How do you market a product that doesn’t exist to people that you don’t know, in places you can’t find?

This has been our basic problem in marketing Exchange Server Archiver. As a newly-arrived summer intern, I was pretty confused. I had a list of instructions, saying things like ‘research Exchange user groups and bloggers’. This I dutifully tried, though it isn’t easy to establish where all the Exchange people hang out. I made lists with emails, URLs, and half-coherent notes.

Then I was shown the info the rest of the ESA team had compiled months earlier, from talking to people at Tech Ed. Turns out there were quite a few Exchange users there, and these people had said a whole lot of things about what they wanted from an Exchange Archiver. As they did this, members of the marketing and product management teams had cunningly probed their psychological makeup, looking for the triggers and turn-ons that would provide a way into their hearts.

I now realise that I was supposed to be confused from the start- everyone is. Exchange Server Archiver will be a completely new area for Red Gate. The plan was, and remains, to figure out how we are going to market it. Whatever we do, it won’t be the same as the strategy for SQL and .NET tools. Sure, we are using User Groups and bloggers. We are giving away an eBook. We are compiling lists of emails and building Simple Talk Exchange as a community. But the Exchange admin is a more elusive beast. Rather than spreading himself across the rich grazing pastures of the SQL communities sites, he forms a giant herd at MSExchange.org, eschewing the varieties of grass on offer elsewhere. Moreover, he is prone to shape-shift. Pre-greenlight research found that admins typically spend less than 5 hours a week on Exchange tasks.

In a state of ignorance, how best to acquire knowledge? Plagarism, naturally. The email archiving market is densely populated, and surely some of the competition must have an inside line on innovative and successful marketing strategies. Yeah, you’d think that, wouldn’t you? Sadly, this doesn’t seem to be the case. A certain unnamed competitor has gone for that old chestnut, an angry IT man, in their flash ads.

As in…. “Is problem X making you angry? Try solution X”, a formula that fits more or less any product.

Try it yourself. This is mine.

“My ears won’t stop growing doctor”
*angry picture with big ears*
“Try Uncle Albert’s ear restraint formula”

Anyway, my point is, the competition doesn’t seem to be on top of its game either. The company above has one of the better web presences of competitors in this market. Red Gate are going to have to come up with creative and interesting ways to reach Exchange admins, and that means being bold with new ideas. That doesn’t mean we can’t use skills we’ve learnt in community and influencer marketing for SQL and .NET to build up Simple Talk Exchange. We just need to remember that we’re chasing a different kind of customer and entering a totally new marketplace.

If anyone knows how to find Exchange admins, how they think, and how to reach them, any thoughts are welcome…drop them in the comments.

Cheers,

Owen Sanderson