[...] morning I was reading about an all too common strategy to online marketing: posting comment spam. It’s incredible how [...]

Hi,

Well, you probably expected this. So, here I am, the “Merc” employee!

First of all, I just want to make sure that it’s dead clear: we don’t use automatic tools to send messages. This is quite crucial: we don’t feel we are spamming, because 1) We try to always hand-pick customers individually 2) When adding to forums, I always disclose who I am and avoid spam-like behaviour.

Now, we can enter a discussion on what’s spam and what’s not, and you can even look at the comic strip we created about this very topic:

http://www.applicomhq.com/content/improject-it-was-automatic-comic-strip (Or you can look at all of the strips: http://www.applicomhq.com/strips ).

On a more serious note, I wrote this:

http://www.applicomhq.com/content/this-is-who-we-are-and-this-is-why-we-reach-out-to-people

Contacting users one-by-one takes a lot of time. It’s not “just” time — it’s t-i-m-e (!). The only reason why I do it, is because 1) I believe in the product 2) I believe in self-reliance; we didn’t get any funding, and don’t even need it at this stage 3) I feel that spreading the word about Apollo *is* helping people.

You wrote two very wise things:

* writing more blog posts about project management and their views in general

This is something we did, and still do. The main issue is that you need to build up a following; this is a _very_ noisy market, and posts that I considered fantastic ended up with fewer reads that I would have liked

* as well as useful comments aimed at helping people may be the better way to go

This is my bad. This is one one the things I need to do — and I failed. Now, any suggestions and ideas in this department would be _greatly_ appreciated!

Thanks a lot. And by the way, have a look at Apollo: http://www.apollohq.com It has cases and — (click)

Merc

Hi Merc,

Yes, contacting each user does take A LOT of time! I still think there is a better way to spend the time. I truly think spending that time writing a blog and educating the community is the best way to go. Writing a blog does not pay off in the short term, but it pays off way more in the long term.

Basecamp, for example, is more than a product. They are a movement. Their blog, Signal vs Noise gets a 1000s of visitors daily, and people get their product because they believe in their mission. 37Signals also takes A LOT of time to educate the community about their mission and why they need project management. This type of education gets people to not only talk about you in terms of your product, but to talk about you whether or not they’re using your product, which is really powerful.

There are other project management tools out there that are creating a movement, and they’re the ones on people’s minds. Podio, for example, are creating a “future of work” movement and they’re going out and organizing events all over the world about the topic. Nozbe, is another tool focused on productivity, and the founder works really hard to teach people productivity tips and that shines through (he has over 25,000 Twitter followers). Salesforce recently had a conference with the highest attendance for a conference, not because they were making an announcement about Salesforce, but because they were there to announce their vision of a social enterprise. Zappos became popular because they believe in having a happy company culture and unmatched customer service and they write about it and educate everyone about it through their book (Delivering Happiness) and their blog – they didn’t go on amazon, find competitive products, and tell people to buy off of Zappos instead, they created a movement and that movement spread word of mouth and became more valuable as the product itself.

What is your company’s vision? From your blog post, you already had some strong statements:

We are here to make great software. Really great software
We are not here to sell out and make millions.
Apollo works thanks to Apollo’s mastermind, Andrea.
We are pushing Apollo on our own (competitors, read this)

This is the stuff you should be covering more, since clearly you are passionate about these things. How are you making your software great? Why is it better than everyone else’s? If you’re not here to sell out, what are you here for? Who is Andrea – tell us more. Does Andrea speak in conferences and in the community? Get people to get to know Andrea. If he’s so great, why doesn’t he share his vision and his thoughts not just about Apollo, but about Apollo’s real vision. The blog post you wrote is great, and you need to write a lot more like these. Stand for something and you will find way better returns in the long term. Make people believe in you and your product as much as you do.

Meanwhile, for every customer you get using your current “spam” technique, there are many more people who now associate Apollo with spam.

Thanks for your response!
We agree with all of your points. We are great admirers of Seth Godin and are working hard to apply new marketing techniques.

What we need to agree to disagree, is in what is “spam”. The ratio between people complaining about our messages, and people thanking us profusely, tell us that most people out there feel we are doing them a service. Spam is mass-email sent automatically — we do anything but “mass-sending”, and we don’t send it automatically.

We will continue pushing our normal marketing, and try and publish more, greater blog entries.

Thank you for your comments!

Given ApolloHQ’s ranking for “project management software” is just one spot behind Basecamp in Google (currently 36 vs. 35), clearly this is working pretty well. I actually expected much higher out of Basecamp, given its larger brand image.

I assume both of them are going after that keyword, since it’s in their title.

Basecamp is 11 in Binghoo, while ApolloHQ is basically nowhere to be found.

Conclusion? As of writing this, Google likes them social signals more and more, while Bing and Yahoo still enjoy large messy link profiles.

What apollo is doing is just part of a marketing campaign. Its working because you wrote about it.