Marketing Plan

Now that I've release Active Last Logon I can just sit back and watch the cash roll in. Or not. I had a couple of days of sitting around with that now what feeling, so this morning I sat down and wrote the outline of a marketing plan. It isn't long, but I urge anyone who hasn't done so yet to write it down. Even if you have it all planned out in your head. I've come up with several ideas I wouldn't have had I left my marketing ideas in my head. I'll be blogging about some of parts of this plan as I start to implement them and give progress reports as I go along. So here is the outline of the plan. You might note that some of the things on this list may not be marketing strictly speaking, but they all relate back to it for me so they made the list.

1. Continue to improve the look of the website - A good looking website should be a journey not a destination, however at some point you need to move on and work on other things. I plan to bring in outside design help in the near future as well.

2. Continue to improve copy on the website - Same as above journey not destination.

3. Send out press release - This is done. Well the copy is written and it will be released May 1 through www.prweb.com. I'm still learning the process and hopefully future press releases will have a wider distribution.

4. Reviews, Reviews, Reviews - I really think this is the biggest key to the success of Active Last Logon. Right now I'm building a list of online and offline sites and magazines to submit copies of Active Last Logon to for review. I'm also looking for any information anyone has about how to get the best response from the editors(ie them deciding to review, not some trick to get a good review).

5. Google AdWords - Can't beat the price, but I just don't think my keywords get enough impressions to help significantly. I started running ads last week and I typically averaged 38 impressions and one click per day.

6. SEO - Currently my site www.desertwillowtech.com comes up on the second page of results for my key words, and every once in a while the last result on the first page. Currently on the first page on msn, but virtually non existent on yahoo.

7. Free tools - I have ideas for a few Active Directory utilities that I'm going to release for free hoping to bring traffic to the site.

8. Articles - I'm planning to write some Active Directory articles. Mostly topics that relate to Active Last Logon, but some general Active Directory.

9. Become active in the Active Directory blogging, mailing list and newsgroups communities. Not spamming or astroturfing just joining in the conversation and giving a few tidbits about my product/articles/free tools in my sig.

10. Possibly run some banner ads on a few sites. The pricing is pretty good and sites are really targeted so it may be worth it.

I didn't really intend to have a list of 10, guess I've been reading Guy Kawasaki too much. :)

Active Last Logon Released

Sorry for the lack of posts lately, but it has been a busy month getting Active Last Logon out the door. It is now available for purchase. For those of you who missed earlier posts Active Last Logon adds another tab to Active Directory Users and Computers to display last logon information. For more information visit the product page or read this previous post.

Thanks to all who have given advice or tried out the beta.