atlascamp 2010 - marketing a plugin
TRANSCRIPT
The Battle for ExposureMarketing Your Pluginsby Alex Loddengaard
Tuesday, October 12, 2010
About Me
• Product Marketing Manager at Atlassian
• Started a month ago
• Formerly software engineer/consultant at Cloudera
• Cyclist, snowboarder
Tuesday, October 12, 2010
marketing
n. the total of activities involved in the transfer of goods from the seller to the buyer
Today’s Agenda:Marketing Your Plugin
QUICK - what marketing means for them
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Development Lifecycle
1. Define a problem
2. Solve the problem with software
3. Launch
4. Iterate with features and bug fixes
5. Acquire users
6. Measure
Tuesday, October 12, 2010
Development Lifecycle
1. Define a problem
2. Solve the problem with software
3. Launch
4. Iterate with features and bug fixes
5. Acquire users
6. Measure
Today’s Material
Already really good at 1,2,4!
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Today’s Agenda
• Marketing Basics: Sales Funnel
• User Acquisition
• Press and Product Launch Advice
• Sealing the Deal: Converting Customers
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SalesFunnel
Flickr: cosmicmoonchild, http://bit.ly/bHmKx2Tuesday, October 12, 2010
Example Sales Funnel
• Each dependent on the previous
• Each feeds to the next
• Smaller audience further down
• Your goal: Convert outbound marketing to purchase
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Winning Users
Boston.com Big Picture, http://bit.ly/atT84xTuesday, October 12, 2010
User Acquisition
• Sending the right message
• Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
• Videos
• Open Source / Worldly Development
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Think About Your Customer
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Psychology
• Answer:
• Why will someone try my plugin?
• Why will they purchase it after trying?
• Apply these to your marketing material
• Website, press media, blog, name, price
Don’t say “I think”
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Example: Online Real Estate
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Redfin: Confidence
Redfin wants customers to be confident in their agents.
Funnel: conversion
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Zip: Search
Zip wants their customers to be thinking about search.
Funnel: more users
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Search Engine Optimization
• Website performance in search engines
• Drives relevant search traffic to website
• Most people start with a search engine
• Having good SEO is very important
(SEO)
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SEO Tricks
• Determine relevant keywords
• Place keywords in:
• Title (<title>)
• Headings (<h1>)
• Link anchor text
• URL
There is more to itExample coming later
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Example: Redfin
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Title and Headingkeywords that matter
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Link Anchor Text
Anchor text contains keywords they want associated with linked-to page.
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Iterate With Data
• Pick keywords you care about
• Use Google Analytics to see how you perform
• Tweak SEO, blogging, and twitter
• Repeat
• Think about The FunnelThis is what marketing departments do a lot
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Google Analytics Demo
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Required SEO Reading
• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Search_engine_optimization
• http://www.seomoz.org/blog
• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PageRank
• http://bit.ly/98Jwft - Google keyword tool
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Plugin Exchange(plugins.atlassian.com or PAC)
• Upload your plugin to PAC
• Will help your website’s SEO
• Think critically about your content in PAC
• Name, link anchor text, description, etc.
• Will drive more users to your website
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add aplugin
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A Winning PAC Page
descriptive title
good featuretour
useful links
screenshots
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Case Study:Users Like Videos
• Atlassian has had success with web videos
• Create one several-minute product tour
• Youtube, Ooyala, whatever
• Give the video good website real estate
• Video how-to -- http://bit.ly/98dW6Q
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Tackle Open Source
• Atlassian used often in open source
• Apache, mongoDB, MuleForge, more
• Get your plugin installed and used
• Do it for free
• Google for “powered by JIRA,” Confluence
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Worldly Development
• Involve yourself in the entire software development community
• Open source, Atlassian, Java, everything
• Be a technical leader
• Solve problems, blog them, etc.
• More popularity for you means more plugin success
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Atlassian Ecosystem
• Become an ecosystem champion
• Each plugin developer can sell your plugin
• Get involved in the forums
• Come to AtlasCamp
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britannica.com, http://bit.ly/bnW29W
Launching a
Product
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Steps to Launch
• Prepare material
• Email Bloggers
• Become active in the discussion
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Bloggers Need Material
• Provide press material on your website
• Description of your business
• FAQ
• Logos
• Make blogger’s job easy
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Bloggers Can’t Find You
• You’re little, so be loud
• Email bloggers likely to write about you
• Think critically about that email
• They’ll be grateful to have new material
• Consider working with a PR firm
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Required Reading
Source: http://amzn.to/btnjLL
Helpful for writing to bloggers
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Blogotwittersphere
• Find relevant discussions and get involved
• Google alerts on competitors
• Twitter saved searches on keywords
• Technorati
• Etc.
• Be relevant, and don’t spam
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Get Involved, Seriously
• Don’t Astroturf
• Materially contribute to the conversation
• Provide facts and insight
• Ask good, difficult questions
Define Astroturf“Cool post. Here’s my link.”
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PAC, Revisited
• New plugin uploads are featured on PAC
• And in-product universal plugin manager
• Atlassian marketing loves guest blog posts
• We do plugin of the month webinars and blogs
• Talk to us, ask us how we can help
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ClosingtheSale
drinkneuro.com, http://bit.ly/cyLPi3Tuesday, October 12, 2010
Make Your Product Easy To Try
1st part of funnel with engagement
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Evaluations: Win-Win
• No such thing as too many evaluations
• Product will sell if it’s good
• Or you’ll learn if product doesn’t sell
• Provide screen shots, videos, tours
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Think Critically About Pricing
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Price is a Feature
• Make your product easy to try, then buy
• Example: learn from Atlassian
• Free, or at least cheap, to try
• Priced for an expense report
• Structured against lock in
• Free for open source
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Exposure, Exposed
Flickr: patrick-smith-photography, http://bit.ly/avikEATuesday, October 12, 2010
Acknowledgments
• peldi of Balsamiq - http://bit.ly/bQfj9E
• Jonathan Nolen
• Dan Rosen
• Daniel Freeman
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Required Reading
Source: http://amzn.to/9Metbp
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We Want You To Succeed
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Tell Us How We Can Help
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Questions?(thank you)
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