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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.
It's All About Marketing
Conventional wisdom holds that software developers would make more money if they inspired web site visitors to make impulse purchases. While this sounds like a good marketing strategy on the surface, I'm not sure that generating impulse sales is a worthwhile goal for most software companies. An impulse buy is an on-the-spot emotional decision to buy a product or service. The most common example of the impulse buying technique is the displaying of candy and magazines in supermarket checkout lines. While software web sites on the Internet are effective for upselling and cross-selling, these web sites are not ideal for generating impulse sales. For more information about these other sales techniques, please see my "Upselling, Cross-Selling, After-Selling, and Just Plain Selling" article from the March 18, 2004 newsletter on http://www.dpdirectory.com/3news011.htm We know why people are in the supermarket checkout line. It's the only way to leave the store with product, and not go to jail. In the supermarket, people make impulse buys because a magazine cover or candy wrapper looks new or looks great. Their kids are lobbying for candy bars. Parents are exhausted, and feel like they deserve a reward for the intense shopping that they've been doing. Interestingly, magazines and candy bars are rarely sold at discounts, because people decide emotionally, not rationally, to buy them. The long wait in checkout lines bores people, causing them to investigate the items at the checkout area. They're already in the process of purchasing, so there is no significant additional investment of time to buy "just one more item." The items at the checkout area are inexpensive, familiar products which won't require future commitment of time or money, and which don't pose any unexpected risks. There's very little similarity between the reasons people buy on a supermarket checkout line, and the reasons they buy on your web site. There are three paths that brought people to your web site: - Some people came from Google, Overture, Yahoo, or some other search engine. They typed words or phrases into the search engine, and they expected to find links to relevant software sites. There's no similarity between their mindset when they arrive on your site, and the mindset of a supermarket shopper who has just seen their favorite movie star on a magazine cover, or their favorite chocolate bar in a new, supersized package. People who arrive at your web site from a search engine are not inclined to make snap, emotional purchase decisions. - Some people came from Tucows, CNET, or some other download site. It's hard to get them to make an emotional decision to buy. Your web site visitor knows that there are a dozen other similar programs listed on the download site, and your sales presentation had better be first-rate if you expect to close the sale. It would be difficult to get them to make an instant, emotional buying decision. - Some people came because of a recommendation from a computer magazine, a newspaper column, or from a friend. These visitors are the most likely candidates for impulse buys. They've heard from an authority that your software has what they want (safety, power, an easy learning curve, great support, a low price, rock-solid stability, or whatever it is that's important to them). You can lose the sale if you don't make it obvious and clear what platform your app runs on, and how much it costs, and how easy it is to contact the company if you're having a problem with the product or with the order. But they came to your site because they had heard good things about your program, and many of them are ready to buy. They're great prospects for impulse buys. While some of these visitors may seem to be impulse buyers, that's probably not the case. Although your web site may not have made them instant buyers, a previous visit by them or by someone else did the selling work. Or maybe some marketing you'd already done had convinced them it was time to buy. However, since these ready-to-buy visitors look the same as all other web site visitors, good all-purpose web site design will serve them well, too. Instead of trying to design your web site for impulse buying, you should design for general sales. And I'm confident that your web site won't present visitors with the boring checkout line wait that would backfire here. Make your web site attractive, easy, and safe for visitors to buy. - Work on your product mix. Pay attention to the software that you're selling, how your applications are structured within the family of products that you offer, how you're positioned against your competitors, and how you're describing your software to appeal to each of your target audiences. - Plan your advertising and promotion. What are you doing to advertise and publicize your products and web site? Do you have a search engine keyword purchasing strategy? Are you buying banner ads and space ads in print publications? Are you swapping links with well-targeted, high-traffic sites? - Fine-tune your product layout. Optimize the location and descriptions of the products on your home page, product pages, order page, and support pages. Look at your web logs, and find out how people navigate your site. Create a great navigation scheme, atmospherics, and look and feel. Determine if you want to look like an old, established, professional company, or a hip, modern firm. - Make it easy to buy. Design your site for sales, not for downloads. Make it obvious and easy for potential buyers to buy. Don't confuse your prospects by subjecting them to a convoluted sales process. Don't frighten them by asking for lots of personal information. Don't require them to read a multi-page license agreement. Streamline your order page. - Stress safety. Tell prospects about your guarantee. Make it easy to find a privacy policy that is attractive, and easy to understand. Take away any obstacle that might lead to shopping cart abandonment. - Portray your company as friendly and accessible. Display your postal address and phone number everywhere. Invite people to contact you. - Streamline