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Marketing Plan — Accessible PDF Converter

Target: Universities with large PDF backlogs that must become ADA/Section 508 compliant. Goal: First sales by March 15, 2026. $5,000+ revenue in April 2026.

Target Buyer Personas

Primary: Disability Services Director / Digital Accessibility Coordinator

  • Title: Director of Disability Services, ADA Coordinator, Accessibility Specialist
  • Pain: Drowning in remediation requests. Faculty submit PDFs last-minute. Backlog grows faster than the team can remediate. One complaint or lawsuit and it becomes a crisis.
  • Budget authority: Can approve $500–$5,000/month tools. Larger purchases need IT or procurement sign-off.
  • Where they are: AHEAD (Association on Higher Education and Disability), Accessing Higher Ground conference, CSUN Assistive Technology Conference, AccessU, campus accessibility listservs, LinkedIn groups.

Secondary: IT Accessibility Lead

  • Title: IT Accessibility Analyst, Web Accessibility Manager, Digital Content Manager
  • Pain: Owns the technical side. Evaluates tools. Needs something that integrates without months of setup. Cares about WCAG compliance evidence and audit trails.
  • Budget authority: Recommends tools to procurement. Influences buying decisions.
  • Where they are: WebAIM mailing list, A11y Slack, W3C community groups, GitHub accessibility repos.

Tertiary: Faculty / Instructional Designers

  • Title: Professor, Lecturer, Instructional Designer
  • Pain: Told their course materials must be accessible. Has no idea how. Just wants to upload a PDF and get something compliant back.
  • Budget authority: None individually, but if 50 faculty want the same tool, it gets purchased.

Channel Strategy

Channel 1: Direct Outreach to Disability Services Offices (Weeks 1–4)

Why: These people have the problem right now and budget to solve it. Every university has one. There are ~4,000 degree-granting institutions in the US.

Tactic:

  1. Build a list of 200 target universities (start with large public universities — they have the biggest backlogs and the most regulatory pressure).
  2. Find the Disability Services Director or ADA Coordinator for each. Most are listed on the university website. LinkedIn for the rest.
  3. Send a cold email sequence (3 emails over 10 days):
    • Email 1: Lead with the pain. “Your university has thousands of PDFs that aren’t accessible. Converting one takes 30–90 minutes. We do it in 2 minutes.” Include a 60-second demo video.
    • Email 2: Social proof + specificity. “Here’s a before/after of a real syllabus conversion. WCAG 2.1 AA compliant, with MathML equations screen readers can actually read.”
    • Email 3: Offer. “Try it free — convert 10 documents, no credit card. If it doesn’t save your team 20+ hours this month, no hard feelings.”
  4. Follow up with LinkedIn connection requests to non-responders.
  5. Target: 200 emails → 30 replies → 10 demos → 3–5 paying customers.

Tools: Apollo.io or Hunter.io for email finding. Instantly.ai or Lemlist for email sequences. Loom for demo videos.

Channel 2: Conference and Community Presence (Weeks 2–8)

Why: The accessibility community in higher ed is tight-knit. One recommendation from a respected voice is worth 50 cold emails.

Tactic:

  1. AHEAD (ahead.org): Join as a corporate member. Post in their community forums. Attend regional events.
  2. Accessing Higher Ground (accessinghigherground.org): Submit a presentation proposal for the next conference. In the meantime, sponsor or exhibit if timing allows.
  3. CSUN Assistive Technology Conference (csun.edu/cod/conference): The biggest event in the space. If the timing works, get a booth or demo slot. If not, attend and network.
  4. WebAIM Mailing List: Participate genuinely. Answer questions about PDF accessibility. When relevant, mention the tool. Do not spam.
  5. A11y Slack (web-a11y.slack.com): Same approach — be helpful first, mention the tool when it’s genuinely relevant.
  6. LinkedIn: Post 2–3x per week about PDF accessibility challenges, WCAG compliance tips, and before/after conversion examples. Tag accessibility professionals. Build a following in the niche.

