The Cost of Playing the Symphony in Reverse
Watching and learning
Today on the first day of the Thirty Day Challenge Ed Dale presented his ‘Symphony in Four Parts’ about the order of creating a product through Internet marketing.
As I watched the screen pan over his ‘In 4 parts’ diagram showing the actual product last, and Ed said that most people do it the other way round, my heart sank. It brought home that we created our first product ScreenRest in reverse and explained why our marketing efforts were proving so difficult.
Playing in reverse
I created ScreenRest first because it met a need of my own that would apply for many other people and that seemed to be a very sound reason. Once it was complete I turned to traffic generation and that led me to market research. It was at that point that it became clear we were struggling for traffic because it is in highly competitive niche. The bid prices for converting medical keywords in AdWords are too high for a low priced product which in turn means there is high competition with niche AdSense sites for organic traffic. In addition our market was too broad to target effectively. Our conversion rates are quite resonable and we have recieved glowing feedback, but without sufficient traffic it will not form a viable business.
Not all is lost
Fortunately one reason I chose ScreenRest as our first product was that is was a small enough project that the mistakes like this would also be small scale. It has taught me many new skills and technologies and highlighted aptitudes I didn’t know I had. It even set me down a path that led to taking part in the Thirty Day Challenge–what a great outcome.
A valuable lesson
Creating the product last seems counterintuitive, but I am in the position now of knowing that it makes complete sense. I doubt that Ed’s diagram would have had such a strong impact without first having seen what happens the other way round. I guess many people watching will be sceptical of the presentation, I’m sure I would have been this time last year.
Tags: ScreenRest, Thirty Day Challenge
This entry was posted on Friday, August 1st, 2008 at 10:01 pm and is filed under Internet Marketing. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.