It’s every software programmer’s goal to have their program downloaded by millions of people across the globe, to have their brand name synonymous with the product market (Think Skype and Google). What kind of software marketing strategy do you need to create this top of mind awareness for your brand?
Online Marketing Bible (Part 1 of 2)
Only Fools Rush In
As with marketing in any industry, it starts with the product. Is this something that people need, want or can use? Is it functional? Have you fixed the bugs? These questions need to be answered before you can start marketing your software; nothing tanks a marketing campaign like software that is too buggy, or has no real value to your target market.
Recently I tested out an app, a YouTube to MP3 converter, the site claimed to have a lot of likes and shares, which in turn made the app seem legit. Once I downloaded it, I could quickly see that the likes were probably bought and paid for, since the app wasn’t functional. This company had pushed out their product to quickly, and sure enough within a few weeks it was no longer available.
Had they waited to fix the issues, I might have downloaded it, and told my friends and social media followers about it, which could have helped with a successful launch. Instead they rushed the product and it failed.
Don’t Play Hard to Get
Hosting your software on your own website is crucial, but don’t stop there, generally speaking you want to offer on as many sites as possible. Since it can be tedious work to upload the information over and over again; I recommend using a PAD file. With a PAD file one can fill out as much information as possible, and then upload the software to hundreds download sites. It’s possible that your niche has a download site that isn’t affiliated or listed with the PAD site; upload the software to these sites manually. Odds are good that people who are visiting these download sites are more likely to evangelize the software to their friends.
Let’s Get it Started
Now that the software is built and available throughout the web it’s time to start driving traffic. There are several options, and they aren’t exclusive to one another, in fact, the more you do, the better the results will be.
Help me if you can I’m feeling down – I’m often asked about the value of SEO, and is it worth it to hire an SEO to help with your online marketing. Let’s take a look at Rdownloader.com, they offer a free YouTube Downloader, however if you check Google for a YouTube Downloader, you won’t find them in the first few pages of results. Only if you know to search them by name will Google be of assistance. Rdownloader.com has recently started working on their SEO with the goal of achieving a first page ranking for the key-phrase “YouTube Downloader,” This will directly bring about an increase in targeted traffic to the site and ultimately more downloads.
The first step in the process is to know what your potential consumers are looking for, and how will they search for you. One mistake that many companies make is taking the keyword that is important to THEM, and optimizing it, not taking the consumer and what they are looking for into account. Google has a free keyword tool that can help you see what words or phrases are more likely to be searched. Once you have you’re a few keywords or keyphrases you can start building content around them.
The more unique your content is, the more likely it is to be shared online, which is one of the main ways that Google determines the sites value and where it should rank.
In the coming-soon post we will find out ways to get more traffic, by using software products such as Somoto and by creating buZzzzZZz!! Don’t miss it!
Featured image by 401 (K) 2013 via Creative Commons, retrieved on February 13, 2013.
[...] the previous post we saw the early stages of marketing, now let the fun begin with this post, the second of the [...]