Guerrilla Software Marketing Strategies

This is republished and edited from my original article at Biznik.

I run a self-funded software company. When I started out I didn’t have any money for advertising, and finding customers was an uphill struggle. After many false starts I struck upon a few excellent ways to get free exposure, by investing my own time rather than money.

In this article I’m going to discuss the methods that worked for me, rather than a complete approach to software marketing.

Identify a Niche, Hit the Blogs

When I released my first web application back in 2006, it was relatively unique because it used modern web technologies. In particular, something known as Ajax. I searched on Google and Technorati for blogs talking about Ajax. Then I visited each blog and filled out their contact forms to tell them about my product.

Suddenly my product was receiving dozens of signups a minute. A week later I had over 2,000 eager customers using my product — with people from big companies like Fox and Reuters.

• Identify a niche that will be interested in an aspect of your product
• This can be technological, not just your ideal customers
• Contact blogs who focus on your strongest niche

Free Software is Better than Advertising

A few months later we noticed signups were drying up, yet we still couldn’t afford serious advertising investment. Then I had an idea for an infinitely useful, yet incredibly simple product. I built it, and let people use it for free. I kept the signup form incredibly simple and encouraged friends and blog authors to try it. When people see a product is free and very easy to sign up to, they jump on board purely to check it out.

This product included some permission marketing options, and a space to advertise my company’s products and services. Almost 2 years later it has 10,000 users, with no paid advertising.

We’re still receiving several signups a day, so in terms of ROI performed better than any advertising we’ve paid for.

• Create a useful free product or service
• It could even be open source
• Carefully and tactfully create permission marketing opportunities
• Advertise your commercial products inside it

Widgets are Walking Adverts

Here’s another minor success story: I created a Mac OS Dashboard widget for my time tracking service. Widgets are easy to make if you’re a web developer because they’re inherently simple. You could just as easily outsource one to a freelancer.

My widget was featured on Apple.com, and generated thousands of signups and hundreds of thousands of hits to my company’s websites. We still get hits from there today. We reached customers we simply couldn’t through any other means.

• You can’t get advertising on sites like Apple.com, but you can get a link to your software
• Widgets are easy to build due to their inherently simple nature
• Even getting a freelancer to build a widget costs less than the equivalent advertising investment
• Put your logo on the widget so new customers (and friends who see their screen!) become familiar with your brand

Inter-Product Marketing

One way to keep in touch with customers, outside of email and blogs, is by displaying messages inside your product.  You could even drive this with Twitter.

• Make sure your interfaces include space for displaying messages to your customers
• Use this space for new feature alerts or advertising new products
• Allow customers to hide these messages

AdWords Competition: Look Elsewhere

We had real trouble competing for keywords on AdWords. Competitors were paying a high amount per-click, and we couldn’t keep up. There’s loads of other good web-advertisers though. None of our competitors were using social networks for advertising, yet sites like LinkedIn, Facebook and Biznik are incredibly popular now. In particular we’ve reached many new customers in the UK through Facebook.

• Look at what advertising services your competitors are using
• Rather than competing, use alternative services
• Consider alternative services that your customers use and advertise there

Creative Social Network Marketing

Social networks also include opportunities for marketing. Discuss product updates with customers via Twitter, create Facebook Pages for your fans, post company photos to Flickr, post interesting work your company is doing to Stumblr and del.icio.us — the list is endless!

If you get a lot of people bookmarking your product on del.icio.us, or a similar service, you can receive thousands of hits. We’ve been on the del.icio.us popular list a few times, and it really hammered our servers!

Use social networks and bookmarking services creatively — don’t spam customers, create something with value.

• Promote your products through creative use of social networks
• Track your fans and followers with social networks
• Give something of value back to your customers through social networks
• Encourage customers to take part through your inter-product marketing

Alternative Business Cards

It’s easy to get business cards printed using services like Moo.com, so why not use them to market your product or service? Use one side to advertise your product, and another to display your contact details. Then simply drop them off in places your customers hang out.

Have you found any unusual ways to advertise your product or service? Please let me know in the comments!