ISV Kaizen

A really interesting marketing case was disclosed by Derek Sivers in his post “Emphasize meaning over price = More paid sales“.

In brief:

A band was doing the usual thing of selling CDs for $15. They’d mention it once or twice from the stage, and sell about $300 per night on average.

A consultant asked the band to try a different approach:

1. Say to the audience, “It’s really important to us that you have our CD. We worked so hard on it and are so proud of it, that we want you to have it, no matter what. Pay what you want, but even if you have no money, please take one tonight.”

2. Mention this again before the end of the show, adding, “Please, nobody leave here tonight without getting a copy of our CD. We’ve shared this great show together so it would mean a lot to us if you’d take one.”

It changes the request from a commercial pitch to an emotional connection. (Replace market mindset with social mindset!) Allowing them to get a CD for no money just reinforces that.

The band did this for a while, and soon they were selling about $1200 (+300% increase in sales) per night on average, even including those people who took it for free! The average selling price was about $10.

But the important part came next:

Because every person left each show with a CD, they were more likely to remember who they saw, tell friends about it, listen to it later, and become an even bigger fan afterwards.

Then, when the band came back to a town where they had insisted that everyone take a CD, attendance at those shows doubled! The people that took a CD became long-term fans and brought their friends to future shows.

Think if this approach is applicable in your ISV business.

A professional friend of mine, technical writer Keith Johnson, offered me an opportunity to write a guest post for his excellent Great Documents - technical writing blog. During several chat sessions with Keith we were discussing various questions of collaboration, social networking, information exchange and sharing. This discussion convinced me to summarize my thoughts about e-book writing in a single post. Recently, Keith has kindly published my post in his blog.

Check it out:

Going to Write Another E-book?

… almost everyone finally arrives to the idea of summarizing the whole knowledge on a certain topic in a single document or informational product …

Thanks for the opportunity to share my ideas in your great blog, Keith!

P.S.: Also, if you’re going to promote your e-book via a website or a blog then consider creating a 3D image to increase visit\buy|download conversion ratio.

Here are several sample 3D e-book cover images to illustrate what I mean.

People may worry about buying virtual things. A realistic looking virtual 3d cover of your e-book will make people to feel like they are buying a real thing, not a file.

Sue Pichotta has kindly published my guest post about my experience in making demo video for TBS Cover Editor.

Although I’ve already known that some steps in my process might be more optimal, I honestly described what I did. I hope that this article will be useful for many software vendors and internet marketers who sell products on-line. Check it out!

In the article I listed several ideas for using live demos to promote your software. Here they are:

• Put it on your website in front of your visitors
• Upload it to popular video portals like YouTube
• Include a link to your live demo into your press releases and messages to bloggers, press editors, and prospects
• Promote your video with social bookmarks like Digg.com, Reddit.com and StumbleUpon.com
• Show it at off-line events: presentations, conferences, and trade shows
• Add it to your giveaway promotional stuff on CD or USB flash
• Put it on view in the reception area of your office

Now, I’ve recalled one more idea how you could use your demo video. If you demo isn’t just an overview of software features but shows how to accomplish a certain task then I recommend to submit it to archives of tutorials. Just search for “submit tutorial” to find appropriate sites.

Putting your live demo in front of thousand people who look for problem solutions on tutorial sites is a good way to increase the visibility of your product.

Feel free to add more ideas of live demo usage in the comments.

If your software was cracked, stolen, patched or keygened then most of warez downloads are likely hosted on RapidShare.com. Try to Google for your product name + rapidshare.com.
If you find links to your software cracks or keygens don’t hesitate to ask RapidShare to remove them. Actually, they react very promptly - usually in 12-24 hours.

Reporting is easy. Just send a e-mail to abuse@rapidshare.com with “Abuse report” subject line.

In the message body use the following pattern:

Hello,

I’m YOUR_NAME, a CEO of YOUR_COMPANY

We are the author of YOUR_PRODUCT software (http://www.YOUR_SITE.com) .

Please remove the pirated (patched and keygened) version of
our product from your server:
http://rapidshare.com/files/….
http://rapidshare.com/files/….
….

Thanks!

Sincerely yours,
YOUR_NAME
YOUR_PHONE
YOUR_CONTACT_DETAILS

This will take just about 15-20 minutes of your time to find and report warez links but the effect in sales, or at least in number of original trial copy downloads, may be significant.

