Discussion: Cheap Marketing Tricks

Marketing a webapp has become increasingly difficult with the growing competition on the web2.0 front. Viral-Marketing is the way to go in today’s scenario. But HOW can it be done on a low-budget, even better if without cost?

I developed a social webapp called “Saywit.com”:http://www.saywit.com/spring/about.html, and launched it a few weeks ago. It has an innovative theme, nice look-and-feel, and a solid feature-set, but few bells & wistles. *Marketing Saywit it to the world is my concern.*

This is a self-initiated product that I developed in my free time, so I did not wish (and could not afford) to hire marketing professionals. After reading a few articles about viral marketing, I was greatly impressed with the propects and decided to try it out.

Some things I tried seemed to work for a while, but traction is hard to sustain. Other things I tried didn’t work at all. I’m sure there are a million other founders like me who’ve also develop applications (whether as a pastime or professon), and need help.

I’d really appreciate a brainstorming session on *Cheap Marketing Tricks* is all that we can use. I’ll start it off by sharing more with you about what I tried that worked:

*My first step* was announcing the launch of Sawywit by shooting out a few emails to my friends and relatives. The response was good. Many of them visited the site to see what it is, but did not become a returning vistor.

*Next I tried a post on Digg* and the Digg-Clones was my next step. This did only a little good. Social bookmarking my webapp on several sites helped to gain more visibility among the search engines.

*Then I tried submitting my webapp to media-blogs* such as ‘Museum of Modern Betas”:http://momb.socio-kybernetics.net/,’ Ehub (this domain is now for lease), “Web2List”:http://web2list.com/, etc. So far, this is the only trick that helped me gain real traction through publicity. Several other bloggers who were subscribed to these sites also reviewed Saywit in time. (However, I haven’t gotten interest from major media-blogs like GigaOM and TechCrunch yet!)

*Advertising via Text-link-ads and Google adwords* is yet another option that I am having in mind, but have not pursued it yet. I tried a few other places of advertising too, and some were good. Work is in progress to get a “Facebook”:http://www.facebook.com/ app for Saywit.

*Talking about the product at social networks* also fetched some recognition. “Techtribe”:http://www.techtribe.com/, “Orkut”:http://www.orkut.com/GLogin.aspx?done=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.orkut.com%2F, and “LinkedIn”:http://www.linkedin.com/ are the ones I frequent(ed).

Other marketing strategies that I’d like to try include “Lifehack articles”:http://www.lifehack.org/, Resources page, User forum, etc… as part of the webapp.

I’ven not yet created as much buzz as I’d like to for Saywit. My real goal is to make more, if not all, Web2.0-enthusiasts aware of http://www.Saywit.com. It has been little over a month since Saywit was launched for public. So, I understand that it all takes time…but if you have experiences, or advice to share I think *it’d be great to start building a List of Cheap Marketing Tricks* as a resource for all of us on Found|READ.

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