Oddly enough, the only somewhat successful project ($20k/month peak passive income) I've ever had was when I didn't know how to code. I spent all my time on marketing and built the site in Wordpress + Plugins in 1 day.
Why Founders Fail To Market Their Products
61–70 of 91 posts
Re: Why Founders Fail To Market Their Products
#62Oddly enough, the only somewhat successful project ($20k/month peak passive income) I've ever had was when I didn't know how to code. I spent all my time on marketing and built the site in Wordpress + Plugins in 1 day.
The number of potentially successful businesses that can be built with Wordpress + Plugins (+ maybe Zapier) is crazy.
I have a few SaaS products out in the wild and find myself longing for the days where I just had to worry about maintaining a decent WP site (with various integrations around it).
All the work that goes into just maintaining a SaaS application tires you out - particularly if you're a solo founder - leaving less time available for marketing...
Re: Why Founders Fail To Market Their Products
#63>5) Hiring a marketer takes too much time Is there any recommendations for all in one turnkey service for marketing? So that i just pay money and they do the rest.
I would highly recommend trying it yourself first. If you hire an agency you won't know how to guide them appropriately, and they'll end up applying tactics that may not work for your product/market.
I advise a few startups that are paying local marketing agencies thousands of dollars a month (much to my chagrin) to "take care of marketing" for them. None of them have seen any real traction as a result.
Granted, it's anecdotal, but I just can't see how a marketing agency can be effective unless given substantial guidance from the founder(s).
Re: Why Founders Fail To Market Their Products
#64>5) Hiring a marketer takes too much time Is there any recommendations for all in one turnkey service for marketing? So that i just pay money and they do the rest.
Yes, for the most part. This is what marketing agencies do. You still need to provide them with the talking points and value proposition so they have the background for drafting copy for the Marketing collateral, but once they have that they can do a great job at putting together a marketing plan and executing on it, assuming you found a good agency.
> assuming you found a good agency.
There's the rub. How do you find a good one? We've spent obscene amounts of money on agencies that said they could get us growth but none made the needle move. Where are all these good agencies?
Re: Why Founders Fail To Market Their Products
#65It'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…
> self-driving car
This is definitely a product that needs media management, because the key question is not so much if it works but if it's safe. That has to be a key part of any self-driving-car strategy. And you also need a legal/lobbying team, as the comma.ai guy found out.
Re: Why Founders Fail To Market Their Products
#66Earlier quoted context omitted.
>Nine years later, and still the stream of customer support requests has not relented! You gave me an idea for a business model - Let's say you offer a pingdom-like service (to monitor your site availability and reliablity) - You can just do the following: 1. Offer the service 100% Free, at your own risk 2. Offer a $x/month subscription . if you don't pay - you won't get any customer support. Or, you can will still o…
A lot of SaaS businesses offer priority support for paying customers. As a SaaS founder — I've always felt it's a bit of an odd value proposition — "pay me more, and I'll fix my flawed, buggy software".
> I've always felt it's a bit of an odd value proposition — "pay me more, and I'll fix my flawed, buggy software".
Hmm. I think it makes sense if you begin with the assumption that all software is flawed and buggy by default.
Re: Why Founders Fail To Market Their Products
#67Such great insight here. This could have been an article that I wrote since I've gone through nearly everything Dave has gone through. As some have already commented it's something a lot of folks struggle with. You build a great product, perhaps you get a good initial bounce, but struggle to keep the growth going. You really need a lot of stamina and patience to grow a product to critical mass. You can never predict when it'll happen.
Re: Why Founders Fail To Market Their Products
#68Earlier quoted context omitted.
>Nine years later, and still the stream of customer support requests has not relented! You gave me an idea for a business model - Let's say you offer a pingdom-like service (to monitor your site availability and reliablity) - You can just do the following: 1. Offer the service 100% Free, at your own risk 2. Offer a $x/month subscription . if you don't pay - you won't get any customer support. Or, you can will still o…
A lot of SaaS businesses offer priority support for paying customers. As a SaaS founder — I've always felt it's a bit of an odd value proposition — "pay me more, and I'll fix my flawed, buggy software".
Support doesnt mean broken software. Many times it's about how to use it correctly to solve a problem, and paying more for response times, customization and general level of work involved makes perfect sense.
Re: Why Founders Fail To Market Their Products
#69I think the founders that fail to market their products are those who take marketing as something external to product development. Those who consider marketing as introducing and explaining their product features to the world - are successful.
Re: Why Founders Fail To Market Their Products
#70I always say coding is the easy part of your SaaS. Marketing is hard. Don't forget customer support, which if you are really good at can fuel your sales and act has it's own marketing channel. Let's not even mention all of the other things that come into play with running a business.
Coding is the easy part!