By S. Housley
Last fall we launched FeedForAll a tool for creating, editing and publishing RSS
feeds. Having recently gone through the experience of a product launch I thought
that I would take the opportunity to share my experiences and discuss what worked.
A key to FeedForAll's success was getting to market quickly, and the marketing began
before the official product launch. We immediately jumped into creating buzz about
RSS with newsletter mentions. We began blogs on multiple sites and RSS feeds so
that we could actually measure traffic and interest in RSS. After a short time it
was clear that the daily fresh content and interest in RSS was significant, and
if we could help educate users to the power and potential of RSS we could drive
significant sales.
During the beta testing phase we set up a web page inviting beta testers to email
us if they were interested in receiving a discount on the released version. The
e-mail established communication and a link to testers. The discount provided the
incentive for the testers to initiate communication and allowed us to establish
a relationship and dialogue with people who had an interest in the product.
Once the product was released, we e-mailed the testers, notifying them of the release
and providing a time-limited discount, encouraging the sale, and thanking them for
their assistance with testing. At the same time, we reached out to user groups,
providing online discount coupons, product literature, and a free Power Point presentation
that explained RSS. We encouraged the user groups to use the Power Point presentation
at user group meetings and distribute the coupons to their members.
Though RSS has been around for some years, it really hasn't yet taken hold with
non-technical populations. As a result, our marketing team decided that education
would be critical to a successful launch. We felt that in order for the RSS technology
to succeed we needed to educate users about the benefits related to RSS. We took
the time to prepare educational articles for syndication. We published the series
of articles available for web syndication that explained RSS and its benefits. An
archive of these articles can be found on the bottom of http://www.feedforall.com/newsletter.htm .
The article syndication increased links to our website from targeted portals that
provided quality traffic, all resulting in a successful product launch.
The articles served multiple purposes increasing page rank and link popularity,
as well as defining NotePage as an industry leader and expert. As a result of the
articles we were able to form some great industry relationships with other developers
targeting similar markets.
Through a partner program at http://www.feedforall.com/feedforall-partners.htm we were
able to further increase our market presence. In exchange for promotion on our RSS
portals, partners plugged FeedForAll on their sites, newsletters, blogs and forums.
In addition to traditional marketing through a press release, site submissions and
evaluation versions, we launched three content portals at http://www.rss-specifications.com , http://www.rss-software.com , and http://www.rss-syndication.com. The portals not
only educated users, providing detailed information about RSS feeds and syndication,
they provided quality links back and quickly became popular industry resources.
The educational material, like the podcasting tutorial - http://www.feedforall.com/podcasting-tutorial.htm contained
unique keyword phrases that significantly increased our ranking in search engines
in an area where we did not have a presence. The graphic tool generated blogger
buzz, driving more traffic.
In addition, we created a number of free items like an RSS to HTML conversion tool,
a free RSS button creator http://www.feedforall.com/public/rss-graphic-tool.htm ,
which ultimately increased our keyword exposure and reputation in the industry.
We also created a white paper section to better understand how our customers were
using the software. Through this interaction we were able to target specific industries,
explaining to them how RSS could solve real-world problems. Another area critical
to our success was providing an evaluation version of FeedForAll that could be evaluated
by the user prior to the purchase.
We conducted a number of campaigns with promotional offers. The coupons were time-limited
and our message was changed to cater to the audience it was addressed to. Sometimes
the message was informative; explaining RSS with a "By the way - this tool
makes feed creation easy." Sometimes the message was technical, with graphs
clearly depicting how traffic/sales can increase - pictures often speak volumes.
All aspects of the campaign were successful. We will continue to see long-term effects
from the article syndication for years to come, with increased page rank and Internet
exposure.
As a result of the linked marketing efforts we were able to drive significant volumes
of free traffic to the website in a very short span of time. The following link
represents an Alexa graph of website traffic during that time frame - http://www.feedforall.com/ice-ffa.htm . All efforts drove
traffic to the website, encouraging the online sale. All marketing efforts drove
website traffic, which pushed the sale. As the public becomes more educated, I believe
our sales will continue to increase. Multi-layered marketing works, and we will
continue to see results from the launch for an extended period of time.
About the Author:
Sharon Housley manages marketing for FeedForAll software for creating, editing,
publishing RSS feeds and podcasts. In addition Sharon manages marketing for NotePage
a wireless text messaging software company.
RSS Marketing Feed