Channel 3: Content Marketing / SEO (Weeks 2–12, compounds over time)

Why: People Google “how to make PDFs accessible” and “PDF accessibility remediation tools” every day. Rank for these terms and inbound leads come to you.

Tactic:

  1. Blog posts (publish on the product site):
    • “The True Cost of PDF Accessibility Remediation at Scale”
    • “PDF vs. HTML: Why Converting to HTML is the Faster Path to WCAG Compliance”
    • “How to Make Math Equations Accessible: MathML vs. Image Alt Text”
    • “Section 508 Compliance for Universities: What You Actually Need to Do”
    • “Automated vs. Manual PDF Remediation: A Realistic Comparison”
  2. Comparison pages: “Accessible PDF Converter vs. [Competitor Name]” — compare against Equidox, CommonLook, Allyant, SensusAccess.
  3. Case study (as soon as you have one customer): “How [University Name] Converted 500 Course Documents to Accessible HTML in One Week.”
  4. YouTube: Record a 3-minute demo. Record a 10-minute walkthrough. Post both. University accessibility teams share these internally.

Channel 4: Partnerships (Weeks 4–12)

Why: If an LMS or document management system recommends you, you get campus-wide adoption without selling to each department.

Tactic:

  1. LMS integrations: Reach out to Canvas (Instructure), Blackboard (Anthology), Moodle, and D2L Brightspace about accessibility tool partnerships. Even a listing in their app marketplace gets visibility.
  2. Accessibility consulting firms: Companies like Level Access, Deque, and WebAIM do consulting for universities. If they can recommend your tool as part of their engagements, you get warm referrals.
  3. Document management vendors: SharePoint, Google Workspace for Education — explore integration partnerships.

Channel 5: Free Tier as Lead Generation (Ongoing)

Why: Let people experience the product. A free tier that converts 5–10 documents per month is enough to prove value but not enough for a university’s real workload. Natural upgrade path.

Tactic:

  1. Free tier: 10 conversions/month, no credit card required.
  2. Every converted document includes a small, tasteful footer: “Made accessible with [Product Name]”.
  3. Email nurture sequence for free users: Day 1 welcome → Day 3 tips → Day 7 “how’s it going?” → Day 14 case study → Day 21 upgrade offer.

Competitive Landscape

CompetitorApproachWeakness You Can Exploit
EquidoxManual + semi-automated PDF taggingStill requires significant manual work. Expensive per-document.
CommonLookPDF/UA compliance tool (manual)Requires trained operators. Steep learning curve.
SensusAccessAutomated document conversionLimited accessibility remediation. No AI image descriptions.
Allyant (formerly Accessible360)Manual remediation serviceSlow turnaround (days/weeks). High cost per document.
Adobe Acrobat ProBuilt-in accessibility checkerFlags problems but doesn’t fix them well. Requires expertise.

Your differentiator: Fully automated, PDF-to-HTML (not PDF-to-tagged-PDF), AI-powered image descriptions, MathML equation support, and built-in WCAG validation with auto-fix. Fastest path from “inaccessible PDF” to “compliant document” at scale.

Key Messages

  1. For the overworked accessibility coordinator: “Stop remediating PDFs one at a time. Convert your entire backlog to accessible HTML in hours, not months.”
  2. For the IT decision-maker: “WCAG 2.1 AA compliant output with a built-in audit trail. No specialist training required.”
  3. For the faculty member: “Upload your syllabus. Download accessible HTML. Two clicks.”
  4. For the legal/compliance officer: “Reduce your institution’s compliance risk. Every document gets validated against 12 WCAG AA criteria with documented results.”

Metrics to Track

MetricWeek 4 TargetWeek 8 TargetWeek 12 Target
Cold emails sent200500800
Demo calls booked102550
Free tier signups30100250
Paying customers3815
MRR$1,500$5,000$10,000
Blog posts published3610
LinkedIn followers (niche)2005001,000