21–30 of 91 posts
This is how social networks work, invite your friends systems, etc.
However, even then marketing is still important. But too often marketing is seen as: Spend huge amount of money on ads.
No: marketing is market research, choosing your target audience, branding, image building, tone-of-voice etc.
I built a desktop app (Poker Copilot) in 2008. I figured if I did it well, I'd have my own one-person software company supplying a steady stream of income with little ongoing effort. My product would be so intuitive that it wouldn't need a user guide. It certainly wouldn't need marketing because everyone in my target audience would spread the word that my product was what they needed! Ha, what a fool 2008 me was. Wha…
"Nine years later, and still the stream of customer support requests has not relented!" I wish I could upvote this more than once. Customer support burden is always underestimated. It's time consuming, especially if you want to do it properly & not just outsource to someone overseas following a script. Even releasing something as freeware is likely to cause an unintended stream of support enquiries. I have no idea ho…
Before I charged money for my software, I was afraid of the overwhelming flood of customer support requests. Except they never came.
> even one short email enquiry would wipe out a dozen sales or more (if you put a monetary value your time)
Per email, yes, absolutely. Sometimes I take 20 minutes to answer a more complex email. But since I know that I don't receive more than 5-10 emails, I take the time and this person might recommend my software to other people, because of the great support.
An easy way to mitigate customer support is to have FAQs and lots of written texts on the website. Most people prefer to help themselves I think, because its faster.
Sometimes I wonder if this is a mentality thing. My customers are all Germans. Maybe US customers are faster to send a short email than browsing through FAQ.
It's almost pathos at this point in the hacker community that if you do any marketing or promotion you're a shill and wantrepreneur at best and a charlatan and huckster at a minimum. I know I used to feel this way before I really tried to launch a product. Now I know that there is no such thing as a product that is so good that it sells itself. In fact the best technical solutions I've seen have failed because the ma…
While this is almost always true, there are exceptions to this rule. If you're working on something that is inherently press friendly, you don't really need to market it. You have the first real self-driving car and you just drove from New York City to Los Angeles? I'm pretty sure that will get you whatever press you want. And then of course there's WhatsApp, which was so focused on solely their product that they had…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
"Nine years later, and still the stream of customer support requests has not relented!" I wish I could upvote this more than once. Customer support burden is always underestimated. It's time consuming, especially if you want to do it properly & not just outsource to someone overseas following a script. Even releasing something as freeware is likely to cause an unintended stream of support enquiries. I have no idea ho…
I sell B2C software with a subscription of 1.99€ per month. I have 7,000 active users. I get 5-10 emails per day max. Before I charged money for my software, I was afraid of the overwhelming flood of customer support requests . Except they never came. > even one short email enquiry would wipe out a dozen sales or more (if you put a monetary value your time) Per email, yes, absolutely. Sometimes I take 20 minutes to a…
If you're used to carving out a slice of your day to respond quickly to a batch of such emails, then it's fine. But if you're in a frame of mind where you're primarily worried about something else you really feel you need to get done, it can seem very hard to set that aside and reply to even a single email in any meaningful way.
(But yes, I've also had the experience that charging money does not suddenly make your users any more demanding.)
I don't imply that marketing is pointless at early stage but time-consuming marketing channels (blogging, social media) are best avoided at that time. A detrimental mistake that I made when I was making a product was to think that I need 'marketing' to get more (beta) users. I started writing blog articles without understanding that I needed at least a baseline of users who really desire the product. Reading about some of the SaaS successes, I think that a lot of entrepreneurs get their initial users from people they know / ads / reachout. Strong marketing effort kicks in when the product seems useful for a market and organic growth doesn't feel enough.
So indeed, by the time I was ready to let beta testers in, I had no real network on which to rely on to get it in front of peoples eyes. As a not-for-profit, I don't plan to make money off it (and hence don't plan to spend much on it), and am not interested in the VC side of things.
I remember initially reading BetaList's requirement of submitting to them before you actually launch and I found it ridiculous. Now I realise, if done right, it's the proper way to go about things. And I missed that boat badly.
It's almost pathos at this point in the hacker community that if you do any marketing or promotion you're a shill and wantrepreneur at best and a charlatan and huckster at a minimum. I know I used to feel this way before I really tried to launch a product. Now I know that there is no such thing as a product that is so good that it sells itself. In fact the best technical solutions I've seen have failed because the ma…
While this is almost always true, there are exceptions to this rule. If you're working on something that is inherently press friendly, you don't really need to market it. You have the first real self-driving car and you just drove from New York City to Los Angeles? I'm pretty sure that will get you whatever press you want. And then of course there's WhatsApp, which was so focused on solely their product that they had…
For instance, I worked with an early stage hardware startup whose customers were developers (you couldn't actually do anything with the device if you weren't a developer. It was a SDK not a finished product).
They generated tons of press because hardware is much easier to understand, show and write stories about than software. But despite being in really high profile publications (millions and millions of people seeing it) - it failed to move the needle sales wise.
- Most developers aren't reading these publications
- Most press articles don't mention the developer angle
- You're just one of many many stories that day in a big publication.
- In some ways is _really hurt_ because it made it seem like it was a $100 thing you could buy at Target than a complicated SDK. This resulted in lots of non-devs buying, being wildly disappointed and wanting to return it.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
"Nine years later, and still the stream of customer support requests has not relented!" I wish I could upvote this more than once. Customer support burden is always underestimated. It's time consuming, especially if you want to do it properly & not just outsource to someone overseas following a script. Even releasing something as freeware is likely to cause an unintended stream of support enquiries. I have no idea ho…
I sell B2C software with a subscription of 1.99€ per month. I have 7,000 active users. I get 5-10 emails per day max. Before I charged money for my software, I was afraid of the overwhelming flood of customer support requests . Except they never came. > even one short email enquiry would wipe out a dozen sales or more (if you put a monetary value your time) Per email, yes, absolutely. Sometimes I take 20 minutes to a…
> Maybe US customers are faster to send a short email than browsing through FAQ.
I get some emails where the entirety of the support question is "The program doesn't work. Is it a bug? Please advise." Some customers don't mention which product they're using, or will even send me support enquiries for competitors products.
Not meaning to be ungrateful (I'm lucky to do what I do!), just that I couldn't afford to do it on a $5 one-off app purchase.
i have built products that went to millions of users, zero marketing. If the product is inherently viral, you don't need to market. Othwerwise, you do.
Same here. One of my main criteria when evaluating a business idea is whether it will need serious marketing or not. If it needs marketing I often dismiss it.