You may have already done most if not all of the ideas below. If not I hope something below is a help or spurs a new idea angle. I am an prior Onfolio user who was looking for a replacement that supports firefox, is portable, automatically imports ‘favorites’ form IE and Firefox (a key feature in my book for new users).

Try to get Walt Mossberg at the Wall Street Journal to review it…that’s a major event that gave Onfolio a huge boost. “The Mossberb Effect”, as stock analysts call it is real. Decide on the name change before you send him a free copy. (maybe Surf-U-Later?)

Perhaps ‘Onfolio replacement software’ or ‘The next Onfolio’ as a subject line will get through the screening process.

In the body mention portability on flash drives, multiple browser support and open database standards. These are all things that will appeal to him. He has a sympathetic heart to open standards and non-proprietary strategies.

Also, perhaps a reverse profile of Onfolio’s marketing history, trace all the old reviews of Onfolio and send out free copies to all the reviewers, or even all their staff. If a PC mag staff were to adopt it you would be in the gold circle. It costs you time for huge potential marketing benefits. In spite of technology and the web much of the world still functions via direct relationships, reviewers review stuff heard of from people they know, trust or just like – influencers. Hope this helps.

Rex

Getting people to trial it is the issue (do you think the name is a barrier?)

Like the pub band called “Free Beer”: I’m not sure that hotels were keen to put them in adverts!

But with hindsight it has turned out to be less than ideal, for a variety of reasons. I hadn’t thought of the detergent angle though.

We’ve had a new name waiting in the wings for a few months now, which is along the lines of your suggestions.

I’m working hard to get to Version 2, at which time we’ll likely have two products. The new one with the new name and a higher price and Surfulater with less features and the current price. I’m very keen to get this done.

A high profile endorsement would be great. For now I need to settle on lots of low profile ones. But stay tuned!

I hate to say this, but I think your product could use a name change. “Surfulater” sounds like a detergent. Yes, for those who take the time to think about it, “Surf you later” does sort of tell the story of your software, but most people aren’t going to take that time. You need a name that instantly relates what your product does — something like Web Wrangler, or Data Catcher, or NoteBoat, or NoteTamer or Note Gallery (I know those suggestions are not exactly great — it is easier to criticize a name than to create an effective one).

Look at your successful competitors:
InfoSelect
InfoHandler
UltraRecall
Net Snippets
Zoot (okay, this one falls outside my theory of having a descriptive name, but it’s punchy, fun to say, and memorable)

The other thing you should work toward is getting a high profile endorsement. That’s what put Zoot on the map… when journalist James Fallows wrote about it (and continues to write about it). So, even with a name like Zoot, the product thrives…

So that’s the commentary from these cheap seats.

Using Surfulater as a tool to market itself is also very worthwhile and adding capabilities such as the talked about Web Publishing and Free Reader will surely help.

“I’d be interested to know who your target groups were?”

Me too.

Many (most) people rely on seeing you in the search results, not the ads and that’s a challenge in itself as I’ve previously written http://blog.surfulater.com/2005/05/25/on-google/

AdWord prices have increased over 400% since I started and will no doubt continue to rise. Advertising and other costs seriously erode profits from low price products.

The problems remain. Most people don’t know programs like Surfulater even exist and don’t know how useful they can be. A person with far better marketing skills than me told me the other day that it is very difficult to educate a market.

And then we get back to my earlier quote about what keywords will folks use when they search for a product like Surfulater. Looking in logs is of limited help as that only tells you what people who’ve “found you” have searched for, not all the ones that haven’t found. And they are the ones of most interest!

Let me tell you the two most popular search terms: surfulater & surfulator.

I’ll be interested in your experiences with Adwords when your genealogy program hits the streets. I have no doubt you’ll do a better job than me though.

Marketing is important in all its various methods (AdWords, cover disks, etc) but I think enabling your users to be your salesmen by giving them the resources to distribute is very powerful. Some of these resources are at our disposal (emailing out from SuL for example), but also: SuL Reader, Export formats, integration tools, gives them something to show.

You have heaps of happy and satisfied customers who use your product extensively. Enabling them to display their work is the best advertising.

I’d be interested to know who your target groups were?

- Perry
What about T-Shirts?

In other words, there’s a lot you can do easily even with just Google Adwords to increase your sales by a huge amount.

You must to try to get those searchers who are looking for your product but don’t know it. Look in your weblogs and see what searches they did to get to your site. Then use keyword tools to find what similar searches they might be trying. Find out what keywords your competitors are bidding on. Get rid of the keywords that don’t pay off and explore in more detail the ones that do.

Then you must ensure that your website (or maybe a landing page for each ad group would be better) is tuned to enable the person who clicked the ad to realize within a few seconds, that this may be the product they want – or else they’ll just leave. If nothing else, first and foremost push them to download and try Surfulater, and try to get them to sign up to some sort of mailing list or download registration or whatever, so that you can contact them again when new info about Surfulator comes out.

My case is no different than yours. I’ll have to target my “well defined” group of people the same way. In fact, for me it may be more difficult than you because I’ve got only one-tenth the number of potential customers that you have and I have 10 times the number of competitors that you have.

Louis

I really, truly wish the answer to my dilemma lay in Google Adwords, which by the way I’ve been running for quite some time now.

Most people don’t even realize programs like Surfulater exist, let alone that they may have a need for one. But lets for a moment assume they do, what do they search for?

This is from a post on another forum yesterday which sums things up nicely:

“How would you search for a software tool to make your life easier to conduct internet research? What would that tool be called? What type of keywords would your customers punch into Google? I tried thinking about that for a few minutes, tried it on Google but did not get Surfulator’s website. In fact, the keywords I thought of were so general that I got lots of unrelated results. If I were a customer, I’d just give up.”

In your specific case it is much easier as you have a very well defined group of people to get in touch with and setting up “effective” ad-word campaigns is straight-forward.

There really is a simple solution to your marketing problems. I’ve studied Internet Marketing for years for the genealogy software I’m developing. You are a bit ahead of me since I’m still in alpha development, whereas your program has been in production for some time.

But it’s as clear as day to me what you’re missing. Since you already get superb reviews from your users, all you really need is more interested people to find out about you. What you want to do is drive more people who may be interested in your product to your site.

There are many sources of information on this on the web. The number one tool you need to use is Google Adwords – but learn how to do it properly or it can backfire.

The resource I like best is the book “Search Engine Marketing, Inc.” by Mike Moran and Bill Hunt. Find it at Amazon or wherever and go from there.

I’d wish you good luck, but its really not a matter of luck. It’s a matter of learning what to do and then doing it.

Louis