Questions to ask when marketing software and services

After writing what must be my third or fourth e-mail offering advice to an online service whose marketing completely missed the mark with me, I started to notice that I was touching on the same set of points.

Again and again, startups seemed to miss that, despite their differing goals and shorter attention span, smart users will act like investors. As such, it’s essential to address, at minimum, these concerns:

1. Financial Viability: Can potential users clearly see how you intend to earn enough money to still be around and paying the bills 5 months, years, or decades from now?
2. Clear Pricing: If your free offering is more than just a trial period or if you offer free accounts to certain groups (eg. non-profits, open-source projects, etc.), does the landing page make that clear? Is your offering only free until the beta period ends? Try to, at the very least, give an estimate how much it will eventually cost.
3. Clear Offerings: How easy is it for users to compare your different plans? …especially any free offering you may have versus your paid offerings? Don’t get artsy here. Put a table/chart somewhere and, if it’s not on your landing page, follow convention and put a link named “Pricing” or “Plans” in your header.
4. Clearly Stated Audience: Potential users don’t want to waste their time learning about your features if your service is too expensive or won’t scale up to meet their needs. Make information on your plans clear and easy to find.

Now, when I write these e-mails, I tend to write them to people who strongly believe that their code is a trade secret, but when I’m actually choosing software and services for myself, there are two questions I ask (which are far more important to me) which marketers should have honest responses to:

• DataPortability: How hard would it be for me to export my data and take my business elsewhere if I grow disaffected?
• Open Source: Can I run and customize a copy of the software myself to meet my requirements for privacy/security/reliability/longevity/features? Can someone else pick up the pieces if the service provider goes bankrupt or loses interest in the product?

All in all, it boils down to two very subjective questions that people try to answer when deciding to invest their time, energy, or money:

• Do I understand what I’m getting?
• Will any changes without my consent be to my detriment?

Update: For end users, this How Do They Make Money? explorer helps to streamline some of these questions for the more popular sites out there.

Questions to ask when marketing software and services by Stephan Sokolow is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.