What's the best way of marketing my non-traditional service?

In My Humble Opinion
1

Hi, I think this is a question for GQ, but maybe it’s more for IMHO…

I’ve devoted the past six months of my life (full-time) developing a service called LifeOnRecord. The web site is here but it’s basically a patent-pending national service enabling people to record and preserve their thoughts, memories, and stories using any telephone.

For marketing purposes, I separated the services into LifeOnRecord Weddings, Events, and Journals. LifeOnRecord Weddings and Events is meant to allow friends and family to make a simple phone call and share their memories, well wishes, advice, and stories.

LifeOnRecord Journals lets people securely record their thoughts, dreams, goals, and treasured moments anytime, anywhere. They can then access them through iTunes™, a phone, email, or the internet, and archive them onto CD.

I’ve had a number of beta testers and am finishing up tying everything together this week. The next few months of my life will be directed at marketing, and I’d like to know where I should focus my energies.

I want to get the biggest bang for the buck and strategies that bring in money sooner rather than later are preferred. I’m willing to spend $10,000 - $15,000 over the next few months.

Here are my current strategies:

  • I’m creating an affiliate program and will print up brochures and flyers that have coupon codes on them. I have a friend that will work on a part-time basis (on commission) and she will visit wedding planners, event planners, photographers, and videographers. The idea is that they will give the flyers to their customers and talk about the service, and if the customer uses the coupon they will get 10% off, and the event planner will get a 10% kickback. In my opinion this is a good strategy, but the downsides are that it’s pretty expensive to print up brochures, folders for the affiliates, sample postcards, etc. Also, my friend is basically just covering the northern suburbs of Chicago when this is really a national service.

  • I thought of advertising on wedding message boards or in bridal magazines. I’ve looked at wedding expos, but they want $600 dollars for me to stand behind a six-foot table and my pricing isn’t such that I’ll recover that.

  • I was going to experiment with Google Adwords. The hard thing is that nobody will really be searching for my service. I thought of using the terms “audio journal” and “voice journal”, but perhaps there are other terms I should use? I’m aware that the more popular the term, the more I’ll need to bid to have my ad placed, so I’d like to use targeted terms that aren’t too common.

  • I think the personal journal product has some potential, and my market there is mainly young families who want to record their kid’s stories, as well as travelers and old people who want to record their stories, but I’m not sure of the most cost-effective way of reaching that group.

  • I thought of hiring a PR person, but I’m not sure how much value they’d bring to the table. I do have access to a talented design person that can create nice looking brochures and banner ads.

  • Although I have a friend walking the street and meeting with affiliates, I myself am not a good salesperson, and so marketing which is more indirect is better for my psyche.

Also, a few people have said “partner with greeting card companies” or “partner with Creative Memories” but I’m not sure how to go about that, and I really don’t think they’d give me the time of day.

I’m open to criticism and constructive feedback, but realize that the service is what it is. I spent a lot of time getting it to this point, and I can’t easily “add video” or “add the capability to incorporate pictures”.

So, my basic question is what do you think is the most cost-effective way to market my services and get paying customers? Thanks in advance!!

2

I agree. Moved.

samclem GQ moderator

3

One thing you could do, if it weren’t against the rules, would be to post an ad for it on SDMB in the guise of asking for marketing opinions.

4

I think this advice will be helpful.

Write a Wikipedia article about the service and spam the living hell out of any articles even remotely related like marriage or graduation. Make sure to check back with your articles since every now and then someone will delete it. But if you are persistent those people will eventually give up since deleting stuff every day is boring.

Also make a claim to notability. Say something like X firm sparked the Y industry in the United States and is considered a pioneer in the field. Doesn’t matter if its a lie, it will save you from Speedy Deletion for making no claim to notability.

Write articles about the service and place them on your website. For instance “All about Marriage”. Say anything. it doesn’t matter what. Add the links to a ton of WP articles. Then you can say that the link to your site is actual content and not spam. Lots of people will believe that and let the link to your site stay.

If you can issue press releases, that’s even better because most of the boobs over there will take that as a ‘source’ for any claims to notability you have. That can prevent it from getting deleted.

If you think it could get proposed for deletion, you need to think ahead. Get some friends (10 is about right) to edit articles randomly for the next couple of weeks. Then when it gets nominated for deletion, your friends (who all now have a credible edit history) can come out and support a ‘keep’ vote.

“Spam 101” by Neptunian Slug

5

Don’t be a jerk, his opinion request is valid, and why wouldn’t he describe his business to us in the process?

Good luck with your venture–

6

I think it is a valid question, one I asked as I read the OP. However, samclem weighed in well before FatBaldGuy’s post, and didn’t see fit to close, but rather move the thread. To me, that would have said ‘comment and/or reporting unnecessary’.

7

And to be honest, I felt weird asking the question because I thought someone would think I had ulterior motives.

To save time I copied and pasted the description of the service from another email I had written, so it may sound like I’m trying to entice people, but I’m genuinely looking for insight.

