earlier markets.

Selling without marketing is a mistake. Yes, your macho sales reps will insist on it, but at some point, like in a recession stuff stops selling, and without marketing you are toast.

Selling with a single pool of hunters and no farmers is definately a way never to make upgrade sales. It isn't worth the hunters time, so instead of a lifetime customer relationship, they throw the customer away. Watch the sales compensation plan.

Moving to the CxO market means slowing down your sales pipeline.

Marketing without good direct marketing and PR is a waste of money.

Not realizing that listening to your customer can kill your company.