Is this real life? IMarketing strategies

TacoCat

TacoCat

Bueno...
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Some time ago I participated in a start - up competition called start - up weekend. I pitched a solid idea, a software small and mid - level businesses that would make their life way easier (not related to IM). In just 72 hours (the length of the contest) we created the first version - I called it Alpha Beta Version (Since it wasn't a mock - up anymore, but I couldn't call it a Beta version).

After the competition was done, me and the programmer decided to continue expanding on the idea. I covered the marketing and sales side, he was building the software. After few weeks I already had a few clients that were ready to purchase the Beta version, but my programmer disappeared. When finaly I got in touch with him he told me that he doesn't want to work on this Idea. Since I'm not a technical guy, I couldn't continue the job, and as a student I couldn't afford a programmer. The Idea was put on hold.

Today something interesting happened.

Everything started as usual, went to my 9 - 5, somewhere around lunchtime I received a phone-call from an old colleague. We had a little chit - chat when he revealed the reason for the call.

Their company wants to invest in the software that I was working on, they will cover all the programming expenses and maybe even they will use some of their staff to sell the product. *we will have a negotiation soon*.

Some time ago, I spoke with some big american company owners, they were basically mentoring startups, here in Eastern Europe. We spoke about my idea and the potential of it in the USA market. They said it was big, because there is noone that offers such kind of software for small and mid - sized companies, but they still need it.

Now I'm thinking about the potential marketing strategies. Should I first strike offline, here locally in my country, or focus my efforts on creating a solid online brand. In the beginning I will be the only one working on the marketing side of it, so I have to decide which one will it be.

Does anyone have any experience in pushing softwares online? I will be going trough everything that @CCarter has written (since he pushed SERPwoo in the market), what about others? I would like to talk with anyone that has experience in this field.
 
I'd go straight to the businesses with some kind of cold calling or direct mail, or even emails to people in the agencies. I wouldn't try to rank it for terms and hope they find it (initially anyways, I'd probably do this later). You could probably scrape all the contacts, shoot emails, and hire a pro cold-caller to follow up with them and try to close.
 
Ryuzaki said:
I'd go straight to the businesses with some kind of cold calling or direct mail, or even emails to people in the agencies. I wouldn't try to rank it for terms and hope they find it (initially anyways, I'd probably do this later). You could probably scrape all the contacts, shoot emails, and hire a pro cold-caller to follow up with them and try to close.
Click to expand...
+1 for this.
Also you might want to listen to https://thefoundation.com/podcast/episode100
It was a great podcast about Clay Collin's fast growth for his Saas leadpages.
 
@Ryuzaki by scraping contats, do you literally mean, scraping e-mails from small business databases and sending them emails? Or scraping my on personal contacts and then contacts from those people?

Thanks @Maxime for recommending that podcast, I signed up for "The Foundation" newsletter some awesome stuff. It gave me a lot of ideas about content marketing.

BTW Dane talks about that for one of his businesses he basically scraped real - estate broker lists and spammed them with some useful content. Would this go trough in 2015? how much legal action might be taken against me? Or is there any way around it? Thanks
 
I never tried such email spam, but I know it is still a current viable method. What I tough about one day was to spam trough unconnected brand to me. But, when they register to the email list on the website I send them to they are not really registered to that site, but with my real brand newsletter. This mean all the angry people report that temporary website that you own on a different name. I doubt anyone will try to find who really own that temporary domain and trace you back.
 
Perfect... Haha. I don't think starting with spamming is the best route if you wanna build a brand/rep online. I would start with online branding, getting traffic through FB, reddit and possibly SERPs

Connect with agencies who have clients that meet your target audience. Give them free trials, promos, etc. Do some things to generate a buzz. Set up remarketing pixels on the site right away even if you aren't going to run campaigns for a while (you have an awesome looking website for it right?). Find a clever way to cap emails from site visitors and build that list.
 
Maxime said:
+1 for this.
Also you might want to listen to https://thefoundation.com/podcast/episode100
It was a great podcast about Clay Collin's fast growth for his Saas leadpages.
Click to expand...

Agreed, great information in that podcast. Matter of fact I just lit a boardroom full of fires under old croney asses using the content & pre-sell strategy in that podcast coupled with CCarters Big Brand awesomeness that I now live and breathe by for branding fundamentals. I added a bit of the sizzle strategy from the CCarter9 recruiting in there and got a fully funded budget before I left the room. Big thanks to you CCarter, I feel like I owe you a commission.

So OP, I'd say get that brand looking solid, then take all that momentum that has found it's way to your doorstep and put it in front of everyone you can. If you're slanging SaaS, follow eliquid and CCarter if you want great examples of a value in your product, the marketing around it and the bar to meet for quality. A pretty smart guy once said the secret to creativity is knowing how to hide your sources, and there are some really smart examples of SaaS success here on BuSo. BTW, thanks again @eliquid and @CCarter for the examples of how to do it right.

Best of luck OP and congrats on the news.
 
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