Advance of software to the West: waiting vs. reality on the example of one video editor

Articles on the promotion of IT products, as a rule, can be divided into two categories.

The first is tips for startups that are about to launch an ultra-innovative technology on the market to solve one of the pressing problems of mankind, or even to challenge a giant like Google. In the second category - tips on the proper allocation of the budget between advertising sites, optimizing conversions and all that.

In an ideal world, of course, this is exactly what happens: every new product has a high goal and a decent budget for promoting its achievement. In the real world, marketers often face much more trivial tasks with a number of limitations.
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With this text we want to mark the third category of articles: what to do if your product is not unique, does not solve global problems of saving humanity, there are no huge advertising budgets, but you still really want to grab a piece of the global audience.

As an example, we will rely on the results of the promotion of the VSDC video editor on the western market, which we were engaged in last year, and describe which methods worked and which did not.

“Freebie, come!”, Or how best to start a promotion from scratch

A product may be three times better than its competitors, but it is unlikely that they will take your word for it, especially if you are just starting up or have never actively promoted. Therefore, the freemium model and in general everything that can be attributed to the “free buns” is still a great way to speed up and facilitate the process of attracting an audience.

Some believe that free = only attractive in our market. This is not true. Free is equally loved in Germany, in Spain, and in America. These are not allegations, these are data of our Google analytics.

The very fact that our video editor offers a fully functional free version without any watermarks on exports, embedded advertising and other unpleasant surprises helped us organize more than one mention.

How to use free to get publications?

• First, knock on major publications publishing lists of “free alternatives”. Many bloggers update these lists at least once a year, so your task is to inform them that you exist and are worthy of attention. Among the leaders in terms of traffic, we consistently keep the articles “5 free alternatives to Movie Maker”, “5 free video editors for Windows” on such sites as Techradar , Techadvisor , Makeuseof, and so on.

• Secondly, there are sites that specialize in the review of free products only. For b2c, for example, Techsupportalert is just a godsend. Adequate editing, active community, guaranteed quality traffic. If you honestly have a free program, be sure to knock there.
  

What if you are not freemium

Select a few publications with a live audience, which occasionally publish the so-called giveaways - free distributions of premium versions with some limitations (in time, provision of technical support, etc.). This method may be especially useful for new projects - the chances that your the product will be approved for distribution rather high, as the editors are interested in daily promotions for readers. You will get a good push for further progress and high-quality traffic.

Do not be greedy! This is obvious to all - both editors and readers.

Everyone wants to climb on the tree and not scratch, but in progress - especially with minimal budgets - this will not work. Trying to push the “distribution” of the product with a 25% discount, at best you will not get the expected response - traffic, installations, word of mouth - because the offer is not so generous, and at worst you will not even be published, because 25% is not interesting .



If you are interested in this promotion method, here are three sites that gave us excellent results from the distribution:

1. Cnet Cheapskate - distribute virtually any b2c products - both software and hardware.
2. Giveawayoftheday is one of the most popular and rated resources in this category with a very active audience.
3. TheWindowsClub - as the name implies, the audience of Windows users.

NB: in most cases, the distribution of the same program is carried out either one-time or not more often than every six months.

Total:

Receptions with free of charge should be used: if you are honestly generous ready to distribute something and understand what it will give you.
Do not use: if you want to cheat and turn on "half measures" - for example, make a pseudo-free version. This will only negatively affect the reputation of the product.

Hiring a Western PR Agency

In order to get into those publications where it seemed impossible for us to get on our own, we hired a PR agency that specializes directly in IT products and publishing publications. That is, the package of services did not include the development of the concept, image, strategy. Only work on placement in online publications is exactly what interested us.

We cannot disclose the name of the agency, but we can name two reasons why we turned to them. First, he was recommended in his podcast by one well-known online marketing guru in the West. Secondly, it was necessary to pay only for the result - that is, for the articles published as a result. Ideal, it would seem.

As a result, in three months, only two articles appeared, which, apart from the dofollow links, yielded nothing. After a while, we understand why this happened.

