Step 2 - Marketing

This step is where Russ and I are admittedly the weakest. We have been programmers, managers, executives, board members, but we have always left most of what would be traditionally called marketing to very talented people who have marketing skills. That said, if we are ever going to make an indie app development company work, we have to become really good at marketing.

Since we don't know much about it, we spent a few days studying what people are doing out there. I should mention at this point that our absolute favorite business book is Rework by Jason Fried and David Heinemeier Hansson.  The chapters in the PROMOTION section (pages 165-198) are a must-read, and a basis for our marketing efforts.  Here is one of my favorite quotes from this section:

Marketing is not a department
Do you have a marketing department? If not, good...Accounting is a department. Marketing isn't. Marketing is something everyone in your company is doing 24/7/365.

• Every time you answer the phone, it's marketing.
• Every time you send an e-mail, it's marketing.
• Every time someone uses your product, it's marketing.
• Every word you write on your Web site is marketing.
• If you build software, every error message is marketing.
• If you're in the restaurant business, the after-dinner mint is marketing.
• If you're in the retail business, the checkout counter is marketing.
• If you're in a service business, your invoice is marketing.

Recognize that all of these little things are more important than choosing which piece of swag to throw into a conference goodie bag.  Marketing isn't just a few individual events.  It's the sum total of everything you do.  -Rework by Jason Fried and David Heinemeier Hansson pages 193-194.

So, we figured that everything we did needed to be marketing.  We had already identified who we would be marketing to (see Step 1 - Market).  Now we needed to figure out how we would help them to individually know about the product.

Here's our preliminary list of marketing strategies we plan to chase to help our target users know about Name Shark:

• Try to get reviewers to review our app
• Update our website, landing page, and blog (check)
• Contract with a search enginge optimization (SEO) guru.  Choose niches specific to our target user profiles.
• Banner advertisements on trade sites targeted at user profiles (e.g. sales people, CEOs, event planners, sports fans, etc.)
• Submit to Product Hunt
• Submit to Show HN (Show Hacker News)
• Facebook hype (to our friends)
• Ask friends to post about it on social media
• Reach out to companies/individuals that created services/tools/pods/APIs that we used and ask them to feature us
• Give tips to local newspapers about "local entrepreneurs"
• Niche magazine ads (again for the specific user profiles)
• Adwords
• YouTube advertising (contract Mango Creative to do some humorous and emotional videos for us)
• 1 Million Cups - meet with others and ask them what they did.  Maybe present there.
• T-shirts

One quick thought on t-shirts: we saw a post on Hacker News about a guy who wears a t-shirt or polo with his logo on it every day--everywhere he goes.  This fits in really well with the idea that, "Everything You Do Is Marketing."  We have been doing this, and we get asked almost every day, "What is Awesome Geekness?" or "What is Name Shark?"  Wearing logo shirts provides you with lots of opportunities to verbally sell your product everywhere you go.

◀   Step 1 - Market   |   Step 3 - Aesthetics   ▶