Marketing Strategies - Be brutal but honest
Kartike Bansal
54 replies
"You can have the best product in the world, but if you don't have a way to get it in front of people, you don't have a business." – Joel Comm
Many first-time entrepreneurs are obsessed with building their product but when it comes to marketing, it's an altogether different ball game. As someone with a tech background, it took me a considerable amount of time to realize this while building my first product.
Share the marketing advice, tactics, or perspectives you've gained from your experiences.
Replies
Shabnam Katoch@shabnam_katoch
I totally agree with you Kartike, what are the strategies that you are implying, tell me your top 1
Share
Adding new and relevant content to your website. Research about the competitors- what content they are writing, what marketing strategies they are using. Doing SEO- on-page, off-page and technical, link building, Social Media Marketing, Using Google Ads, Promoting your product on various channels like Product Hunt, Reddit, Saashub, Quora etc. Collecting and analyzing customer testimonials- You must try using Feedspace for your business. Collecting all the data and tracking in Google Analytics. Good Luck!
@abhishek_bhardwaj19 How long does it take to capture very early customers?
@abhishek_bhardwaj19 Is this manageable by one person?
@mike_cecconello1 You can have 1-2 working on SEO and Google Analytics, Similarly 1-2 persons for preparing social media posts and strategies.
@neelptl2602 You will start getting engagement, website or app traffic, and brand awareness from the start. Although the numbers would be less but they will keep on increasing. If you follow all the strategies correctly within a few weeks you will start getting some paid customers. Good Luck!
Purchasing email lists might seem like a quick way to reach a large audience, but it's a surefire way to damage your brand's reputation and violate privacy regulations like GDPR. It's better to build your email list organically with opt-in subscribers.
@nitin_joshi completely agree, if you want to reach a large audience without hurting your brand, I would suggest trying to create viral content that can for example use current trends.
at NewsJack is what we are trying to do!
@mike_cecconello1 I going to check this NewsJack. and you are right content for larger audience always work. That is the way to viral your content.
Understand your target thoroughly, then use social media, content marketing, and partnerships to demonstrate the value of your product.
Absolutely agree with Joel Comm's quote
But there are also many great cases where the product didn't need marketing tools or strategies at all, like Slack, Notion, Facebook, Reddit and many more.
Today I think times have changed and we need to use marketing to its full potential, especially in the early days to get the first users.
My team and I are currently using all possible and impossible methods, it can be content marketing, SEO, Google ads, podcasts and press releases
@erkin_bek I totally get where you're coming from! 😄
It makes sense to experiment a lot in those early days and drive your efforts where you're getting the most success.
Keep hustling! 🚀💪
Focus on your target audience, not everyone, prioritize content that provides value, measure and adapt constantly, optimize your website for conversion, do not neglect email marketing, and analyze competitors' activities but do not copy blindly.
1) Double down on sales. This means good quality in prospecting and good quantity in reaching out.
2) Go to places where your audience hang out. Start providing value there. Eventually, people will like to know about you and your product.
3) Share short yet valuable content on socials. Comparably easy to create and probably, your best shot at content during the initial stages.
@senthil99nathan Absolutely spot on!
Going where your audience hangs out is golden advice. Providing value in those spaces builds real connections. It's like making friends before talking business—way more effective!
I think people think that they can do the same methods for every product. Marketing strategies are not a one-size-fits-all.
Think about the problem you're solving, not he marketing channel to use.
Great brands all have a purpose or mission that their target audience can relate too. Believe it or not, we all buy with our emotions, even when buying B2B tech.
This fundamental purpose then becomes the narrative for all your marketing activity, whatever medium/platform your target audience use.
Brands that do this well always stand out from their peers. Salesforce talk about enabling customer relationships, not CRM or features/ functionality.
Create a shared purpose for your brand message - the rest will follow.
Namaste
@jon_sturgeon Great example! Emotions play a big role. When you weave that purpose into your marketing narrative, magic happens.
Namaste 🙏
We had a surprising amount of success with twitter DM's at Frontdoor, got our first thousand users that way in a couple of months
We were getting over 10% conversion rates on some follower lists, which was way higher than we expected
Talk to the user is my secret marketing strategy. It is not only about the product improvement or new feature discovery. It can also help let your user talk loud and share your story! The more users you talk, the more traffic you will get!
Define your target audience, go the places/platforms where they hangout, talk about the pain points that resonate with them instantly, painting a vivid picture of their challenges.
Here's what worked for the teams I was part of when we were launching new products:
1. You need to talk to your first customers A LOT. Ask for their feedback, listen to their insights, use their words in your copy. Feature them everywhere and whenever possible. Grow them as your first advocates and they'll bring you new customers. People trust people.
2. Measure properly but don't fall into the trap of "we need more data". Define several crucial KPIs to track and do this all the time: conversions throughout the buyer journey, sales cycle length, CAC.
3. Don't choose marketing channels based on your own gut feel. Invest time into asking your ideal prospects what they read, how they choose a solution, what are their preferred content formats. Good news is: those channels are "free" (you don't need to pay for clicks or impressions). Not so good news: they're not completely free because they need your time and attention (being active on social media, participating in community discussions, attending relevant events).
What about using newsjacking to get your brand in front of people?
It's easy and cheap with https://www.newsjack.me/.
It helps people recognize your brand in a positive and innovative way 🚀
Find your target audience and stick to that platform. Create consistent content according to the platform and engage with users with early thoughts and after-release constructive feedback. It helps. :)
I wholeheartedly agree with you Kartike Bansal. As a developer myself, I am deeply invested in perfecting our products, but marketing can be incredibly time-consuming. It's challenging to engage with the audience and maintain daily content updates, and it's especially difficult when you want to allocate your most crucial time to product development. We believe in delivering a flawless product, but marketing is undeniably essential in today's competitive landscape. Without it, even the most authentic and exceptional product may struggle to generate leads in the market
My marketing steps work with new products to grow and achieve 50 to 100 monthly sales every month.
1st: YouTube my first option to promote it and achieve at least 2 or 3 sales daily.
2nd: Articles on my website and features page for the solution we offer.
3rd: Currently working on my twitter account as I saw some Saas owners achieving great success and traffic for their AI business by using twitter.
4th: Tiktok videos of your products.
5th: Try to get ranked on Google for some low-average keywords.
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Currently learning now and it feels like I'm behind. We spent a year building & getting licensed with the SEC to launch and now that we're ready to, we're wishing we did more to communicate our product sooner!
Any tips on how to catch up? We've built something awesome and people are enjoying it, but now it's just about getting in front of the right folks
Completely agree with Joel!
We should make sure our we are presenting our product or services in best time, best place, to best consumer. For that we research our consumer bed to bed daily life, and so on. It's make sure to develop more personalized marketing campaign, that's drive result.