This Man Watches $50 Bills Float By. He Will Not Scoop Them Up.
In the field of writing, Scrivener is an exceptional tool. There is nothing else quite like it. For writers, it is something of a miracle.
There is a problem. Its designer does his own marketing. Because the program is so good, it is getting exposure. Because it is cheap -- under $50 -- it is selling, but not well enough to let him hire an assistant, let alone a marketer.
He stands next to a gutter. Every few minutes, a $50 bill floats by. He refuses to look down.
His site, www.literatureandlatte.com, has perhaps the worst name in marketing history. I have never seen anything so distant from the product being offered. Yet it has an Alexa rating of 30,000. This is very high. For a site that offers no new information or updates, but merely offers a 4-year-old obsolete video, this is astonishing.
Yet he runs a one-man operation. This is a huge neon sign: "Marketing Rn't Us."
ONE OBSOLETE VIDEO
He has produced one YouTube video. That was in 2010. It is for the Mac version. It is for an obsolete edition of his program. This is his entire marketing program.
Only in 2013 did he introduce a Windows version. He has yet to produce a video for Windows users. Understand what this means. Windows has almost 90% of all operating systems for desktop computers. He regarded 90% of the market as an afterthought.
One thing is sure: he is not in it for the money.
Here is his 2010 video for an early Mac version, long out of date. It's better than most software videos. But, compared to the value of the product, it misses the mark.
His marketing could be brought up to date in about four hours. But the designer is a techie. Marketing is not part of his outlook. "Four hours? On marketing? Why, that's an hour a year. Inconceivable! I'm doing important work here! I don't have that kind of spare time to waste on marketing!"
SCREENCASTS AND SALES
He does not understand the use of screencast videos in marketing. There must be one screencast for each marketing step. For software, there are usually two steps. There may be three. Two are better than three.
1. Get a sale.
2. Get the user using the program within 15 minutes.
Why 15 minutes? Because if he doesn't find a way to use it profitably on one task within 15 minutes, he won't adopt it. For every day that he does not use it, the odds increase that he will never adopt it.
He has 30 days to ask for a refund, according to U.S. federal law. He may ask. Or he may just forget about it if the price is low. But he will never buy an upgrade.
The profit in software is in selling upgrades. The initial sale is not usually profitable. At best, it breaks even on advertising costs.
Scrivener has no advertising budget. The designer makes money on the initial sale. But without an active campaign to sell upgrades, the designer is losing money. Big money.
There is a second way to sell software. It almost never works.
1. Offer a 30-day free trial.
2. Wait for the user to order the program.
Camtasia Studio adopts this approach. But the marketing department does what must be done. It offers extensive training screencast videos to get the trial subscriber to use the product. These begin as soon as a user opens the program. It's a $300 product. It makes lots of money on upgrades.
Scrivener offers both approaches: buy or free trial. But it does not have an extensive library of screencasts to get the person using the product. It offers no technical support. It offers only forums run by volunteers. This is not a bad way to do it, given a $45 product. But the forums are not easy to use. I have found them counter-intuitive. In fact, the user needs a screencast to use the forums effectively. He needs a way to find out how to ask a question. I speak from experience.
Trial subscriptions are extremely dangerous, as I have said. A trial should encourage immediate use. The key to marketing by means of a trial version is to get the user to discover one major benefit within 15 minutes. You must addict him to the program. He must think: "This is easy to use. I already have gotten a major benefit. I will keep at this. I may get five more." Fail in this, and you will not make a sale.
If the program is not intuitive to use, it creates frustration. Frustration kills sales. The user thinks, "I cannot do this. I'll never learn this. I'm outta here." Forever. In this case, the free trial has just killed the sale. In almost all cases I have seen in 20 years, free trials kill sales. They do not get the user up and running within 15 minutes.
Scrivener in this regard is a disaster. You cannot open it. There are no instructions on how to open it. I warned the support staff of this.
I got an answer from a vounteer. The answer was not intuitive. (Note: it was not this. "Click on 'Blank' on the left side of the dialog, 2nd option from the top.") Of course, from a marketing standpoint, it does not matter what the solution is or was. What is important is that problems at the beginning create frustration, and this kills sales. Technicians think: "There is a simple solution." Marketers think: "Don't allow problems that need solutions." Technicians think: "It's probably one guy in a thousand. I don't make big mistakes." Marketers think: "It's probably 80% of the users. They are mostly idiots, but they have money to spend. Fix the problem."
The correct response of the designer is to solve this problem in advance, not wait for an inquiry. The correct approach is to warn the user: "This program does not open the way you probably think it should. Here's what you must do."
The #1 customer support job of the designer should be to get feedback from the volunteers on what the main questions are, and then keep producing new screencasts to answer these questions before they get asked. This is the correct use of Pareto's 20-80 rule. About 20% of the problems produce 80% of the inquiries. The goal of tech support is to keep letting the designer know what the most frequent questions are. He must keep producing updated training videos to solve at least 15% of the initial problems in advance.
Let me offer this summary:
The primary task of customer support is not to provide answers. The primary task is to identify the most numerous time-consuming questions, and then notify the designer, who must then produce training materials to eliminate 80% of these questions.
If these initial questions are not systematically overcome by the designer, the free trial offer will lead to frustrated users who will never buy. They will also never download another free trial. They will never buy an upgrade.
1. THE "GEE WHIZ" VIDEO
A marketing video should focus only on the few features of the program that the designer knows for sure are the main ones that a new user will want. He has about 8 minutes to make the initial sale, which is a trial download, a sale, or a choice between the two.
