Marketing your startup: What's on your checklist? • Hacker News Board

Re: Marketing your startup: What's on your checklist?

#21

Post by corford » Tue, Jul 08, 2014, 3:10 PM UTC

alphagenerator wrote: post #13

programminggeek wrote: post #10

1. Figure out your market before you build anything. Talk to them, get to know them, figure out what they need. 2. Ask them for an intent to purchase or to reserve a spot in line or whatever. 3. Build landing pages and advertise them so that you can validate your ability to acquire customers before building anything. 4. Create a human machine that looks/feels like the real machine you are going to build later. 5. Sel…

Serious question regarding #1: What if I am the market because I am addressing a need I have that others have not addressed? Is the question then whether others have the same general needs? Do I get to walk around thinking I have instant validation, or am I rolling the dice on the likelihood that others have the same problem?

Until you talk to other people, you're rolling the dice. Trust your gut and go ask a bunch of people if they have the same need (and if it's going to be a paid thing, whether or not they'd pony up for it if it existed). If the answers come back positive, high five yourself and go make it!

Re: Marketing your startup: What's on your checklist?

#22

Post by alphagenerator » Tue, Jul 08, 2014, 3:12 PM UTC

gk1 wrote: post #20

alphagenerator wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Serious question regarding #1: What if I am the market because I am addressing a need I have that others have not addressed? Is the question then whether others have the same general needs? Do I get to walk around thinking I have instant validation, or am I rolling the dice on the likelihood that others have the same problem?

I was once in that situation, and I learned that yes, you do need to validate that others have the same issue and that they're willing to pay for the solution and that there are enough such people to make this a viable business. The product I created was a tool for a small niche of artists (of which I was a part). It solved a major problem I had, and I knew that others had the same problem. I even ran it by a few oth…

What if you had used a freemium model and delivered your product as a free app with IAP or ads and such? Or was the market too small in such a case?

Re: Marketing your startup: What's on your checklist?

#23

Post by alphagenerator » Tue, Jul 08, 2014, 3:14 PM UTC

corford wrote: post #21

alphagenerator wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Serious question regarding #1: What if I am the market because I am addressing a need I have that others have not addressed? Is the question then whether others have the same general needs? Do I get to walk around thinking I have instant validation, or am I rolling the dice on the likelihood that others have the same problem?

Until you talk to other people, you're rolling the dice. Trust your gut and go ask a bunch of people if they have the same need (and if it's going to be a paid thing, whether or not they'd pony up for it if it existed). If the answers come back positive, high five yourself and go make it!

What if a competitor has already validated the market for me? For example, they exist and have existed for a few years, but still don't service my need. Is it valid to assume I can attack their market share?

Re: Marketing your startup: What's on your checklist?

#24

Post by c16 » Tue, Jul 08, 2014, 3:16 PM UTC

trengul wrote: post #5

We tried Stumbleupon PD for getting quite cheap traffic, when we were on initial stage - it helped us to validate the concept and move further. Advantage - you will also get a free traffic just as regular stumbleupon submission. Betalist is quite hot now as well - we got 100 subscribers to beta from it.

My problem with stumbleupon is that while you may get many visitors (in the thousands per page), I noticed that very few - if any - actually cared. Did some analysis on it and I wouldn't use SU again: http://ssdpress.com/when-it-comes-to-blogging-readership-its...

Re: Marketing your startup: What's on your checklist?

#25

Post by antr » Tue, Jul 08, 2014, 3:20 PM UTC

Kequc wrote: post #15

johnmoore wrote: post #3

1) Set up a Twitter page. 2) Set up a facebook page. 2) Have your branding the same on all social media. 3) Connect to relevant followers or potential customers. 4) Connect your blog posts automatically to twitter.

How do you mean by connect your blog posts automatically to twitter, you mean have twitter link to new blog posts? What tool do you use?

Tools: dlvr.it, bufferapp.com, ifttt.com

Re: Marketing your startup: What's on your checklist?

#26

Post by visakanv » Tue, Jul 08, 2014, 3:21 PM UTC

blumkvist wrote: post #4

The very first thing that should be on everyone's marketing checklist is understanding what marketing is and what it is not. A lot of people use marketing and promotion interchangeably. Promotion is just a part of your marketing strategy. Marketing is the science of bring a product to market. A good marketing plan includes (among other things) initial market research, analysis of the marketplace (the dynamic relation…

This. The most important part of marketing your X is building a X that matters. This applies whether you're doing a startup or playing in a band. The best promotional tactics will flub on a bleh product that nobody cares about. You'll waste time and money trying to sell something that people aren't interested in buying.