the checkout process and make it friendly. Your prospects may not be familiar with the eCommerce company that you're using to process their credit card payments. Introduce your prospects to your eCommerce provider. Don't require a shopping cart for a single item purchase. Make prospects trust you and feel comfortable about becoming customers. - Test. Try new sales approaches, measure the results, and adjust your sales presentation. Offer daily or weekly specials. Try coupons. See if rebates generate more sales. Create a frequent flyer plan that rewards existing customers for buying your other software, and for sending their friends and colleagues to your web site. Find other ways to welcome back old customers, and make it easier for them to buy a second time. - Keep track of holidays throughout the world. Make special offers for Mother's Day, Father's Day, and any other holidays that make sense. - Encourage people to sign up for your newsletter. In Seth Godin's book "Permission Marketing," he actually suggests that Internet retailers rebuild their web sites, and transform them from brochureware to a focused permission acquisition medium. In short, use your web site to get people to sign up for your newsletter, and use your newsletter as your primary sales vehicle. In the software world, it's easy to create both a strong, selling web site and a content-rich newsletter that sells software. There's a book review of "Permission Marketing" in my newsletter archives - http://www.dpdirectory.com/3news001.htm The bottom line - Your web site visitors came to your site because they were considering buying software like yours. There's no impulse involved, and not as much emotionalism as some would have you believe. You might be able to introduce an upsell or a cross-sell. But it's not likely that your customer's main purchase will be an impulse buy. There is no "one size fits all" path to effective retailing. It's complicated. It requires imagination and original thinking. It's necessary to try things, test, measure, and try again. And again.
There are a couple of good reasons to avoid using the term "shareware" in your press releases: (1) Every magazine and newspaper claims to have an impenetrable wall between their editorial and advertising departments. My experience is that these publications try to not let advertising dollars affect the press coverage that they give. But there are exceptions. Computer magazines have two major sources of income: subscriber money and advertiser money. Editors can increase their subscriber base by telling their readers about neat new software. Like yours. But the magazines would like to turn you into an advertiser. If they can demonstrate that, by their printing your press release you'll get a lot of inquiries from their readers, then they might talk you into buying ad space. Shareware authors, however, are not known for buying lots of magazine ads. So, given two equally intriguing press releases, one for a shareware product and one for a shelfware product, it's in the magazine's interest to give ink to the shelfware. While all editors would insist that there's a solid wall between their editorial and advertising departments, the editors are, after all, human, and interested in the financial success of their employers. So, it's best not to mention your being a shareware author. (2) Not everybody knows what the term "shareware" means. Some people associate it with second-tier software, and view it as having lower quality than the shrink-wrapped software that they find in stores. Others simply aren't familiar with the term. You can lose sales by using terms that people don't understand. And you can lose sales by defining terms like "shareware". These definitions take prospects' attention away from your company and its software, and will cost you sales. Don't say "shareware" in your press release. Simply talk about the availability of a free, fully-functional 30-day trial version.
Look Into Success
Success Leaves Clues -
by John L. Stanton and Richard J. George (published by Silver Lake Publishing) The Big Picture - Success Leaves Clues is a marketing strategy book whose main premise is that we can improve our companies' performance by learning what the best marketers do. Learn what works by studying success, and mimic that success. The book is divided into three sections: - The first 50 pages provide an excellent overview of marketing. Unlike marketing textbooks, the material and examples are down to earth. - The next 80 pages discuss ten rules of developing and executing your marketing strategy. The material is good, with a lot of helpful examples. - The final 100 pages talk about offensive, defensive, and avoidance strategies. I enjoyed this part of the book least. Perhaps it was the continual use of war terminology, or perhaps it was the repetition (and application) of the earlier material. However, the chapter on niche marketing is particularly good. What it Means for Software Developers - Too many developers do no marketing planning at all. Developers see the job at hand as an exercise in technology, to which they add uploading to the download sites, doing press releases, and perhaps buying search engine keywords. Many software developers need to understand what marketing is all about, and this book provides a painless, often inspirational way of getting this information. The first 130 pages of this book provide a fine, practical checklist of marketing issues that you need to address to be successful. The Bottom Line - Success Leaves Clues is an easy read. If you haven't taken the time to get your arms around the practical effects that good marketing planning could have on your company, then this book would be very helpful. "Success Leaves Clues - Practical Tools for Effective Sales and Marketing" was reviewed by Al Harberg. 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. Please add al@dpdirectory.com to your anti-spam filter's friends-list. To REFER a FRIEND to this newsletter, click your email client's "forward" button. I thank you very much. And your developer friends will thank you, too. 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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