Neptunian Slug, thanks for the information about Wikipedia. When you say, “spam the living hell out of any articles even remotely related like marriage or graduation” do you mean link those WP articles to the WP article about my business, or do you mean something else? What’s the benefit of writing a Wikipedia article? Will it come up in searches?

Thanks.

8

Congratulations, it’s a nice looking website

First of all, I’ve had a quick glance at your code (i’m at work so it was super quick, but I couldn’t see any traffic code) and *please please please * if you do nothing else, put a stats code in it. http://www.statscounter.com is free, invisible and not only gives you an idea about how many people are visiting your site, but where they’ve come from, how they’re interacting with your site and how the move through this. You will now know where you stand with regards to visitors and will be able to judge what kind of results your marketing efforts are having.

Once this is done, then think about spending your money on marketing. I think online is a cheap and easy way to go and provides accountabilty, but you need to target proper sites that your demographic goes to to be able to get the best bang from your buck.

Here’s my two cents from my online perspective:

  • Search engine marketing (ie. google, yahoo! adwords). You can buy words from YSM super super cheap sometimes. And you track them like an auction. So providing no one buys your specific words, you can get great marketing and results from them.

  • Search Engine Optimisation - Make sure your site is optimised for the best search engine results

  • start a newsletter for people interested to sign up. Give them a reason to come back.

  • create yourself a couple of banners in web standard sizes and see what deals the Yahoo!s of the world have. Sometimes they have tier 3 inventory available quite cheaply. this is the inventory that when tier one clients (eg. the clients with the big bucks) has run out, the tiers below pop in. They’re usually very reasonable.

Ok best back to work now
Good luck

  • T.
9

Add a link to your website to the article on marriage, graduation, whatever to the External Links section. Here’s the proper coding:
[whateverlink.com Article about marriage]

And if those articles have a ‘See Also’ section add a link to the article.

Remember, be persistent. People stop deleting the link and sending you nasty talk page messages after a while.

And if you don’t follow my instructions to the letter, your article can get bagged via articles for deletion or speedy deletion. See here for the deletion process

10

So how does the event host give the number to the guests? that’s the weird step I am having a hard time picturing. I can imagine some hesitation from the less tech savvy guests (which seem to be your intended target)

11

About a day before you posted that, I had incorporated code from Google Analytics. It’s right before my </head> tag. I didn’t do any research on web site analytics before I put in the Google Analytics code, do you have an opinion on Google Analytics vs. statscounter?

threnodyangelfire, I didn’t know what YSM was, but I googled it and see that it’s Yahoo Search Marketing. I’ll look into that. I like and will look into the other suggestions as well.

Neptunian Slug, good advice - I’m just not sure I have it in me to keep linking over and over knowing people are getting mad at me. I’m persistent, so I don’t mind doing it, but I don’t want to be a pest about this. Maybe I just need to try it…

Well, the idea was that in the save the date letter or invitation that goes out, there’d be an insert. Here’s a sample . Either they could have the printer who is already printing their invitations print the insert, or I would print it. They’d specify what it would say, and I’d print it on white or ivory card stock.

If they already sent out their invitations, they could communicate the number to their guests using postcards that I would print up and mail. They would send me their text, a photo I’d put on the front, and their mailing list, and I’d use a “build your own postcard” service to print, address, and mail out the postcards.

Finally, I was offering a photograph to postcard kit. It’s basically a sticker that goes on the back of a photograph that turns it into a postcard. The couple would need to hand address them, but it’s cheaper then the other kind of postcards.

However, the fact that you’re asking the question, makes me think that I need to highlight how the phone number gets communicated. Out of curiosity did you look at the web site? If you went to it, did you just spend a few seconds on it, or did you read the content on the weddings or events page? I’m trying to figure out how buried the information is to the average person. Thanks.

12

Regarding stats…your host (bluehost, right?) says that “Log Files & Site Stats” are a standard part of your hosting package. You should see what that means first before adding a third-party stats thing, as it might be more accurate and reliable.

You should hire a SEO (search engine optimization)/Web marketing company instead of a PR person. Your business is basically a web-based business, so you need a company that specializes in advertising online. A SEO company will come up with the right keywords for you and do the submitting and optimizing for you. You definitely need AdWords and/or Yahoo’s program, as a web-based business, and yes you will need to pay for good keywords, not just put yourself under very specific keywords that no one will ever search. Your SEO company will probably suggest starting several campaigns with several targets - weddings, old people, young couples with kids, event coordinators, etc.

You also might want to consider not starting your own affiliate program, instead, sign up with an existing affiliate company like Share-A-Sale (note: I do not work for them and I cannot say if they are really good or not. That just happens to be the only affiliate company I know of, as one of my customers uses them.) This will save you time and money and widen your affiliate base.

In the Web world, “partnering” usually means something like joining an advertising network, who will put your ads on similarly-themed sites and put similarly-themed ads on your site. For example, my customers have used Tribal Fusion.

And, print ads are never a bad idea. But you need to think globally, as you said this really is a nation-wide business. I would not sink too much money in to local flyers. Focus your attention to advertising online and in national publications.