Unsure of how to market my first "product"

[khtm]

I've been doing IM since May and have finally created my first "product".

Well...it's not really a "product" like most of the other stuff you see as Warrior Special Offers. It's not an ebook or a video that you can download. It's an online community which does automatic social bookmarking. It's really only useful for internet marketers...not the general population.

I'm struggling with the best way to promote it. I've talked to a few friends who've suggested:

1. Typical SEO campaign to try to get organic traffic
2. A WSO
3. Offering free memberships to IM gurus in exchange for a "review"
4. Some sort of Joint Venture
5. Setup an affiliate program

Unfortunately I don't have a mailing list so that's not an option.

My only experience in the above suggestions is #1, so I'm a bit nervous of trying the others because of lack of experience. I offer a free account and two "paid" accounts with more features, and I think this setup will just create confusion if I do a WSO or JV.

Any words of wisdom will be much appreciated!

[Ken Durham]

I think if you demonstrate without a doubt that it works well then IMers will know a good thing and spreading the word through IM forums should work well.
There are some very smart and vocal people on here that will say what they think of your product, no holds barred. So make sure it does what you claim

Best of luck to you!

[Jason Johns]

Hi Kane,

If you are worried about it causing confusing then offer warriors just the top level account for a discount and casually mention the free option as a trial.

Alternatively, run a WSO promoting the free trial.

You could find some JV partners if you have an affiliate program and get some other people to promote it for you.

Definitely set up free accounts for JV partners / big marketers as if they use the service and really like it they are much more likely to recommend it / provide a testimonial.

Get yourself some testimonials on the front page and success stories and get your product ranking well for it's keywords.

Hope that helps you

Jason

[Sean Ski]

I agree with the WSO to JV idea as well although I do think you should also do SEO just in case you're having trouble getting potential JV partners to promote.

[TheMagicShow]

Originally Posted by khtm

I've been doing IM since May and have finally created my first "product".

Well...it's not really a "product" like most of the other stuff you see as Warrior Special Offers. It's not an ebook or a video that you can download. It's an online community which does automatic social bookmarking. It's really only useful for internet marketers...not the general population.

I'm struggling with the best way to promote it. I've talked to a few friends who've suggested:

1. Typical SEO campaign to try to get organic traffic
2. A WSO
3. Offering free memberships to IM gurus in exchange for a "review"
4. Some sort of Joint Venture
5. Setup an affiliate program

Unfortunately I don't have a mailing list so that's not an option.

My only experience in the above suggestions is #1, so I'm a bit nervous of trying the others because of lack of experience. I offer a free account and two "paid" accounts with more features, and I think this setup will just create confusion if I do a WSO or JV.

Any words of wisdom will be much appreciated!

You could do the following:
1. have a demo video that shows what your service is all about
2. Some testimonials from satisfied customers
3. Get on twitter and find your niche/audience and build a relationship with them.
3. Go to your competition, see how they have setup their site and their marketing funnel.

Your site, as of now really doesn't motivate me to join or use, good luck!

[James Pateman]

Hi Kane,
You could get a few ideas from searching the WF for the following topics:
·keyword research
·SEO
·back links
·social bookmarking
·video traffic
·article traffic
·rss
·media buys
·press releases
·forum traffic
·PPC
·JV’s


All-the-best,
James Pateman

[waihon]

IMO, you may consider to combine #3, #4 and #5. They involve contacting successful IMers and offer them your top level account. Ask for their favor to:

1. Try it out and then provide you a review/testimonial, and/or
2. Promote your website to their list (you need to have an affiliate program; also offer them a high commission rate e.g. 75%)

Some of them are willing to help with 1, 2, or both.

I have recently soft launched a product using the above approach.

[mrozlat]

i personally use the service and find it AWESOME
my advice to go hard with articles/SEO
i sent you a list of keywords that i would target
start small and build up one by one
once people start using it they will see the benefit
the product is there... just needs the marketing

p.s. - did your stats show any traffic from diigo?

[IMDetective]

A thought would be to ask if people are willing to try your product for free and give a review of it. Give this “special” once in a life time offer for 10 -15 lucky people!!
If they like it I'm sure they will let everyone on here know If not I'm sure they will let everyone on here know

It is a simple way to keep the product on a short leash and get some exposure and much needed testimonials.

