Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Side Project Marketing Checklist

sideprojectchecklist.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

11–20 of 70 posts

Re: Side Project Marketing Checklist

#11

Post by secfirstmd »

camillomiller wrote: post #7
muzani wrote: post #6

It starts off nice, but past the blog part, it seems to just be mixing some low quality things with the high quality stuff. Something like "Attend meetups or conferences for your target market" can be extremely dangerous because this is a great way to spend a lot of time accomplishing nothing just to tick something off the list. Whereas something like "cold calling 20 customers" is so important it should be in bold.…

it depends from the market. Cold calling can be effective in the us but should be done with a lot of attention in Germany for example, or Europe in general. Here we are all much more skeptical towards companies or individuals that call you to offer something. Most of the time, even if the call is perfectly crafted and polite you would be perceived as an obnoxious spammer. Didn't want to diminish your comment, because…

Agree, its not common in UK/Ireland so if someone does it, I reckon 90% of people just polietly try to hangup quickly

Re: Side Project Marketing Checklist

#12

Post by GordonS »

secfirstmd wrote: post #11
camillomiller wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

it depends from the market. Cold calling can be effective in the us but should be done with a lot of attention in Germany for example, or Europe in general. Here we are all much more skeptical towards companies or individuals that call you to offer something. Most of the time, even if the call is perfectly crafted and polite you would be perceived as an obnoxious spammer. Didn't want to diminish your comment, because…

Agree, its not common in UK/Ireland so if someone does it, I reckon 90% of people just polietly try to hangup quickly

And the remaining 10% will give a tirade of verbal abuse before hanging up - cold calling in the UK is not welcome.

Re: Side Project Marketing Checklist

#13

Post by Fiahil »

That list explain perfectly why I don't want to work on "marketing stuff" anymore. So much opportunity to waste time and money on trivial things.

A blog ? A "sneeze page" ? What's the point if you don't have anything interesting to write ?

A/B testing landing page and newsletter ? Is that difficult to get honest feedback from people who care ?

Re: Side Project Marketing Checklist

#14

Post by archagon »

Fiahil wrote: post #13

That list explain perfectly why I don't want to work on "marketing stuff" anymore. So much opportunity to waste time and money on trivial things. A blog ? A "sneeze page" ? What's the point if you don't have anything interesting to write ? A/B testing landing page and newsletter ? Is that difficult to get honest feedback from people who care ?

I feel this list is intended for full-on, VC-yearning startups. My admittedly limited experience is that if you're going for more of a small business product, you could eliminate about 75% of this list.

The rest is just "industry hacking".

Re: Side Project Marketing Checklist

#15

Post by a13n »

camillomiller wrote: post #7
muzani wrote: post #6

It starts off nice, but past the blog part, it seems to just be mixing some low quality things with the high quality stuff. Something like "Attend meetups or conferences for your target market" can be extremely dangerous because this is a great way to spend a lot of time accomplishing nothing just to tick something off the list. Whereas something like "cold calling 20 customers" is so important it should be in bold.…

it depends from the market. Cold calling can be effective in the us but should be done with a lot of attention in Germany for example, or Europe in general. Here we are all much more skeptical towards companies or individuals that call you to offer something. Most of the time, even if the call is perfectly crafted and polite you would be perceived as an obnoxious spammer. Didn't want to diminish your comment, because…

I don't think it's really a US thing. I think it really depends on who your target customer is and how they're likely to feel about a cold phone call.

Also cold outreach doesn't have to be over the phone. Email, Twitter, FB Messenger, LinkedIn mail, etc. could work better.

Re: Side Project Marketing Checklist

#16

Post by jermaustin1 »

spapas82 wrote: post #10

Hello this list is too comprehensive and exhausting. Could somebody filter or sort this list by importance of each task? Ie you must absolutely do these tasks but if you skip these other tasks no big deal.

The problem with filtering the list to only what is most important or necessary is impossible, but none of them are required.

I have launched hundreds of products for myself and clients, and followed a formula for each one, and I believe it had about as good a chance of a successful launch as having a monkey throw darts at a wall. You always end up analyzing what you did when your launch succeeded, and your resulting formula is just the Texas Sharpshooter Fallacy with checkboxes.

The only real thing that truly helps a launch is having an audience already. It might not make the product succeed, but it will at least aid in getting the initial signups and feedback.

I have also launched "free" products to no audience of my own, and instead found them in forums. After posting about the product, people typically would sign up in droves. And once I had a critical mass of sign ups, I then had an audience to market to. That would then lead me to selling a bigger version that we were giving away for free [1]. I call this piggybacking.

There are a lot of "hacks" you can do to help your launch along, but I don't believe any of them are better than having a baked in audience already [2].

1: http://jeremyaboyd.com/my-first-product-launches/

2: http://jeremyaboyd.com/tricks-to-monetize-your-side-projects...

Re: Side Project Marketing Checklist

#17

Post by dsr_ »

Missed a big step at the end of customer research:

* Use the results of your research to make sure you are building something that customers will actually want/need enough to pay for.

Re: Side Project Marketing Checklist

#18

Post by jermaustin1 »

camillomiller wrote: post #7
muzani wrote: post #6

It starts off nice, but past the blog part, it seems to just be mixing some low quality things with the high quality stuff. Something like "Attend meetups or conferences for your target market" can be extremely dangerous because this is a great way to spend a lot of time accomplishing nothing just to tick something off the list. Whereas something like "cold calling 20 customers" is so important it should be in bold.…

it depends from the market. Cold calling can be effective in the us but should be done with a lot of attention in Germany for example, or Europe in general. Here we are all much more skeptical towards companies or individuals that call you to offer something. Most of the time, even if the call is perfectly crafted and polite you would be perceived as an obnoxious spammer. Didn't want to diminish your comment, because…

I don't think "customer" in the list for cold calling was consumers. It was probably businesses which are a lot more receptive to cold calls/emails.

Re: Side Project Marketing Checklist

#19

Post by Cerium »

ekianjo wrote: post #5

> [ ] Record/post video of you reading the post on YouTube. Lol, really? I don't see the benefit of doing that. It's way faster to read text than to watch a video.

Sometimes reading is inconvenient, for example during commute while driving I listen to YouTube videos.

Re: Side Project Marketing Checklist

#20

Post by XCSme »

Fiahil wrote: post #13

That list explain perfectly why I don't want to work on "marketing stuff" anymore. So much opportunity to waste time and money on trivial things. A blog ? A "sneeze page" ? What's the point if you don't have anything interesting to write ? A/B testing landing page and newsletter ? Is that difficult to get honest feedback from people who care ?

Well, you need a landing page so users can actually buy your product. Maybe not A/B test but you should use something like hotjar or userTrack, at least in the beginning to see if your users are having difficulties actually converting.
Post reply on HN