"Marketing for µISVs" from Andy Brice

Tue, 24 Nov 2009 16:41:13 -0800

Andy Brice, developer of the app "Perfect Table Plan" for Windows and Mac, has made a talk he did available online. It's called "Marketing for µISVs — Embracing the Dark Side?" Clearly he comes from the PC world more than the Mac world to use such a term, but his presentation has some good points that the indie developer who is new at the idea marketing — especially the reason why it's a useful activity — should see.

His presentation on marketing was a lot less rushed than my five-minute Blitz talk at C4, so he gets to cover a lot more ground. First he dispels seven "myths of marketing," then goes into a number of marketing concepts. His presentation goes a bit too heavy into the concept of branding, which really doesn't apply (as he admits) for the small developer. He shows a lot of examples of "positioning" from the non-software world, but it's food for thought in any case. His insights on pricing are extremely interesting; that's an issue that we all have had to go through.

I think that there is a lot more about marketing the people need to understand, especially dealing with getting your website found and getting your visitors to turn into buyers, but this is a great overview. Listen to the lecture and page through the slides for some useful enlightenment.