Software Marketing Glossary
by Al Harberg, the press release guy from DP Directory

Software marketing ideas about

software marketing by listening to software customers,
and total lifetime value

from chapters 3 and 9 of the book How to Become a Marketing Superstar - Unexpected Rules that Ring the Cash Register by Jeffrey J. Fox, the October, 2009 Educational Software Cooperative Software Marketing Book Club selection.

Listen to your customers Find a way to listen to your customers. Get their input. Turn your web site into a give-and-take. So many developers say that they don't accept phone calls because they're an interruption. From a marketing perspective, they're the best interruption that you can ever hope for. Find a way to get people to contact you by email for tech questions, and by phone for "should I buy your program?" -type questions. Lifestime customer value Learn the total dollar value of a customer. That means current sales, plus sales of updates, plus sales of upgrades to the better version of your program, plus upgrades from single-user licenses to family and multi-user and site licenses. That means sales of future products, and sales of software that you offer on an affiliate basis through your newsletter. And, possibly most importantly, it means referrals and testimonials. Love your software brand It's not enough, Fox tells us, to manage your brand. Being a minder or a maintainer or a manager leads to mediocrity. Unless you understand the value that your product delivers, you'll always be uncomfortable about the price. You'll think that you're charging customers too much. Marketing software that has problems Developers often have difficulty dealing with their applications' problems. You know your software's flaws, and you assume that these flaws are obvious to prospects and customers, too. I don't mean program bugs. If you have bugs, you need to fix them before they hurt your brand. I'm talking about having a less impressive feature-set than your competitors, or a less impressive GUI. If you're concerned about these things, then plan on correcting them soon, in a new release of your program. But don't let these flaws get you down.Your application undoubtedly has other outstanding features. Marketing a program that you developed quickly I see this problem a lot: A microISV is feeling guilty because it only took a few weeks to develop one of their applications. And you feel that the user isn't getting something that you agonized over for two years. Frankly, the user doesn't care how long it took you to code your last project. Users are tuned in to WII-FM - What's In It For Me? You have to love your brand, Fox reminds us, to feel comfortable writing about it on your website in the superlative terms that you need to use. Good software marketing demands that you love your brand. Software Marketing Glossary move to the previous or next book club sample chapter Quick Links: Lists: computer, business , education, multimedia, game, programming, others Ordering: place an order, prices and time frames, sample news releases, about us Information: free newsletters, press release FAQ, software marketing glossary Copyright © 1997-2011 DP Directory, Inc.

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Glossary Index A - B - C - D - E - F - G H - I - J - K - L - M N - O - P - Q - R - S - T U - V - W - X - Y - Z Table of Contents of the - S - pages: sales message satisfaction scannability scraper screen shot search engine search engine marketing search engine optimization search engine results page seeds self-mailer selling selling to families share of mind shareware Shareware Industry Conference (SIC) Shareware Industry Awards Foundation (SIAF) shareware marketplace shelfware shopping shopping cart SIC - Shareware Industry Conference and Software Industry Conference SIC - Standard Industrial Classification sign-in signature file siloing site license site map Software Industry Conference Software Marketing Book Club solution sound bite spam spell checker spider splash page spyware stakeholders stemming strategy strategic partnership strategic planning subdomains subscribers success Success Leaves Clues sugging suite suspect synonyms system requirements Hard-hitting smartphone and computer software marketing info. Monthly. Free. Al Harberg's free monthly Software Marketing Newsletter delivers fresh ideas on creating web site sales presentations for your applications. Subscribe now, and enjoy your software as your sales go up. Subscribe now to the newsletter, or read more than 100 articles in the newsletter's marketing archive.