Using Twitter to Promote a New Product Launch in a Congested Space

The antivirus market is a very congested space, and getting your product recognized amongst all the noise is truly a marketing challenge.  In this battle, the vendors must often displace an embedded product, usually one that comes pre-installed with the computer.  AV vendors often find themselves fighting against powerful, entrenched companies such as Norton and McAfee, companies with multi-million dollar budgets.

In the battle for desktop space, these vendors have to be creative and willing to take chances to out flank the massive marketing budgets of their competitors.  One of the more interesting moves I've seen is Sunbelt Software's use of Twitter.  Today only (March 2nd) you can take advantage of their promotion and receive a free license to the new product, just click here.

Not only does this allow them to gain desktop share, but it also generates a list of customers and performs some serious web marketing.  Each Tweet increases web placement and the likely hood of the product being found, adds another follower to their fan base, and ultimately educates the market.

The overall cost of the promotion is based on the percentage of that base that WOULD have converted (not all free adopters would buy remember).  The return is desktop space and installs for a subscription product, SEO and a whole lot of free press.

Update on Tuesday, March 2, 2010 at 3:23PM by Casey S. Potenzone

If you are interested in seeing how well the promotion worked, and how many people took advantage, check out this real-time twitter search result.