A great product ...now where to start?

11 replies
Hi everyone, and thanks in advance for the advice. I hope I'm posting this in the right place.
Background: I am a moderately experienced web developer/programmer/SEO who has been given a great product to market. It is essentially an electronic service for businesses to monitor their marketing efforts. I know your thinking this is a saturated market, but believe me, this is a completely different animal than what you think. The market is pretty open. In fact, the market for this product isn't even set in stone yet. We need to let people know that this product exists. My target audience would be business owners.

So this is why I'm consulting the experts/warriors on how to get this product off the ground.
I have already started to write some articles, but I'm new to this process. Where should I submit them, ezines, Wikipedia, any others? I was going to write two articles on each topic related to the product. Put one of the site for SEO purposes, and 1 for syndication to drive traffic.

We plan to do a bit of PPC on the site, but I don't want to rely on that. Instead, I plan to drive traffic via blogs and forums. I really think the product will sell itself once the word gets out. Maybe social networking is the best way to go... if so, how do I begin? Do I just start an account with the name of the business, and ask people to join?

Sorry for the rant, but you get the idea. It's a great product, and this is my first chance to market something I believe can be successful. Any input would be great.

Thanks again,
rastabloke
#great #product #start
  • Profile picture of the author nick1123
    Every great product needs several things:
    - A great sales page
    - Great reviews from real people

    When you have these things then you need to find the people that are interested in this sort of thing and market to them.

    Consider running a WSO. It's only $20.
    {{ DiscussionBoard.errors[820681].message }}
  • Profile picture of the author Richard N Adams
    Hi there,

    Can you be any more speficif about your target audience. "Business owners" is a wide scope. What sort of size business? What sort price is the product? Have you sold any copies yet? If so, who to?

    Regarding articles, boradly speaking I would recommend submissions to EzineArticles.com and to high traffic websites/blogs that your target audience reads. Submit unique articles to each that link back to your website.

    But with more information on your market we can probably do a lot better than that :-)

    All the best,
    Richard
    {{ DiscussionBoard.errors[820689].message }}
    • Profile picture of the author rastabloke
      Sorry, I'll try to be more specific.

      The target market small to medium sized business owners. The product will prove to be invaluable to them, and I can safely say that it WILL save them money in the long run.

      I am nearly done with the site, and I must say it is very inviting. I like the idea of testimonials on it.

      The cost to each business to use this product would be between $10-$100 per month depending on how big of a business they are.


      I've never done a WSO, where's the best place to start?

      Thank you for the help.
      {{ DiscussionBoard.errors[820738].message }}
  • Profile picture of the author scattermouse
    Social networking is a great way to go if you're just planning on getting the word out. It's easy enough to get a massive audience on twitter, facebook, etc but the problem is getting a massive audience that are targeted towards your product.

    If you're going to write articles, are you writing them to drive traffic directly, or to get links to rank your main page on google? You need to be clear about what your aims are before you decide which method to use. I would also suggest that you're going to need to write quite a lot of articles to get decent traffic with either of these methods - perhaps you could outsource the article writing to a professional.

    PPC is brilliant, if you have the money to spend in the first place, and if you've done your keyword research well to make sure that your adverts are in the best place.

    You could consider doing a joint venture with an experienced warrior. This is an easy way to spread the word about your product to masses of people, and if you're sure that your product will sell very well then you can make really quite ridiculous amounts of money in this way.
    {{ DiscussionBoard.errors[820757].message }}
  • Profile picture of the author rastabloke
    submitinme: Thank you for the post, I have done some meticulous SEO work on the site.. I pride myself in making SE friendly sites that get decent rankings. Unfortunate, I'm dealing with a product awareness issue. I need to use other forms of promotion to efficiently get the product out there.

    Scattermouse: I was planning on writing 2 articles per subject relating to the product. I would put one on the website for the product to build content. I was planning on submitting the other copy to article directories and then link them back. -Then repeat about 30 times They obviously need to have completely different content to be effective.

    Nick1123: I am unclear on the WSO... can you elaborate?
    {{ DiscussionBoard.errors[820807].message }}
    • Profile picture of the author scattermouse
      Originally Posted by rastabloke View Post

      submitinme: Thank you for the post, I have done some meticulous SEO work on the site.. I pride myself in making SE friendly sites that get decent rankings. Unfortunate, I'm dealing with a product awareness issue. I need to use other forms of promotion to efficiently get the product out there.

      Scattermouse: I was planning on writing 2 articles per subject relating to the product. I would put one on the website for the product to build content. I was planning on submitting the other copy to article directories and then link them back. -Then repeat about 30 times They obviously need to have completely different content to be effective.

      Nick1123: I am unclear on the WSO... can you elaborate?
      Good. I misunderstood you regarding the amount of articles you were going to write - you're being much more sensible than I thought you were being
      Having said that, you may still need to write a few more articles than you had planned.

      It's hard to say too much more without knowing more about your product, but I can understand if you don't want to give too much information away at this stage.

      Let me try to explain what Nick was saying. Is your product something that you think other warriors would buy? If so, you have a perfect way to sell.

      Warrior Special Offers Forum

      They will charge you $20 and you can then offer your product, at a discount, to other warriors. Chances are you will make a lot more than your $20 - there's a lot of warriors with a lot of disposable income!
      {{ DiscussionBoard.errors[820869].message }}
  • Profile picture of the author rastabloke
    Video marketing is another thing that I forgot to mention. We have an on-site greenscreen for our web development clients. With this, we have been creating promotional videos for the product. I think that should help too.

    Any thoughts on this?

    I was also wondering if someone could point me towards a good email marketing resource/tool?
    {{ DiscussionBoard.errors[820853].message }}
  • Profile picture of the author Jem Crowne
    Sorry to be blunt but what makes you think that businesses would want this product;

    Have you done enough thorough market research: If I was you, I would go to a

    couple of

    local small businesses before spending precious time and money on marketing this

    product and it end in failure. Also you can go to the local chamber of commerce as

    well. If there is a need there, there will be a need online as well. I have a company

    that lets you advertise to small and medium size businesses, can't think of the name

    but pm me so when I find it I can pm you back. Hope this helps.
    Signature
    Authority Coach on Personal/Business Credit
    Follow Me @crownejem
    If you have any questions about credit email me!
    {{ DiscussionBoard.errors[820877].message }}

Trending Topics