I'm building a web app and have budgeted $3000/month for marketing. The app is an applicant tracking tool, which is a market with plenty of competition.<p>I'm also thinking about bringing a partner on board to help guide the marketing portion of the business to make sure it's done right because I'm clueless in that area. Looking for advice, insight, warnings, and links to more information & resources.<p>Thanks HN folks!
How can you have a marketing budget and not a marketing strategy?<p>How long have you existed? what data have you collected? what worked and what didn't? Whoever you bring on board as a marketing expert will ask you these questions (if he doesn't, you don't hire them.)<p>If you're just starting, you need to ask "who did we develop this for"? Then go where your supposed clients are. The simplest thing you can do is use Adword's Keyword Tool to see how sought after your keywords are. Google your product description and look at the top 20 competition websites. Analyze the sites and see what language they're using, collect synonyms, different phrasings and popular descriptions (all done with firfox plugins, btw.) Then search those keywords in the Keyword Tool.<p>This will give you a bird's eye view of how your competition is spending its Google advertising money (you will see them in the ads on the right after you search.)<p>You now have enough data to form a rudimentary strategy.<p>The fact that you like this skill in-house is not very reassuring. No one you can hire will care enough about the product to put in the grueling research hours necessary to make your product a success. You might be better off forming partnerships or joining a CPA program; at least the scalpers will push your app for a commission, though they might drag your brand through the mud in the process.<p>If it's your job to <i>spend</i> the $3k, please don't throw it away just to seem like you're doing something. Get a marketing person on retainer + commission, skimp on the retainer but go heavy on the commission; that guarantees they have enough incentive to come on board and go for the long run. Pay their early commissions with little fuss, and maybe pull in some multitier incentives (though all of this could be avoided if you developed the talent in house, and pushed your product like crack, with solid quantitative data in hand. Otherwise your marketing strategy is "Pay and Pray".)<p>Good luck!
So, it looks like there are two main options so far; (1) search and (2) direct sales.<p>This product will be offered as a SaaS product and be priced between $50-$500 per month. Most of the competition is enterprise level software that's sold directly to their customers, although there is big money being spent on search advertising (between $15-$20 per click) in this market as well. Because it's direct sales and custom software packages, it's difficult to gauge pricing across multiple competitors. Also, since many of our competitors offer applicant tracking as one piece of larger HR software suites, it's difficult to gauge user experience and user satisfaction with these tools.<p>Does that information help at all? I'm still very interested in more feedback. I know the HN community has a ton of super-smart folks that have either been in my shoes or are just smart enough to figure it out.
- AdBrite.com is excellent. Put your budget to just $5 a day or so and do text links across there network and you get super cheap clicks and they are pretty good clicks.<p>- Revieme.com is good. You can create a "campaign" and then pick a key phrase like "applicant tracking tool" for $10 each blog they write about it. Works really good.<p>- text-link-ads.com is worth spending several hundred dollars a month on. The static links do seo wonders, I have moved up from the 3rd page to the first page doing this and for a client I am spending over a thousand dollars a month with this service on different keywords and it is doing really well.<p>- Google adwords is important and managing your budget is very important when using adwords.
I assume that this is like, e.g., Taleo or CATS. If so, you're lucky because most of the competition sucks. Unfortunately, switching costs are high.<p>I would suggest Adwords and/or SEO, depending on whether or not you have free time. For Adwords, you can probably A/B test your way into getting whatever audience you're targeting (in-house, individuals, big companies, etc.). SEO is more time-consuming, of course, but it can get you a ton of credibility. Links are endorsements; getting a link from ere.net will boost your rankings <i>and</i> impress recruiters you talk to.<p>Actually, shoot me an email. I used to be a recruiter, and I currently do online marketing. We should discuss this!
What is an application tracking tool? Are people searching for this type of product on google in any great volume?<p>If yes focus on seo with a little ppc in the short term. If not you will have to identify where your target market hang out and then work out how to get exposure there.
Well, you could give it to me, and I promise I will speak highly of you for doing so! :D<p>However, I don't think that would help you much in actually marketing your product successfully. I think first you should figure out who you're selling to.