Advice on marketing and pricing in a niche market?
Hi everyone, my partner and I founded our business about six months ago with the long term goal of building a new generation of web-based software for veterinarians (http://menagerievet.com). This market is clogged with expensive and ancient desktop (mostly Windows) software. Our first product is a digital "whiteboard" which allows veterinary clinics to manage patient workflow instead of relying on paper and index cards. The idea was to start with a small product to "get in the door" and start generating some interest.
We are both technical co-founders and it seems like many other engineers we feel we are stumbling around in the dark a little as we try to market this product and ourselves. I was wondering if the hacker news hordes had any advice for us. Our (somewhat informed) assumption coming in was that veterinarians would be a hard group to reach via web and social network marketing, however we have been pleasantly surprised at the amount of connections we have been able to make via twitter. (we also do adwords, ahem, and have sent out a very small physical mailing batch, as well as gone door-to-door to some local practices). However, we're not yet seeing the interest we'd hoped for, so I'm wondering if anybody has advice regarding marketing, and also pricing of our product. We started with a traditional fixed-price downloadable "boxed software" model due to some arbitrary initial circumstances, but have switched to a SaaS model with monthly pricing (and we still feel SaaS is the right long term goal). We are toying with lowering the price, and switching back to an up-front yearly subscription.
Since our ultimate goal is a more ambitious practice management system, we can also envision pricing tiers differentiated either on more whiteboard features, or further practice/records management integration. Or maybe it's time to cut the losses and pivot. I don't want to bore you to death with more background, but I'm glad to share in the comments if there are questions.
TIA for any feedback. Aaron
The links are:
http://menagerievet.com
http://menagerievet.tumblr.com
@menagerievet Maybe I missed it from your post but have any of the docs seen your thing in action yet? Make up a story for your pitch that demonstrates how your product will make your client`s life easier (Betty came in with her Griff, her dog and the receptionist took info down on the iPad then handed the iPad to the doc who blah blah blah ipad blah dog blah blah symptom blah...everything was so easy...happy Griff, happy Betty, annnnnd happy doc!) of course you can replace by ipad by `computer with internet with your site` see what im sayin? Good point. We do have one vet who is using the product but it's the same initial customer we developed it for/with, so they naturally already know how to apply it. We should come up with a little story, perhaps a comic, which introduces the idea in a friendly way and puts it in context of existing practices. I dont wish to knock on the comic idea but the purpose of the pitch is to demo how the the app will make their lives easier...in my experience comics usually do a good job demoing the overall process; which is PERFECT for investors - but not overly useful to the user. Unless of course your plan was to move the pitch from comic to a hands on demo when the time came, in which case just ignore everything I say! A question for my own benefit - how eager were the doctors to meet with you? I can't decide if doctors in general would bother with hearing pitches...it would make more sense for them to hire IT Consultants So far it's been difficult getting one on ones with doctors. They justifiably shield themselves from solicitors and other annoyances (if I were a vet, I would do the same). You are right that vets typically rely on IT consultants, but there are two things that are slightly different (I believe) about the veterinary industry vs. human medical industry. For one, there are a large number of very small practices (2-3 vets total), which makes any IT expenses proportionally larger. Secondly, most have to rely on "generic" home town IT consultants which are not very familiar with veterinary needs, as there is not a robust veterinary-specific IT support industry. And to some extent we're trying to improve this vet/IT relationship by offering a very low-maintenance, flexible solution. We've had more success meeting early adopters where they already are on twitter, facebook, etc. than by knocking on doors or making calls. Although I know we still have our work cut out for us and need to continue pursuing these in-person discussions. Your pricing is simple and makes sense. Regarding marketing - for reaching niche audiences, one of the best things you can do is try to get into Trade Magazines or go to tradeshows. It costs a lot but oftentimes is worth the expense of a booth. We aren't so deep a niche but we do some outreach to different niches and try to do some deep diving... find out what they really want and where they would go to find it. I second trade shows and conferences. Professionals in target demographics such as yours thrive on trade shows and similar networking events. I worked for nationwide company that had virtually no online presence, but they dominated events like these. It's amazing how much we depend on technology these days yet so much business goes on outside the bounds of the internet. Get out there and go for it! thanks! while we can't afford the big national conferences there is a regional one in the fall we are thinking about attending. we'll take a look at magazine advertising.