A lot of good marketing is about figuring out how to position your offering in a way that allows people to talk about your stuff. The marketer is really a facilitator- you have as little and as much influence as that sounds.

The promotional stuff at the end, that's the victory lap, that's the easiest bit. The million (or billion!) dollar question is- who does this matter to, and why, and how do we put it in front of them in a way that makes them agree? The rest is just elbow grease.

Re: Marketing your startup: What's on your checklist?

#27

Post by gk1 » Tue, Jul 08, 2014, 3:21 PM UTC

alphagenerator wrote: post #22

gk1 wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was once in that situation, and I learned that yes, you do need to validate that others have the same issue and that they're willing to pay for the solution and that there are enough such people to make this a viable business. The product I created was a tool for a small niche of artists (of which I was a part). It solved a major problem I had, and I knew that others had the same problem. I even ran it by a few oth…

What if you had used a freemium model and delivered your product as a free app with IAP or ads and such? Or was the market too small in such a case?

In hindsight I think the market was just far too small and did not have the expendable income to pay for such a service.

Re: Marketing your startup: What's on your checklist?

#28

Post by corford » Tue, Jul 08, 2014, 3:24 PM UTC

alphagenerator wrote: post #23

corford wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Until you talk to other people, you're rolling the dice. Trust your gut and go ask a bunch of people if they have the same need (and if it's going to be a paid thing, whether or not they'd pony up for it if it existed). If the answers come back positive, high five yourself and go make it!

What if a competitor has already validated the market for me? For example, they exist and have existed for a few years, but still don't service my need. Is it valid to assume I can attack their market share?

Assumptions are inherently risky but ultimately you always end up having to go with your gut. That doesn't mean you shouldn't do the background research and talk to people first though! Even if you are right, you'll very likely discover that the proto idea you have now needs changing or tweaking in ways you would never have imagined had you not talked to some people in your target audience first.

I'm actually working on something right now that started like that. There are a load of large, well established incumbents operating in the market I'm about to try and pitch a tent in but none of them offer a service that does what I want. My gut told me I wasn't the only one who'd prefer my approach to the problem, so I talked to a bunch of people, refined the idea a little, did a load of research and when that all came back positive I quit my job and started building it. I'll let you know how it pans out :)

Re: Marketing your startup: What's on your checklist?

#29

Post by andys627 » Tue, Jul 08, 2014, 3:24 PM UTC

SEO - takes a while to get picked up and also some trial and error, but once you've got it will bring in a trickle of leads every day. This adds up.

Guest posts on industry blogs - My experience is to make it easy for the person to put the blog up - have a few ideas ready when you contact them. Make it awesome and they'll ask you to write another one.

Advertising is hard and expensive. Repeat advertising is HARD and EXPENSIVE. Its hard to convince people to buy your stuff with ads/landing pages. Its expensive to run ads. Great for driving traffic before you've "earned it" other ways. Measure, measure, measure and iterate. Spend time on different ad variations and turn of the bad ones. An increase in CTR from .05% to .1% doubles your clicks!! Spend some time on a landing page. Make sure you wow these people so you get referrals and stretch every last penny of your ad dollar. Use retargeting - its way cheaper and way more effective. Takes 5 minutes to setup w/Perfect Audience All of these things stretch your marketing dollar farther.

Referrals - ask people to refer you. Or better yet, WOW them and they will do it for you. In my experience, people ARE ok with doing business w/new companies that aren't super polished. Make up for it with ridiculous service and responsiveness.

Re: Marketing your startup: What's on your checklist?

#30

Post by gk1 » Tue, Jul 08, 2014, 3:25 PM UTC

alphagenerator wrote: post #23

corford wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Until you talk to other people, you're rolling the dice. Trust your gut and go ask a bunch of people if they have the same need (and if it's going to be a paid thing, whether or not they'd pony up for it if it existed). If the answers come back positive, high five yourself and go make it!

What if a competitor has already validated the market for me? For example, they exist and have existed for a few years, but still don't service my need. Is it valid to assume I can attack their market share?

I know that as engineers we'd like to avoid talking to strangers as much as possible, but there's simply nothing better than speaking with your potential customers.

Having a competitor is a good sign, but how do you know they're profitable? How do you know they're solving the problem well enough that they're even worth imitating? How do you know they're not frustrating the hell out of their users? If you speak to potential customers, you'll know.