If you have no good news reason, then you have no reason to contact the agency.

What were we hoping for? Professional relations of PR managers, creative approach and perseverance in the organization of articles - all the more so since payment directly depended on their quantity. As a result, we realized that there are no magic wands, and the guys at the agency did exactly the same thing as we did - just pitched the product to relevant bloggers by email.

Total:

Perhaps you should use it: if you are just launching a product or received an investment, and / or you do not have the time / skill / desire to distribute this news. The key point here is the news feed.
It is not worth it: if you do not have news reasons and objectively unique advantages, but you hope that the agencies have some special approach to placements. This is not true.

Paid publications marked Sponsored

There is a popular opinion among marketers that the “Sponsored” label automatically makes the placement of an article useless, because no one reads such materials.

We experimented several times with paid publications in large niche publications and concluded that they slandered sponsored content and could still extract it from it. Yes, the traffic from it is noticeably less than from the “natural way” of the articles received. But there are a number of points from which you can get the benefit:

• Firstly, it is 5 kopecks per seo. Dofollow link on a site with high DR - it is important for those who work on organic.

• Secondly, it is a long-term investment. Objectively, it is very difficult to break through hundreds of letters to the editor and draw attention to yourself. Especially if you are not Google (and you are not Google, do not be fooled). Sometimes a sponsorship review is the only quick way to do this.
  
  However, if the same revision will subsequently prepare, say, a selection of services in the same niche as your product, then the likelihood that it will at least be considered for inclusion in some “Top 5” is higher than if you had they were not published.
  We had it, for example with Techadvisor . After a paid review, we were several times included in the selection of the best video editors.

• Thirdly, this is the perfect time to discuss free accommodation options. While you are having a dialogue, tell me that in the appendage you can write a guest post or column for placement in the same edition. The odds that you are allowed to try are 50/50. Not all blogs have a flexible editorial policy regarding guest posts, and not always the advertising department can and wants to connect you with the editors. But it is worth trying.
  
  We thus received 3 additional publications in various publications over the past few months.

• Finally, ad placement can be made readable and very shareable if you include additional benefits. Make the “Sponsored” mark fade against something bigger.

You can arrange a contest, again - to distribute free licenses, discount coupons - anything, to switch the attention of readers from the "advertising".

For example, in August, we offered 5 licenses for the PRO version of VSDC for free in the SLRLounge review, and despite the “Sponsored” stamp at the very beginning of the article, it was actively searched and commented on in social. networks, and we received normal traffic to the site and 5 satisfied users of the pro version. A satisfied user, as you know, is also an investment.

Well, it is worth noting that, fortunately marketers, there are still editions that simply know how to make advertising content with high quality. In Runet is, perhaps, VC.ru and DTF . In Western blogs for the lifting price is more difficult to find.

Total:

The sense will be: if you have a budget for the payment of the review and ideas on how to squeeze the most out of the placement, not limited to what the editorial board offers.
There will be no point: if you want to post a press release or something just as boring.

YouTube and YouTube

Strange, but still not everyone believes in this promotion channel. Like VC, it is considered a platform for schoolchildren. On YouTube, we are still spending significantly less effort than on textual content, and yet this platform is growing faster than the rest, giving 60% of traffic among social networks and tens of thousands of clicks per month. Moreover, only 10% of these transitions are from our own channel.

What we did:

First, they reviewed the analytics of the channel in order to understand which videos are working for our audience, who generally watches them, where they come from and at what moment close the window. All that we publish is short simple video instructions for working with a video editor, but even here there was something to optimize: the regularity of publications (at least once a week), visual design, navigation, keywords.



We publish new videos on Facebook, on the website in the instructions section and, if possible, we embed sponsored publications. As a result, without much effort for the year it turned out to gain 10 thousand subscribers almost from scratch.

By the way, the important point here is the human approach. We noticed that many competitors ignore or not enough attention is given to feedback under video on the channel. Noticed ... and decided not to be so, because leaving a comment today is an effort on the part of the user that deserves to be noticed.