As I wrote before, we want to keep the ISV Kaizen Blog free from hard selling and don’t write much about our own products except occasional references where appropriate. In every post I try to give some useful information that can help you improve a certain aspect of your own business. Through this blog we aim to build strong and long-term relationships with our colleagues: ISV, software developers, architects and marketers, technical writers, editors and journalists, designers, and other IT professionals.

Nevertheless, every 4-6 months I post a digest of the most important news about our company, Indigo Byte Systems LLC. This allows you to know more about us and to see that the blog’s topics were taken from real practice and experience, not from books or universities only.

So, here it is - the summer news from Indigo Byte Systems.

The Time Limited Special Offer:
Only this summer, the Dr.Explain will help you reinforce your IT business after recession.

Our recent market research proves that many IT companies who have survived in the recent financial recession, nowadays are working hard to release new products by the upcoming Fall 2009 to save their businesses and to get sales back.

They are working on a tight budget and with limited resources trying to cut the development and release costs as much as possible. They gave up bonuses, expensive offices and cars, and even free coffee for developers.
The software documentation is an obligatory part of any IT project and it also cannot be scrapped… but we can help you with it!

To support our colleagues we’ve dropped the price of our best-selling small business bundle “Dr.Explain Advanced License - Office Package” that allows you to install up to 5 copies of the Dr.Explain documentation tool in your company.

If your company deals much with software documentation writing then don’t miss this unique chance to get professional tools for special prices

Joint partner news :
TBS Cover Editor 1.7 released

Our fellow partner, True BoxShot Software, has recently released a new version of its amazing TBS Cover Editor - a full-cycle tool for creating 3D boxshots and virtual cover images from scratch.

What’s New in Version 1.7

Specular highlight
A specular highlight is a bright reflection from a light source and it provides a strong visual cue for the shape of an object and its location with respect to light sources in the scene. Now, in the TBS Cover Editor it is possible to specify the intensity of a specular highlight shining on a 3D object.

Reflection Effect
Now, you can use the new reflection effect for every layer in your design with possibility to adjust the offset of reflection, the opacity, and the length.

Bent 3D Screenshot
It is clearly self explanatory.

Printing the cover
In the new version it is possible to print a designed cover on printer with basic mark ups on edges, thus you can even theoretically make a sort of real software box with scissors and glue.

Download the new version and give it a try!

Make us your friend

If you use social bookmarks or networks then I’ll be happy to join your network. Feel free to add me as a friend on the following networks:

LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/zhuravlev

StumbleUpon: denniscrane.stumbleupon.com
Digg: digg.com/users/cognitiveforce/
Reddit: reddit.com/user/cognitive/
Delicious: del.icio.us/cognitive

If you use Dr.Explain software, please add it to your social bookmarks. Thank you!

Have a good summer!

Nowadays, the Twitter gets very popular. Frankly, the marketing value of Twitter is still doubtful for me so I have no personal account. Nevertheless, Twitter helps me to monitor what people tell about our products and in what context our product names are mentioned.

You can do the same and that’s pretty easy. Simply add a customized twitter search feed into your blog reader. The feed URL must look like:

http://search.twitter.com/search.atom?q=google+chrome

Put your product name or other target keywords into the query string and forget about it! Each time somebody mentions your product on Twitter you will be alerted and will see that post right in your blog reader. No extra efforts required.

P.S. That’s also useful for tracking cracked versions of your software appeared on the Web because pirates also use Twitter and usually announce their “victories” there too.

Recently, we needed a presentational video for an affiliated service that allows health conscious people to track their diabetes, blood pressure, or body weight records and to share the results.

The main difficulty of the project was a voice-over for the video. We needed a clear, calm and native English speech but there are no native English speaking members in our team.

The two services helped us in this matter.

EditAvenue.com is a proofreading and editing service marketplace that helped us to proofread the draft of the written script for the voice-over.

If you are non-native English speaker then through EditAvenue you can access hundreds of professional editors who can correct and refine your written communication. The prices start from about $4 per page (300 words). A relatively small task may be accomplished likely in the same or next day even if you don’t pay for express delivery service.

Once we’ve received the edited script we started to look for a talent to record a voice-over for our demo. That was a problem until I spotted a link and recommendation for Voices.com on JoS boards. That’s was amazingly helpful service!

Voices.com is another marketplace where you can hire a voice artist for almost any type of job - from commercials and presentations, to cartoons and audio books. For presentations, the rates are about $300 per 5 minutes of speech.

After we had posted a job description we received about a hundred of responses with sample records in several hours. We selected a talent, made the deposit and received the final audio files by the end of the day. That was really, really cool.

