The Press Release That Attracted Loads of Visitors
Despite being a $5 billion per year market, our target market is a fairly niche market. Of the $5 billion, a large percentage of that is purchased by a surprisingly small number of customers.
We started advertising in two of the leading magazines in November and continued through March spending $5,000 per month. We were doing a 1/3 page ad in each magazine along with advertising on their respective web sites. After spending roughly $25,000, we did not get a single phone call — not a single web hit was registered by our web server coming from the magazine web sites.
We have tried Google adwords in two spans. Spending from a few hundred to several hundred dollars per month, we saw no tangible effects.
We turned to the idea of a press release. Mostly because we were running out of money and also because, the other forms were not working. No one had heard anything about us. A google search, even when the adwords were running, using keywords that should have hit our site, never produced our site anywhere on their top two pages of hits (aside from the ads of course).
We had just done our first press release a day or two before. I was walking across the parking lot to pick up lunch for a working lunch business meeting. A car drove past with the passenger in the car waving. The wave seemed a bit over energetic. While standing in the line to get lunch, I was approached by somehow who is somewhere between an acquaintance and a friend. This person works for the company that we deploy on. In fact, you could say that he writes the software that we compete against.
Again, his energy seemed above normal. He briskly walked up and thrust out his hand to shake and while shaking my hand he spilled “GREAT
PRODUCT!” I was still not understanding. But it finally dawned on me that he was talking about our product. “We are passing it all around the office” he said. Then added “It has created quite a stir.” (The “it” was a copy of our first press release.)
But, that isn’t possible? How could someone buried in the bowls of a huge corporation know anything about us? I eventually determined that someone in his group saw the press release on an electronic magazine, printed it out, and passed it among the group.
Our e-store hit stats show us going from about 50 hits per day in April to well over 400 hits per day in June. We had no other advertising running at the time. All the other print ads and Google ads had run out.
Do this: Google the two words “aix sata” and see the results for yourself. EVERY hit on the first page is pointers to us.
Perry Smith
Ease Software, Inc.
http://www.easesoftware.com
