They are Always Right
Since reading Bob Walsh's book, i've been working very hard on the exercises. Who knew that spending $19 would privilege me with homework? Exercise one is about clarifying who your potential customers are and there couldn't be a better time for me know my customers. In about two weeks, we'll be sponsoring Daring Fireball (a very popular site for Mac geekery) in order to get the word out about MercuryMover (soon to be your favorite program for moving and resizing windows on your Mac via your keyboard). We'll be cosponsoring the Daring Fireball RSS feed during the week of 24 March 2008*. This will hopefully bring me some eyeballs, but you can't sell software to eyeballs. Bob's book really drives home the point that this is your best (and possibly only) opportunity to hook your customers and get them to want to try your product. Your best shot at this is to say something that WILL appeal to the person who's reading (or probably just skimming) your page. So nu? How can you appeal to the readers if you don't know who they are?
When i first conceived of MercuryMover, i was proud of the fact that the potential user base was so large. By developing a general purpose app that would appeal to any savvy user (at least the keyboard oriented ones) i could cast a wide marketing net and then start counting the money. In truth, having such a wide potential customer base has hurt more than helped thus far. When anyone can be your customer, how do you market to them? What language can you use to appeal to "anyone"? After working on this exercise, i've identified a few smaller customer segments that i will target with the language on my site. I'm going to try target Web designers, graphic designers, bloggers and software/web developers specifically. I'll still try to have some catch-all language to try and appeal to your general LaunchBar lovin' power user. So loyal reader...do you fit into one of those categories? Are you in the catch-all group? Something else entirely? Comments are open (and operators are standing by) to let me know.
* My co-conspirators (err... co-sponsors) are Dejal Systems, Decimus Software and Xeric Design.