Ask HN: How would you spend $1-2K a month in marketing/ads for a web app? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: How would you spend $1-2K a month in marketing/ads for a web app?

17 pointscallmeed13 comments

We have a web app/service (http://nextproof.com) that is about 18 months old. It has a solid user base, a steady number of signups, and is profitable. However, most of the signups are coming from existing customers of our other services (we offer it when they signup).

I'd like to start bringing in new customers directly. I've set aside $1-2k per month for marketing, ad campaigns, etc. Anyone have creative suggestions on how to spend this money?

Ideas so far include:

- AdWords

- Facebook ads

- Niche ads on industry-related sites, blogs, and forums

- Paying someone to blog steadily

I also don't mind spending on related tools and apps. I'm looking into things like Kissmetrics, AdGrok, etc.

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I would look into a referral program. Offer your existing clients $50 - $100 for every new member they refer.

To take it one step further approach popular photography blogs and offer them the referral deal. Most of the large camera / photography blogs are already making their money through affiliate programs so there is a good chance they will be interested.

Good idea, I forgot about that.

Look up the demographics of your users that bring in the most money. Are they professionals? Are they students? How did they find you? See if you can tell how most of your purchasers are coming to the site. Facebook? Google? Direct links?

Use this to get some idea of where to start. Might be smart to invest some money in increased ad spend where your high volume sellers are coming from.

Alternatively, cut directly to the people you're interested in. Virtually every university sustains some kind of picture taking business, at OU it was http://partypics.com - they go to all the parties and events and then sell their pictures online and do well enough at it to stay in business. Target these companies to become their exclusive ecommerce provider. A single one may seem small, but there are thousands of universities just in the US.

Draft a nice sales letter and send it to every college photography business you can find.

Seach google for wedding photographer + area and harvest addresses or phone numbers. Assault them all with sales letters and calls. Start actively reaching out, don't just place an ad and sit back.

After you've started making calls and sending letters, start split testing headlines and opening paragraphs. Always ask yourself "How high is high?" Don't settle for a 10% ROI even if it pays your bills.

In my opinion, you have the ideal product for advertising on photography websites and blogs. Your ad dollars will go much further than with AdWords in my experience, with a much lower CPC. I am a big, big fan of being able to reach pre-qualified buyers like that with direct ad placements.

Yes, I agree and we have done that in the past. Our app is mainly gear towards wedding and portrait photographers.

The main problem I run into is that people with popular blogs in our industry (a) charge a lot for ads and (b) are likely to use a competing product. Should I be worried that they aren't dogfooding what they're peddling?

Should I try to negotiate some type "Pay Per Signup"/affiliate program with sites?

I'm not being snarky but if A and B are your experience, you're doing it wrong.

Let's say Popular Website A can give you 100,000 views and charges I dunno $35 CPM. Less Popular Sites B, C and D may only be charging $10 CPM, and you can get the same number of ad views in aggregate by placing ads across all of them. You'll have to work harder to find them, but I generally assume people who have no money have a lot of time when it comes to marketing.

As an example, I know of a site for wedding photographers with good numbers that will give you an entire year of sidebar ad placement for $275. (Drop me a mail on my contact form, I'll send you a link.)

To answer your other questions, don't worry about the dogfood at all. And no, affiliate prgrams are really hard to sell to individual site owners; they're generally not setup for it, don't understand it, and don't think it will work. The sales cycle on your part is way too long.

Hey Callmeed, I'm a huge fan of not paying for advertising. Use that money to reinvest into your product, make it something people want to blog about, or advertise.

Here's what I'd do

1. Create a product that is brilliant to use, and something that professionals on Flickr, or other stock photography sites use. I know this is obvious, but it's crucial to the plan I'm laying out.

2. Contact professional photographers, or photographers with large social media followings. See if they use any existing services similar to yours, see why they use them, work with them to get them users of yours.

3. If they're currently not using any, or if their using one and you've successfully integrated what makes them use it, proceed!

4. Partner with them! Partnerships = way better than spending money on advertising, in my opinion! Offer them 100% profits for x months, or waiver fees, that sorta stuff. Feature them, make them feel special. In return, they should promote their photos to their fan base, blog, twitter, facebook, whatever.

I'd also do what SHOwnsYou said, and pitch to all local businesses, and photographers. But most of all, I'd find blogs and sites with the your TARGET AUDIENCE and get them to do the advertising for you. This could be a giveaway (which is basically free advertising / awareness), or convince them to post about you because it benefits their readers.

I've used http://buysellads.com with mixed results. Lots of sites on there, but mostly with a tech focus. The CPM's and effectiveness of the ads vary quite a bit (from crap to very good), so it's worth digging around to find some good cheap ones. And as always, track everything.

I am not a Marketing Guru but, I would suggest you to have referral system and Free plan and restrict usage of your core service. In your case, I would restrict the number of photos user can upload every month.

This way users will get change to use all the features of your app and if it works for him, he can upgrade his account.

Word of mouth is another best marketing channel.

Also, you can sponsor bloggers and in return they will advertise your product. Eg. TutsPlus.

Check out http://www.ProjectWonderful.com It's an auction-style online advertising site, used heavily in webcomics (but you can find ads on all kinds of sites).

None of above. Marketing is about reflecting your USP and solving your problem effectively (and communicating it. I'd rather spend that money improving the app and providing good support.

Word of mouth generated that way (slow but most powerful) will be AWESOME!

I understand what you're saying but I should be clear that this money is not taking away from our development budget. We have an ongoing list of new features based on user feedback and we're putting development efforts towards it.

As for support (and not to brag) but our main company has one of the best customer service reputations in the photo software/online tools arena.

That should be enf in itself then. Now you can go social (fb, twitter) and do some give-aways etc. Let your users have fun with you. Best marketing ever.

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