Marketing and delivering software products requires certain finesse when it comes to understanding the endless assortment of consumer personalities. There are many tools used by marketing agencies across a broad spectrum of marketing and delivery firms. From TV’s Nielson ratings, to grocery stores reliance on market studies from Consumers Choice, to consumers who read Consumers Digest and other consumer periodicals – developers rely on assays and advertisements to guide every consumer to making the correct and intelligent choice.

How to Market and Deliver Your Software Product

That choice is simple. Buy our product that we just spent money producing, marketing and delivering. Act fast and delivery may even be free! Thankfully, software distribution can be delivered through a wider assortment of venues. Regrettably, software can be much harder to market, as there is no single golden rule or pre-emptive marketing firm to whom all developers can turn.

Instead, to market products successfully, developers must rely on every tool in the proverbial marketing and distribution book. This includes marketing through television advertisements on channels like TechTv, marketing placements in computer magazines, in general or niche interest publications og banking software and even online marketing and advertising through larger services like ClickBank and AdSense.

As a result of the wide choice in marketing and delivery strategies, many developers find substantial rewards from studying how competitor products (of non bankrupted companies!) are marketed. Additionally, looking at the marketing plans or simply how many places you can find comparable products marketed can help lead a developer to establishing a sound marketing plan .

In general, the following steps are necessary to market and deliver a product. First, make a website. The internet is used by millions of users nowadays, and your first and freest form of marketing comes through a well designed website. Second, publish your software in a demo form in a wide variety of locations – everything from Tucows to Simtel to gaming portals or specialty delivery channels.

Third, invest in some form of online and ideally supplemental offline advertising. Ultimately, the marketing of any product is tied to two major points. Is the product good enough to at least dissuade word-of-mouth from ruining, and secondly, is the marketing strategy matched correctly to the marketplace?

In regards to delivery systems, content can be delivered using the traditional method, through shipping a boxed product to a store and included a printed manual. Or, it can be delivered in newer more innovative (and often cost-cutting) ways. Take for example an OEM computer purchased. Traditionally restore discs were shipped along with a manual.

Previous to that, the computer came with a full operating system disc and extra software was delivered through individually packaged disks and CDs. Now, a computer is delivered with pre-installed software, and the vendor expects you to furnish your own CDs if you elect to make a backup of your recovery software.

Additionally, many auctions on EBay now carry instantaneous content delivery, as soon as a PayPal payment is delivered, an email will be delivered through an auto-response which includes either an attachment or download instructions. Similarly, sites such as Tucows and Simtel provide large selections of categorized and alphabetized content, which is delivered as fast as an internet connection can download the software.

Delivery benefits greatly from the digital revolution. So much in fact, there is now an even greater need than ever for a greater emphasis on marketing than delivery. Delivery is such a breeze, that a developer just needs to select the correct delivery strategy for their target audience.

And while digital delivery is the new gold standard for obtaining content, it’s important to avoid forsaking at least the option for boxed software delivery, as many businesses have strict blanket policies about downloading any foreign software, regardless of the merit or time savings gotten through digital delivery.