Your prospects are busy. They don’t care a bit about your software. Their bills are due, the kids need to be picked up from day care, they aren’t getting enough sleep and they don’t trust advertising.
How are you going to break through? How are you going to catch their attention long enough to let them know you have something that could really, really help them?
Robert Collier, a famous adman from the early 1900s said it best… “Start with the conversation already running in the prospect’s head.”
1. Make it All About Them
You need to develop a Position. This ‘position’ clearly and succinctly communicates what your solution does for them. It also presents a point of differentiation from your competitors.
Your Position allows you to get into and STICK in the prospect’s mind.
Whole books have been written on Positioning (see authors Al Ries and Jack Trout) but here it is in a nutshell. You need to decide WHO you are talking to… what their NAGGING problem is… how your product solves it… and how your product is different from the alternatives.
When you answer those questions you are ready to develop the Positioning statement.
For Tax Prep Software it might be… “Shaves 137 minutes off the average tax prep time, and finds an extra $527 in deductions.”
2. Discover Patches of Organic Fans and Develop the Business.
When I used to write advertising for all small businesses (not just Software companies and ISVs), I noticed quite a few Dentists contacting me “out of the blue.” I decided to investigate and discovered that a dentist I had previously written an ad for was referring me to his colleagues at dental conventions.
Apparently, dentists had a hard time finding an agency that understood how to really bring in the business. Over the next few years I honed a special pitch and developed targeted marketing for that niche. It created a nice income for me by really speeding up the sales process.
Put in a system to discover this… If you have customers select their profession or industry when they purchase, you can create a simple system for noticing surges (up or down) and look into it further. Your software may be getting used for reasons you may have never thought of… Then, you could create an entirely new website for this group with specific testimonials, case studies, tutorial videos, etc.
3. Get Aggressive About Video!
The benefits of video can’t be overstated… particularly for software services. Showing your software in action helps melt resistance to purchase (or even trial) away and makes the user feel like she has a better shot at getting the full benefits. Most people won’t sit down and read 8 minutes of text BUT many will watch an 8 minutes of video (if it’s done right).
For an example of video to sell software, done right, go to Jason Demos Basecamp’s Dashboard. Notice the video is a bite-sized 49 seconds long and focuses on one main area without going TOO in-depth and getting mired in details.
All sites selling software should have these types of short, demo videos.
No exceptions.
4. Use Case Studies and Testimonials.
It’s surprising how many companies STILL don’t do this… In every split test I’ve ever seen, testimonials boost the conversion rate. Case studies have even more impact. It’s even better if they are VIDEO case studies or testimonials.
5. Follow Direct Response Advertising Principles… and DON’T rule out advertising in traditional mediums (print, radio, direct mail)
Forget about touchy-feely ads that don’t educate AND describe the benefits of your solution to the prospect in plain english. Every communication needs to serve, educate, inform and sell. This doesn’t mean acting like a snake oil salesman or a late night ginsu knife hawker. It means you develop the compelling business case for your software, give clear instructions on how to order and ask for the sale (or some other conversion on the way to a sale).
Anything less and you are leaving money on the table… and WILL get passed up by a competitor who follows direct response principles.
AFTER you have your online strategies humming along, including utilizing Web2.0 and Social Media strategies, I suggest testing some direct mail and/or print advertising. It is important to narrow your focus and go after the prospects who are ALREADY buying or naturally inclined to buy your software. While there is TONS of money to be made online, if you want to hit the BIG LEAGUES, there is still much, much more money to be made by marketing off line. (I know I will catch flack for the last sentence… but, it’s a simple matter of mathematics which I’ll flesh out fully in another post.)
6. Use the power of Joint Ventures!
Make a list of who is ALREADY talking to your prospects… Then, reach out to them and set up a business relationship for them to promote your products to their customers. If you can prove that many of their customers are already using your products and love them, you will have a much easier time convincing them. Likewise, the prospects, who already trust your new JV partner, will be more likely to trust you.
You will have to share some of the revenue… but you will have almost NO acquisition cost. Win-win!
(For more on this strategy, including an 8 step process to use read “Discover Rich New Oceans of Prospects for Your Software.”)
7. Use Social Media to Connect, Support and Improve.
There are already many, many savvy software companies using Twitter to make customers aware of outages, blips in service, updates and to ask questions. This is a FABULOUS use of Twitter to connect, support and improve.
Look at the Tweet below:
This Tweet provides BlinkSale with an opportunity. Do they have a process in place to take advantage of it?
If BlinkSale was my product I’d have a process in place to see just how big an issue this is… I’d contact @overmortal to see EXACTLY what the issue was… I’d do some searches to discover if other people are also having it and make sure that we have the solution handy in our FAQs and other documentation. If it were big/important enough, we’d add it to future features roadmap (or bug fixes) of the software.
What if this message got Re-tweeted thousands of times? Both users and non-users (but, prospects) could assume it has NO Excel support. One (or more) of them could then post this in a forum or blog which is indexed by the search engines… something that may have been really “nothing” pops up in all future searches for BlinkSale, whether it is true or not.
Scary.
But, by having a process in place to handle such possibilities Social Media can help you Connect, Support and Improve.
Jason
P.S. Can you think of other ways to increase software sales? If so, share them in the comments!
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