The second step was to find the videos about our video editor uploaded by users and ask them to give a link in the description. We were very surprised to find out how many people published whole ten-minute videos about VSDC, but did not include a link to the product.



Third - YouTube. With YouTube, we started working not so long ago and so far we have been experimenting with small English-language channels, in which even not hundreds, but tens of thousands of subscribers. However, such trends have already been noticed:

1. To get a free mention is real. Moreover, some video bloggers, like journalists, fundamentally refuse money and any kind of partnership for the sake of objectivity. So, in the fall, the famous installation expert Justin Brown (88K subs) included us in the list of the best free video publishers for Windows. When we contacted him, they counted on sponsorship, but they directly told us that they didn’t need our money, and mentioned it if they liked the product.
2. If you see the numbers of 10 thousand subscribers, you think that youtuber is not worth attention, you are not always right. Pay attention to the quality of content and the activity of subscribers of the channel, because you can stumble upon a growing star. One young YouTube user made a review a year ago for $ 100 with 40K subscribers. Today he has more than 83K, and this review already has 147 thousand views and 693 comments.
3. When choosing between sponsored text postings and sponsored reviews from YouTube, you should choose the second. The level of trust in video-bloggers is still noticeably higher, and the average overview on the channel, say even from 15K subscribers, gives up to a thousand transfers per month with a conversion of 25%. It is worth such a review within a few hundred dollars, if we are talking about the United States.

The difference between collaborating with a journalist / text blogger and collaborating with YouTube is that for the latter, reviews are the main bread. He does not sit on the salary, and payments from YouTube, if there is one, are tiny. Therefore, free mentions are the exception rather than the rule.

The good news is that the cost here is quite lifting, and bargaining is appropriate. The bad news is that the cycle of production of content from them, as a rule, is much longer. Sometimes, a short insert has to wait for three months.

The platform on which you can find YouTube from any country for cooperation is Famebit , but searching with pens also works fine.

Guest posts, publications from bloggers - that's all

Many materials are written on this topic, including on Habré, and of course, not just. Text content is still very effective in promoting, however, due to the increasing flow of information, it is necessary to strain every year.

One of the main rules that is difficult to follow is to stop trying to post articles about your product and generally talk about it as if it were in a vacuum. Such publications make little sense for any, especially non-unique products. It’s not interesting for bloggers to write about it, for the audience it’s not interesting to read.

If you don’t have a news story, look for contexts, trends in which your product can be successfully entered, and use them everywhere - in advertising on Facebook, in pits to journalists and bloggers, in guest posts.

• Speak not about the product, but about the problem that it solves, about the benefits it carries.
  ( “How you can make beautiful subtitles for video using the gradient” )
• Think what combination your product might be interesting to the typical user.
  ( "A set of free tools for a beginner YouTube" )
• Follow the news in your niche and use trends.
  ( "GoPro stopped supporting its video editor! This is what you can now use to process recordings from your action camera." )

By the way, the latest trend was especially successful for us, because VSDC is now officially recommended in the FAQ on the GoPro website, and The Guardian has included our video editor in the list of the best tools for video editing from drones.

Everything, we already finish

In this article, perhaps, the combination of “news occasion” is used too often, but the fact is that in the absence of this, difficulties with promotion begin - forcing to dodge trying to efficiently light up on the sites where your audience lives.

Just in case, we give examples of what NOT is a news occasion:

• the very existence of the product (to be honest, even the launch of the product does not pull every time a news occasion)
• a new version of a little-known product (this applies even to the versions that users have been waiting for a whole year),
• opinion / comment of the founder who does not have a unique expertise or is not a media person.

In general, when someone tries to offer you promotion through press releases based on these three points, politely refuse. Neither bloggers nor journalists will pay attention to your press release, and for the same money you can experiment with advertising on Facebook or from YouTube.

On this, perhaps, you can finish with the tips, but we will be happy to answer questions in the comments, and maybe even be able to prompt something to the owners of b2b products - because with them there is also promotion experience.

gerente_capaz and galkinator