atlascamp 2010 - marketing a plugin

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

• aloddengaard@atlassian.com

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

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

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!

Tuesday, October 12, 2010

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

Tuesday, October 12, 2010

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

• developer-relations@atlassian.com

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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

Tuesday, October 12, 2010

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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developer-relations@atlassian.com

aloddengaard@atlassian.com

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Questions?(thank you)

Tuesday, October 12, 2010