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DP Directory, Inc.
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Subscribe Now to Al Harberg's Software Marketing Newsletter, the best way for software developers to get free, usable marketing information. We'll never use your email address for anything besides sending you this twice-monthly newsletter.
Fresh Ideas to Increase Your Software Sales
Before the electronic age, we recycled our newspapers at the end of the day, we kept magazines for a month, and we kept books forever. Despite predictions of tomorrow's paperless society, these rules haven't changed. However, there are two new rules: On the computer, read unimportant things on the screen, and print the important information. The bottom line: You can sell more software if you create a one-page, printer-friendly Easy Installation Instruction Sheet for the user to print from your download page. You have to break out of the mold in which only one percent of downloads result in sales. - How many sales are you losing because a user downloads your software and forgets that they've downloaded it? Your printed sheet will remind them that there's a neat application on their computer that they should install and play with. - How many additional sales would you get if your prospects could remember the name of your installation file? Your instruction sheet would have this information in both a QuickStart guide for experienced users and a step-by-step guide for newbies. - How much would your income increase if users could remember what folder they downloaded your file into? That information is all there in your instruction sheet. - Are you losing sales because people have no idea how to install your software from the .exe file or from the .zip archive that they'd downloaded? Your instruction sheet has all of that information. Just as your web site visitors need to know immediately how your site will benefit them, prospects who pick up your instruction sheet a week or a year after downloading your software need to know why installing your software is important. Start by saying something like "Thank you for downloading Widget, the Windows powerhouse that saves you time and money every week by doing this thing and that thing." This shows users the big picture, and reminds them why they downloaded your software in the first place. "Widget is safe and easy to install, and easy to use. In just a few minutes, you'll be saving time and saving money with Widget." Include your best "closing line" to rekindle their interest in your program. Give experienced users a QuickStart guide. Perhaps all they need is the filename. Give newbies a lot of information. They may not be familiar with pressing start, pressing f for "find", pressing f for "files and folders", and so forth. Show them and tell them how to find your program, install it, and start using it. Include your full contact information on the instruction sheet, including your company name, product name, URL, and email address. People will be more comfortable buying from you if they also have your postal address and phone number. There's a lot more you can tell them. Print a discount coupon that they can cash in if they order within three days. Cross-sell other developers' products (and arrange for these developers to cross-sell yours). Remind prospects to bookmark your web site. Invite them to sign up for your newsletter. Tell them about the other software that you offer. Use plain text or simple HTML for your instruction sheet. Don't require people to open a .doc or .pdf file. Remember that standard paper sizes in North America are different from those in the rest of the world. Your instruction sheet has to print comfortably in both formats. Experiment, and measure the results. Encouraging downloaders to print a single sheet of paper can generate a lot more sales.
When choosing a company to email your press releases to the editors, make sure you're getting somebody who will give your press release a careful reading, and give you tough, honest feedback. Getting a press release printed is a lot like winning a horse race. The winner of a horse race might win $32, while the horse who comes in third wins only $3. That's because the horse who comes in first runs ten times faster than the horse who comes in third. Right? Five times faster? Twice as fast? Half again as fast? In reality, it's difficult to measure the tiny differences between the three horses who win, place, and show, and the horses who don't win any money. It's the same with press releases. If an editor has room for three New Product Announcements, and she has a pile of 25 press releases, she has a difficult job. Even if she likes your software better than the others, if your press release isn't in the standard format, or if it has errors in grammar, syntax, or usage, then she's likely to select your competitor's press release for publication. An experienced press release writer can give you an edge. Just as the horse who comes in fourth doesn't win any money, the editor's fourth-favorite press release won't generate any sales for you if she only has room to print three. Even if you write your press release yourself, make sure an experienced PR person reviews it before it goes out to the editors.
I'd like to thank Brian Flanagan of http://www.Planware.org/ for this great idea: Ask your customers and newsletter subscribers to add your address to their anti-spam software's whitelist, or friends' list, or whatever they call the list of addresses that they automatically let through their filtering system. In this newsletter, I talk a lot about selling more software, and making more sales, and bringing in more money. Phrases like these could get my newsletter caught in your spam filter. So please do two things: - Add me to your friends' list, and - Write a note like this to your customers and ask them to add you to their friends' list. Brian's www.Planware.org site has a lot of really good material for software developers. There are free articles about getting business ideas, developing strategies, writing a business plan, making projections, and forecasting cash flow. Check it out!
I'm amazed by the variety of ways that the major software registration companies are dealing with the recent European Union Value Added Tax rules. Sharon Housley of www.SoftwareMarketingResource.com sent thoughtful questionnaires to the eCommerce companies, and received some fascinating feedback from them. You can read the article in her latest newsletter - http://www.softwaremarketingresource.com/author-resource-newsletter31.html
Practical Ideas for Improving Your Web Site
The Big Red Fez:
by Seth Godin (published by Simon & Schuster) You can spend an hour and learn what the "permission marketing" guru thinks about web site design. Godin urges us to design our web sites for the busy, ill-informed, impatient, not very thoughtful person who is eager to click on something immediately. That sounds like the typical software buyer. The Big Picture - Godin defines the goal of your web site as creating "a series of enticing offers, impenetrable boundaries and thoughtful and logical steps that keep people with you from the moment they arrive until they successfully reach the destination you've set out for them." The longer somebody has been on our web site, the more valuable they are as a prospect, and the more time we can afford to spend with them to close the sale. What it Means for Software Developers - Godin believes that if a visitor can't figure out why they're on your web site during the first three seconds of their visit, then they're gone. This means that your web site had better load quickly. And the first sentence had better tell your visitors your company name, the name of your software, the platform it runs under, the price, and how it can benefit the visitor. There's simply no time to babble about your mission statement, or how proud you are to release a new version of your software. The book is a quick read. It consists of 40 or 50 short, independent lessons. Each lesson is easy to understand, hard to dispute, and (usually) easy to implement in your own web site. The Bottom Line - The Big Red Fez is full of ideas that can improve your software sales. Even if you only implement a few of them, reading the book is time well spent. To UNSUBSCRIBE from this newsletter, send me a note. I'll remove your name immediately and permanently. To SUBSCRIBE to the email version of this newsletter, send me your name and email address. I'll only use your name and email address for this newsletter. I'll never spam you, or let other people have your name or email address. al@dpdirectory.com To SELL MORE SOFTWARE, bookmark this web site, and visit often. There's a lot of free, useful software marketing information on http://www.dpdirectory.com/.
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