About marketing

[Stealth]

So it's an endless money sink but when "should" you stop? Do you dump more money to reach "unavoidable" ASAP and then stop? Is there a benifit to continue marketing once something is unavoidable? (I assume this is the highest level of recognition)

[SN9000]

I'm not sure what exactly you're asking, but you market as long as the product is being sold and you make a good deal more from said product than you spend on it's marketing, say 10 times more, at least (although, for me, ideally around 2.5%). So for a product that makes 2 mill/day spend 50000 on marketing.

[Stealth]

What I mean is, as you are marketing, the recognition moves up throught various stages like "widespread" and "unavoidable" as the months go past. When you go through these various stages, I assume sales go up as a result. Once it reaches "unavoidable" status which is the highest stage I've seen, can you stop marketing since basically everyone knows about the product? If I stop marketing there, would sales suffer as a result? I normally do what you do which is market until sales drop to basically nothing while trying not to eat too much profit but I'm not sure if once it's "unavoidable" if there any point in continuing since you reached your goal of letting everyone know about your product (even if monthly sales are still high).

[Proteus]

I only make iot dependant on the revenue from the sales ...
when sales revenue gets too close to the amount of money my market staff uses per month, I put a limit on the budgets, which I adjust when the revenue from the sales falls further.
At one point (usually when sales revenue falls below 10-20k) I stop marketing altogether

[korac]

Originally posted by Stealth:

Once it reaches "unavoidable" status which is the highest stage I've seen, can you stop marketing since basically everyone knows about the product? If I stop marketing there, would sales suffer as a result?

It will still sell at Unavoidable, especially if you have decent Market Recognition in that particular market (a blue or, even better, green smiley face for that type of software), but may fall off very quickly without active and continued marketing—especially if there's a new or even just fairly recent rival release with a strong marketing presence of its own.

But regardless of whether it's currently Sparse, Prominent, Widespread or Unavoidable, actively marketing your product can be summed up as having several direct effects, none of which are in any way negatives:

1. If not yet "Unavoidable" it will push the awareness level in that direction.

2. It will help to increase your overall Market Recognition in that particular field.

3. It will increase your daily / monthly sales (and therefore your actual ROI* & overall profit margin).

4. The more units you sell, the more fans you will gain, which makes it easier to gain Market Recognition in future.

In summary: Spend! Spend! Spend! :D

There may come a point where sales will suddenly drop off, which can be due to either market saturation or a strong rival release. You may also just be flogging a dead horse (i.e. lack of current Market Recognition, or you didn't build up a strong enough following during development to help the later sales effort). In any case, it pays to keep a fairly close eye on things—a careful scrutiny each month, say—and adjust your marketing priorities & budgets accordingly.

*ROI = "Return on Investment" (how profitable something is for the time / money spent)

[Stealth]

Ok thanks for the info guys!