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We recently launched a website, and we're eager to start spreading the word. We've sent emails to our closest friends, to mailing lists from different universities, and also to journalists and tech bloggers. It's been pretty hard to get our foot in the door. So, I was wondering if anyone had any advice on which channels we could use to get more exposure. |
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I'd like to offer a different perspective. Looking at your home page, you sort of emphasize Facebook. So, I assume you target Facebook users. It's the largest social network on the planet. You shoudn't have any problem finding potential customers. Thus I wonder: Why are you trying to get more exposure elsewhere? When you say, you have problems getting the "foot into the door", it seems your past activities were not as successful as you imagined. So, what is the real problem? I haven't researched your activities on Facebook, but maybe, your prospects simply can't related to your product. Remember what Harvard Business School's marketing professor Theodore Levitt said: “People don’t want to buy a quarter-inch drill. They want a quarter-inch hole!” Maybe, your problem is not the lack of exposure but presentation. You're selling a photobook creation app while your customers are more interested to remember their bachelor party, their university degree, their holidays, their wedding, the birth of their new child, its first day in school, etc. They want to have easy, inexpensive, personal presents for family members and relatives. Your homepage is about technology and features. It should be about benefit. Your homepage also doesn't look trustworthy. It's selling too hard. It also doesn't address possible objections: Your testimonial box is below the fold and hardly noticeable, your demo button is too small and hard to find, and the 'demo' appears to be a video -- and bad one, unfortunately. There seems to be no free trial. Fix your homepage, first. Then, you may also get more exposure because people will understand what the benefit is. (On a side note: Replace the Flash animation with a simple Javascript slideshow! It's hard to figure out how to use it. Also fix the header navigation for Firefox 3.0) Hope that helps. |
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A great way to spread the word is to be relevant to a twitter trend. If there is a relevant trend, you can tweet about it with a link to your site, and you will get lots of traffic. Just make sure you are relevant. It might mean starting a blog section in your website, and writing a relevant post. It requires some work, but it is worth it. |
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Bloggers have access to lots of eyeballs, and more importantly it comes with authority. Two easy ways to get bloggers to write about you:
Note: do not impose any restrictions on what they write or how they do it. Otherwise you've undermined their ability to be authentic and true to themselves, which is their value to their readers. |
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Claus has some great advice! I would definitely listen to him. Also, try split testing on your homepage. If you go to www.odesk.com from a few different browsers, you'll notice you get taken to different homepage layouts. So don't stress out about entirely ditching what you have, but if you throw it into a test, you might see it's not as effective as other more simple versions. I haven't spent much time browsing around your site or searching in facebook, so you may already have this, but...perhaps you could put ads in facebook to send users directly into your app where they can dive in and start creating photobooks before making a buying decision? Turn it into something fun and let the users play before trying to sell them. |
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I think Claus has some extremely valuable foundational points that you should look into incorporating as soon as possible. The first impression matters a lot and one should be constantly improving it. More specifically regarding your question on word of mouth and exposure. Take a look at http://www.everlater.com/ I like the way they have some sample trips in place where I can see what it would be like for me to create similar trips. Similarly maybe you could have some demo albums where you could show off the capabilities of the system and all the features available. This would make it easier for people to fully understand the capabilities that you offer and get them to build their own albums. Essentially the more people that build and share albums the more exposure you get. So I would run a contest on twitter and facebook. The contest could encourage people to create and share photo albums (can you include voting of some kind, the contest could have a theme Halloween is coming up) to stand a chance to win cash or free photo albums shipped to them. Play with the idea a little and optimize it according to the resources you have available. If you need any further advice on the campaign please get in touch. |
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Another "launch"-type website you might try is Launchly: http://www.launchly.com. |
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I got a lot of good results from submitting to http://www.killerstartups.com/ also since your target market is purely facebook why not some facebook ads? You can target them down to the direct market you think would be best. Put a small dollar cap ($1-$5) a day so yo can play around with it without losing much. |
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I agree with all the comments that have emphasized content creation. If the product truly is worthwhile then your site and your marketing efforts should be geared toward showing off great examples that are relevant to the audience you are pitching to. This could be catching a trend or targeting a demographic. |
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The number one tip is to find places where you can Engage in conversations with your potential clients. It could be at facebook fan groups or other offline groups starting in your town. Facebook would be the starting place since your product is geared towards facebook users. |
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To appear on KillerStartups, you need to spend $50. Free submission hardly ever gets listed (not in my case). Blog is a good idea. And so is Twitter. Another is go to forums and post about your site. I am also a newcomer, but we are getting traffic through search engines and forums. |
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Here's a few ideas:
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