Five Undiscovered Best Ways to Market Your Software Solution

Introduction

Search Engine Optimization, Affiliate Marketing, Pay per Click (PPC) Campaigning, and Telemarketing are commonly used techniques to market a Software Solution. Even though, these methods are proved to be successful, they involve huge financial implications. It is observed that Start-up & Small companies cannot afford to follow these techniques, leaving them with unsuccessful sales revenue.

There are many efficient software solutions out in the market, which are left behind as there marketing techniques doesn’t reach the potential customers.

Here are the undiscovered five best ways to market your software solution:

1. Shareware and Directory Submission: Promote your software by submitting it to as many download sites and directories as possible. Create a software description file with SEO optimized content with all the features of the software. The main advantage is backlinks, for example: submitting a software solution to cnet.com or soft.com will enable backlinks on many other shareware download sites, which will enhance your website's page ranking and position in the main search engines. It is one of the most important software marketing techniques, that also helps you increase your traffic and from that your internet software sales.

2. Newsletters and Press Releases: A newsletter is an easy way to stay in touch with your clients, prospects and affiliates. The success of an e-mail newsletter distribution system depends on your database: you need to keep it up to date and accurate. You can target your e-mail campaign to clients and prospects or to affiliates. Concentrate on creating different campaigns for each segment that you target. Always ask permission to stay in touch with your clients and your affiliates. Let them know what to expect from your newsletters regarding content and frequency and respect the standards that you have established. Keep focused on the substance of the email - make it original and appealing. Offer the chance to unsubscribe from the newsletter in a very visible place. You can also take advantage of many websites that offer public relation services including free publishing of press releases. Of course you can always choose the classical way and publish your materials regarding product launches or news related to your company, in newspapers or software magazines.

Optional: Whitepapers, Solution Brochures are also very successful marketing techniques, submitting a whitepaper to techrepublic.com or itworld.com can generate thousands of potential leads.

3. Involvement in Online Forums and Blogs: It is basically free publicity. Invest time in subscribing to forums or discussions groups that deal with software related themes. Be careful though, some administrators might ban you for explicit publicity. So be creative. Many people visit forums and blogs in search of information. A blog post that deals with the theme under discussion, contains relevant information and is presented in a professional way could be of real interest to the participants. Give your website's address, the product's name and possibly your PAD file location. Use a signature and not a nickname, and you can also add a slogan related to the software product you want to promote.
4. Partnerships: This isn’t easy, appointing partners for the software solution in different regions and countries may sound very easy for organizations, but engaging the partners to sell the software solutions is very difficult task. Even it is found that 70% of companies offering partnerships fail to sell the solution to the end-customers. Offering facilities to partners can really benefit in this technique.

So, I decided to focus on facilities that an organization can offer to engage a partner to sell:

1. Monetary Facilities: Credit, Percentages, Discounts, Resale commission, bonus etc. are considered as monetary facilities.
2. Non-Monetary Facilities: Not for Resale Software, Training, Certifications, Recognition for sales associates, awards, etc., are considered as non-monetary facilities.

It is observed that organizations offering non-monetary benefits are more successful than organizations offering monetary benefits.

5. Enforce Pre-Sales Team: Pre-Sales Teams are considered to be very valuable asset for any software company. These Teams are equipped with the technical information and other points to pitch in sales. Enforcing pre-sales team on chat/sales support can improve the customer perception towards the software solution. Make sure your team response rate is good or above average with accurate problem solving and consultancy.

It is observed that organizations with 24/7 chat support, tend to generate more sales than conventional organizations which respond through emails.