If you don’t ask the question or make the offer then you will always think of what could have been.

Don’t be shy. You’ve done the hardest thing already and let people know you are a serious IM by creating a product. You have also asked for advise, something I thing IM’ers here respect. Good Luck.
If you do offer this then you have one person that is willing to help you…. ie me, Nick Shah The Online Marketing Detective

[khtm]

Thanks for the awesome advise, everyone. This is why I always tell people that WF has the best members of any forum I've ever participated in

It's one of those things where I absolutely know my service is worthwhile, and maybe I just figured other people would automatically figure this out through osmosis without me having to really "sell it".

I'm good at coming up with new ideas and knowing how to use technology to make them happen...just not so good yet at marketing or sales.

Every time I read a sales page I think, "Oh jeeez not another one of these cheesy POS's that's likely filled with fake testimonials and impossible promises"...but I guess these do actually work?

Does anyone know the best way to setup an affiliate program if I'm not using any commercial Paypal-integration script (ie. I wrote it myself). Or maybe I should post this in the "Programming Talk" forum...?

[jasonl70]

From what I can see, that looks pretty cool.

I'm a bit confused though - it does NOT require any sort of manual or semi-automated account creation?

[khtm]

Originally Posted by mrozlat

i personally use the service and find it AWESOME
my advice to go hard with articles/SEO
i sent you a list of keywords that i would target
start small and build up one by one
once people start using it they will see the benefit
the product is there... just needs the marketing

p.s. - did your stats show any traffic from diigo?

Thanks dude

I haven't really done any SEO (besides the backlinks that SocialAdr generates for its own bookmark), because I was thinking that a lot of those keywords are really saturated, my target market is people on WF, and my time would be better spent doing an affiliate program or JV.

No Diigo traffic, but perhaps Google Analytics doesn't count that as referrals and converts it to direct traffic?

[khtm]

Originally Posted by jasonl70

From what I can see, that looks pretty cool.

I'm a bit confused though - it does NOT require any sort of manual or semi-automated account creation?

Good question!

My intent was to make the whole process as "legit" as possible, but automate as much of it as I could. So no, I don't automate the account creations (like other software does), primarily because there's questions and fields on each site that are unique and that a human should be filling out.

But most people ALREADY have accounts at these social bookmarking sites, and even if they don't it literally takes less than 30 minutes to sign up for all of them. And you only have to do this once.

What is fully automated is the actual bookmark submissions. If you've ever used SocialMarker (which is a great, entirely free site BTW), you have to drag and drop your URL, title, description, and tags into each site's fields manually.

Also, if you've done a lot of manual social bookmarking, you know that determining what format the tags have to be in can be frustrating, because there's no standard (comma separated, space separated with quotes for multi-word tags, etc.). So this is all done automatically.

But the real benefit is that you're not just bookmarking your own sites, it's a community, so members bookmark each other's sites. This gives the potential of 20x more backlinks than you'd get yourself.

I think another problem (which you've touched on) is that the concept is confusing. I have a couple YouTube videos where I try to explain it, and there's an "FAQ" and an "Overview" section. But it's all from my point of view, and I'm likely too close to the project to present it in a way that's easy for everyone else to understand. Perhaps I need to solicit help from someone else to find a way to present it in a simpler way?

[jimmy506]

I joined SocialAdr a week ago and it seems to be working out quite well.

Everyday other people are bookmarking my blog posts on 14 Social Social Bookmarking Sites.

The interface is extremely simple to use. In 60 seconds I can do my part and bookmark other peoples sites.

I am extremely satisfied with the results. I had been looking for something like this for a while.

It really is a great system-
Jimmy (a happy customer)

[mrozlat]

Originally Posted by jimmy506

I joined SocialAdr a week ago and it seems to be working out quite well.

Everyday other people are bookmarking my blog posts on 14 Social Social Bookmarking Sites.

The interface is extremely simple to use. In 60 seconds I can do my part and bookmark other peoples sites.

I am extremely satisfied with the results. I had been looking for something like this for a while.

It really is a great system-
Jimmy (a happy customer)

I noticed your toast site when i was posting... some funny stuff I couldn't stop laughing, cool niche aye

[jimmy506]

Thanks mrozlat!

If only I could live on selling toast...