Okay, here is a specific marketing challenge that is begging for some new thinking and new ideas. The product is a low cost hardware commodity sold to IT people in business. Network managers of all size companies, systems integrators, IT consultants and other such IT people buy these products when they need them to support their networking. Due to the nature of the products, the practical market is North America. SEO and PPC are the obvious sales channels and, quite frankly, are too competitive (i.e., expensive) to compete in effectively. So, the challenge is: how else can the company and/or website be found by IT professionals? I am looking forward to some fresh thoughts. Thanks!
What is the product? One idea would be to combine forces with another successful product, possibly something complimentary. Give that other company a cut of your profit. Another idea would be to pay to have your product reviewed by a successful blog with a large following. Another idea is to find someone on linkedin with a large connected base to mention your product in a non sales way. Or how about a contest with an ipad give away.
The product is network and PC cables. Mostly Ethernet (copper and fiber optic.) The network hardware guys either do their own cables or have a partnership with a big player. I tried linkedin from several angles and that did not work. I would not want to do a contest because that might bring the onesie-twosie buyers who need a single cable for the Xbox. That is not the type of business I want to encourage. The blog idea is interesting, though I am not sure if there is a blog out there that has a large corporate IT following or if there is, whether I could afford the cost of a review. How could I go about researching this?