Here is a rule of direct-response marketing: Every ad should provide reasons for the reader to take just one step.
He offers two choices: pay now or download the trial version. This is risky.
I think he should offer only one choice: either (1) download the trial version, or else (2) pay. He should test this before deciding which offer to make. Testing is basic to marketing.
If the offer is to obtain a free trial version, the user should be required to give his email. This triggers an autoresponder email: a welcome letter with a link to a page where he can download the trial version.
This contact will begin a series of follow-up emails that contain links to new screencasts to help the trial user discover great benefits. Day by day, he gets reminded.
This is nagging, of course. But it is disguised nagging. It offers links to videos that show him how to get wonderful benefits, one at a time.
To get him to download a trial version, the "gee whiz" video must demonstrate benefits. It must not show features apart from verbally described benefits.
Customers do not buy features. They buy benefits. Here is the rule of direct-response marketing:
"Don't tell me about your grass seed. Tell me about my lawn."
The "gee whiz" video must not show the user how to do anything. It should show him what the program will do for him. The narrator should verbally spell it out. Every step on the screen should have a voice-over: "With this feature, you get this unique benefit. . . ."
The goal of the "gee whiz" video should be this: to persuade the viewer to sign up for the 30-day free trial. Nothing else.
Get that email! Start the multiple sales pitches! Keep those benefits coming! Get orders! Sell upgrades!
Simple. It's easy as pie.
2. THE "EASY AS PIE" VIDEO
The second video must be a how-to video. A link to it is included in the email that provides the link to download the program.
This video has one goal: to get the user to achieve one major benefit with the program. It must persuade the recipient to use the program within the next 15 minutes.
There should be a very easy learning curve for this one benefit. The first exercise must not frustrate the user.
Trial software kills sales. Why? Because it does not get the user dependent on the software in 15 minutes.
The program sits there. What next? Where to start? The learning curve is steep. The user quits. He never comes back. "Been there. Done that. It's way too difficult."
The software includes a PDF of a 330-page manual. This manual says, loud and clear: "You can never learn this." Response: no purchase order.
The first how-to video gets the user to take just one step. This step is easy as pie.
The user is told that he will be sent one lesson a day. At the end of the video, there will be a link to one long video that covers a lot of benefits in 25 minutes.
The user must not be shown these videos before he downloads the product. They might scare him off. They should therefore not be posted on YouTube. The videos should be posted on Amazon S3 some other inexpensive video hosting service that is closed to the public.
Instead, the designer has produced a long, intricate written presentation of how to get started. I doubt that anyone has ever gone through it.
He made the fundamental error of most people who try to explain a visual procedure with words. This is virtually impossible. I call it the shoelace mistake. Think of this task. Explain to someone how to tie a shoelace. You can't do it. Now try to explain to someone who is right-handed (if you are left-handed). You cannot do it. But if you produce a video, and you verbally narrate each step, you can do it.
The designer is trying to get you through a complex program with words. Yet few people will ever use more than 4% of any program (Pareto's law: 20% of 20%).
Example:
We first need to define some custom meta-data fields, though. Let's do that now:Click on the "Define Meta-Data Fields…" button (alternatively, you can choose "Edit Custom Meta-Data Settings…" from the menu that appears when you click on the gear button in the "Custom Meta-Data" bar, or select "Meta-Data Settings…" from the Project menu and then choose the "Custom Meta-Data" tab).
Click on the "+" button in the bottom-left of the sheet that you've opened, and enter "Date" into the row that gets added to the table.
Click on the "+" button again and this time enter "Characters". For this one, also click on the "Wrap Text" checkbox. Click "OK" to accept the changes and dismiss the sheet.
This needs a simple 30-secind video to make it coherent. Most of all, it needs a narrative to explain why it is important: a benefit.
He is good with his 2010 video. But he does not understand marketing. He does not understand that a series of short, one-benefit-per-lesson, easy as pie screencasts are basic to getting a trial user up and running. If the user becomes dependent on the program, he will pay for it. This is central to successful marketing by means of free trials. But the designer does not understand marketing. He is not interested in marketing.
I don't know how long it took him to create his hopeless written instructions guide. Days, I would bet. It was wasted time. He could have produced a dozen one-benefit screencast videos in two days, and he would have dramatically increased his order rate from the free trial downloads over the last four years.
The money floated by in the gutter.
It still floats by.
"Look down! I beg you: look down!"
"Then build two scoopers."
FOUR HOURS TO BUILD A PAIR OF MONEY-SCOOPERS
I produce two or three 25-minute screencasts per day for the Ron Paul Curriculum. I write the scripts, record them, edit them, and post them.
Any programmer who lives with his program could produce the screencasts I have described in fewer than two hours each.
Here is a man who has produced one 9-minute video in 4 years. His site has an Alexa rating of 30,000. He has a unique program, and it is priced competitively. Yet sales are not good enough to let him hire an assistant.
I am saying: "Mr. Blount, look down at the gutter. See those $50 bills? Get a pair of money-scoopers. You can do it in less than an afternoon."
But Mr. Blount does not care about marketing. Programmers rarely do.
He is better than most. At least his outdated video shows a few useful things that Scrivener can do. But it is all features. "It can do this, and this, and this!"
What he never says in his narration is this: "With this feature, you can get the following benefit. . . ." Programmers never say this. It is literally outside their realm of discourse.
"Look at my grass seed. Isn't it great?"
Tell me about my lawn.