Martin Amm of Boston, Mass., writes:
“Our company, adenin Technologies, Inc., provides a complete intranet suite for businesses. We also offer software that turns your existing intranet into web 2.0, including blogs, a Twitter-like app and more.
“Employees communicate and interact with each other better using the intranet software. It’s a simpler and more user-friendly intranet than Sharepoint.
“We’ve been using social media to build relationships with the intranet industry and prospects. We’ve also contacted specific publications with story ideas rather than pitching them. We’ve made great connections, but haven’t seen much results in terms of publicity and sales. What can we do to help our little company gain more attention?”
I would suggest trying the regular and alternative schools and colleges. Businesses that tend to have groups of people and this area would be large in the metro areas and available across a nation though it is just one niche. Maybe youth centres through children services and small business trade shows and their trade journals. Just some thoughts. 🙂
Nothing will really replace SharePoint…i like the idea listed above, but if people really do their homework on SharePoint, it cannot be beat for content management, document management, collaboration and social computing!
A couple of questions first. Just exactly who is your market? Every corporation that has or wants an intranet is too broad a market. Narrow and focus. My wife works for a major school association here in CA, and they have an intranet. So do you target non profits? Or are you going after huge corporations with their own giant IT depts?
Can’t help you target pubs or media unless we know who your hot targets are. And each release/social media comment you use should be focused as well.
You say you go after the intranet industry. Are these your resellers? Then you say businesses? Who exactly?
Once you have this down pat, use social media with a different “group”, like on facebook, that you create for different types of prospects. Same with publicity, as Joan taught me. One size does not fit all.
Reece Franklin
Market Smarts Senior Marketing
@ Jeffrey Willinger, I think Sharepoint is pretty weak when it comes to building websites, terrible in fact. Its real strength is in document management.
As for the question in the original post “what can we do to get more attention”, you are in a crowded market place, you need to figure out what distinguishes you from the competition and promote that. In your post above all you tell me is that “its a bit better than sharepoint at doing intranets”… well… I think sharepoint is lame at intranets, so you are just saying that your product is a little less lame than Bill Gates offering… IMO.
Im sure there are some key advantages to your product, you really need to focus on getting those across… what does it do well… what is your USP?
If you were able to build some kind of user community around your product that would really help you too.
Jez
The product seems me too with other sites like yammer etc..
Maybe drop Web2.0 in the pitch (Is that term dead yet?)
Maybe pitch benefits like reduced costs X amount… also how about attacking a niche in the business sector like health care… definitely some heated debated in that area of late…if you technology could help reduce costs in that industry that would stir some interest I bet…
As a former intranet pioneer, IT executive, and consultant to huge companies, I took a look at your web site out of curiosity. (Caveat: I left technology and started a non-profit a few years ago.)
You’re not quite ready for the publicity and sales yet. The good news is that it won’t take long.
I found features and pricing at your web site, but where the heck are the benefits for “me” if I were still a corporate executive or IT executive? Don’t waste my time on a demo – just give me a concise list of benefits. And if you can apply them to my industry, so much the better.
This is common for software startups. Please say it with me: “It’s not about the technology and features, it’s about what it does for the business.” If you can’t think like your customers, and give them solutions and ROI, you’ll end up as history, like many of your predecessors in the intranet collaboration and KM space. I know – most that I talked about in my 1997 “Intranet as Groupware” book are long gone.
Until you remedy this, you’re wasting your time pitching tech publications. Figure out who you are, who your customers are, what they need, and how you provide that. And pick a couple of niches (industry, geography, company size, etc.) to go after and become the best in those niches.
The big boys are in the big companies with big IT staffs, so you can probably make more difference in small-to-medium size companies with lean IT staffs. If you can make it easier for them, or even better, offer software as service, you have the opportunity to capitalize on the economic downturn.
Once you’ve figured that out, then go after business and technology publications in your niches. When you get some great customer successes, you can branch out to the top technology publications to get cross-industry publicity. Just provide them with some ROI and raving customers to talk about what you did for their businesses and those publications will be anxious to write about you.
And in the meantime, be following those publications and their writers on Twitter and start using HARO (http://www.helpareporter.com/) to see what the writers are looking for just in case you can provide that.
Hope this helps. And I didn’t even charge you for it. 😉
Mellanie Hills
We’ve been focusing on banks and financial organizations and studied up their publications, contacting them after doing our research on both pubs and reporters. We’ve also been trying to reach publications that talk about intranet products (Intranet Journal, for example) and it’s been a challenge. Thanks for your input.
When you started you had a Business and Marketing Plan….didn’t you?
Are you where you thought you would be? Sounds like…not!
I love your ideas, and Sharepoint, and Cloud, and…and.. any collaborative techniques that lend themselves to interaction are to be praised, pursued, and…purchased.
They are the wave of the future of business, with video conferencing and whiteboarding, collaborative interaction increasing productivity by orders of magnitude.
If I think of your software as a …classroom, what potential does that offer?
If I think of your software as a Department Meeting, does that help?
Even your limited customer base provides real clues as to your preferred direction, doesn’t it?
Perhaps you could encourage a Trade magazine to offer a Review of the product category, and take your chances there.
I see lots of opportunity for you, particularly if your Value Package offers a starting point that others would find difficult to replicate.
Hope this helps,
Melanie, thanks for the great insight. We have been watching HARO for a long time — very rare that a reporter needs what we can help with. We take care to respond to the appropriate pitches.
Mediaman, we’ve been researching pubs that do product reviews or have directories. Appreciate the great advice.
Thank you, all.
Martin,
Regarding HARO, you’re not looking for an intranet or IT story, are you? You should be looking for stories about cost savings and business productivity, especially in this down economy. There are queries for that in HARO several times per week (sometimes per day).
And what kind of HARO queries are there for your target industries, especially where you have existing customers? Look at the ROI from your current customers and see if that fits into any of the queries.
Are there bloggers talking about intranet tools? (Sorry, I haven’t kept up with Intranet Journal since I’ve been out of that space–they were a small start up when they published some content from my books, but I presume they have grown into the 800# gorilla of that space). Are there smaller blogs/media in the intranet space? The big media, especially print, likes to get ideas from the blogs.
If you have to, go find some potential showcase customers and together build a hugely compelling ROI story. With that, the media should chase you rather than you chasing them.
Good luck.
Mellanie