I highly recommend the above services to everyone who needs to create impressive presentations for his\her products.

Here you can see the final video with the voice-over.

Upselling (or Up-selling, or Upsell) is a simple way to increase your average revenue per customer. It’s easy and effective. At the time of purchase simply offer your customers extra options or a more valuable deal.

This is just a short list of what you can offer to your customers besides your main software product:

1. Bundles with complementary software products
2. Add-ons and plug-ins
3. Visual themes and skins
4. Advanced versions of software (Professional, Deluxe, etc)
5. Multi-user discounted licenses
6. Source code
7. Delivery of files on CD or DVD
8. Boxed version
9. Printed manual
10. Express shipping
11. Extended download warranty
12. Access to private knowledge base or use-cases
13. Bulletin or a newsletter subscription
14. Professional community partnership
15. Priority support agreement
16. Long term or life-long support agreement
17. Long term or life-long update agreement
18. Setup and installation services
19. Customization services
20. T-shirts, cups, mouse pads and other stuff
21. User training
22. User certification

Nevertheless, try to choose upsell options wisely in order not to turn your order page into a pile of junk and scam-like offers.
Also don’t force your customers into up-selling options as it won’t be appreciated.

This is not my habit to copy posts from other sources but this time I couldn’t resist. The info below seems to be very useful for any ISV and everyone who deals with sales copy writing.

Here are 7 ways to use numbers to increase the selling power of your next promotion:

Original source: www.technicalcommunicationcenter.com
Author: Bob Bly

Numbers gain attention, arouse curiosity, and add credibility to product claims.

1 - Make percentages look larger.

Taking percentages out to the second decimal place makes them look bigger, because there are 2 extra digits.

Good: 230%
Better: 230.47%

2 - The magic of 2,000.

When you have 2,000 or more of something, you can legitimately say you have “thousands.”

Good: 2,100 subscribers.
Better: thousands of subscribers.
Thousands sounds better because it could be anything from 2,000
to 999,999.

3 - Almost/over.

When you want to make a number bigger than it is, compare it to the nearest round number using the words “almost” or “over/more than.”

Good: 17 years of experience.
Better: almost 20 years of experience.

Good: 21 years of experience.
Better: more than 20 years of experience.

4 - Use credible numbers.

The rule of thumb is to use the round number when you are talking theoretically, and the odd number when you are presenting hard data.

Theoretical: “Make $100,000 as a professional massage therapist.”
Hard data: “Last year Henry earned $100,287.45 in his massage therapy practice.”

5 - Do not write numbers as words. Use numerals.

Good: Seven ways to reduce PC down-time.
Better: 7 ways to reduce PC down-time.

6 - Write fractions as whole numbers rather than percentages.

Good: 30% of wine bottles have cork rot.
Better: 3 out of 10 wine bottles have cork rot.

7 - Use the largest unit of measure possible to make a number sound big.

Good: 25 years of service.
Better: A quarter of a century of service.

When we think about affiliates we usually consider them as webmasters or newsletter owners who put affiliate “Buy Now” links on their websites or plug them into e-mail newsletters.

The on-line affiliates can reach only a fraction of potential users of your software products. There are many prospects who cannot be reached by on-line marketers because they spend just a little time on the Web or don’t trust on-line sales copies.

In the same time, there are many people who could recommend your products offline: on conferences, presentations, user group meetings, etc.
But long affiliate links with personal code are useless in this case because they are hard to remember. The prospects will hardly follow the affiliate link. They will likely go to main product URL and will order from there. Thus the affiliate won’t receive the commission for that lead. This is bad.

If you use Plimus.com for managing your affiliate program then there is a way to help your affiliates to sell offline.

Setup a discount coupon and assign it to an affiliate. The affiliate may give that special coupon code to prospects and they will apply it on your website when ordering the product.

There are two obvious benefits:

• The prospects will be able to purchase product with discount. So, this coupon will make the affiliate’s recommendation more valuable.
• The affiliate won’t have to share an affiliate link. He\she can simply refer prospects to the product website and give them the discount coupon code. Every order with that coupon will be counted as affiliate’s lead and s\he will honestly receive the commission for that order.

Also, on Plimus you can setup the coupon to completely absorb the discount value and it won’t be deducted from affiliate commission. This will also inspire your affiliates.

I hope this idea will help you make you affiliate network more profitable.

If you’d like to sell our help authoring tool Dr.Explain offline by using this approach and to get paid then join our affiliate program and request for your personal coupon.