You’re planning, or have started building a product. Where to start marketing? Should you start in the first place? If yes, how?
First,
What’s not marketing?
Marketing is not advertising, let’s get this clear first.
I’ve recently read Seth Godin’s Marketing book, I think he perfectly gives the different definitions of marketing throughout the book. Basically, marketing is to bring a change.
Marketing is changing people for better with what we’re offering.
Marketing is helping people that we want to serve achieve their dreams.
Marketing is changing belief, culture in society, work environment, etc. (for better or worse 🙊)
Marketing is the act of making the change happen.
Marketing is making the impact.
Marketing is changing or creating new patterns (in a society, work environment, etc.).
Marketing is helping people solve their problems.
Marketing is our heartfelt help you give to help our customers to become who they seek to become.
Marketing is learning or ability to see what our customer believe, dream, think, act, decide.
Marketing is understanding our customer behavior, beliefs, worldview – so we can impact them and meet them there.
This is marketing.
And, hell you don’t do it with advertising; it is scam and pushy. Forget that.
SEO, ad targeting, PR guys will help you get more visitors, get found on Google, interrupt your customer’s social media experiences (when they just want to get distracted from life’s stress), and help your brand name mentioned on web papers. But, they will not help you bring more customers in and grow your product.
In short, YOUR CUSTOMERS SHOULD NOT BE A VICTIM OF YOUR HARD-WORKED SEO PRACTICES OR ADS. They should be blessed by your product and solution.
How to start marketing for your startup?
Marketing starts with customer development: finding a middle spot between of what your customers want and what you offer. This middle point is your traction. The goal of this traction is to find people who will understand your product and what you offer.
In this stage, you need to focus on tiny group of people – smallest viable market, put your focus on them, do nothing but supporting, learning their difficulties of doing ‘X’, making relationship with them. You talk to people, people in the field, customers of your competitors, people who may use your product, people who you think that face the problems that your product intends to solve. And you discover that the ‘problem’ you had in your mind doesn’t exist 💀
Anyway.
Honesty is the best marketing. ALSO, marketing is telling a honest story.
You tell a good story to those people that matches with who they want to become or achieve. And the story you tell to these people will determine whether they will become ready to be part of your movement – change. They will fall so hard in love with you that they’ll start promoting, spreading the word about your startup. It’s bulletproof.
What is meant by stories?
Story is not about telling how you started building the product, how founders met, or it’s not your blog post about how your product help X do the Y or mission and vision on your ‘about us’ page.
Your overall marketing efforts – the efforts to make a change will make up your story and the story will fuel your marketing efforts, and this goes on and on in a cycle.
How we make stories is all about those efforts we put to make a change and help solve a real existing problem.
As you become consistent in these marketing efforts, your customers began to love your story and your generous support so much that they began spreading the word.
You do nothing other than that (support & getting to know them).
The best case scenario for determining if your marketing and storytelling are effective is when your customers sell and promote your product because they love it.
And for this to happen, they need to believe in your story, see themselves as a part of your story (because being your customer affect their identity, that’s another topic for psychological marketing).
If this is not the best marketing, tell me what is:
I have many screenshots like this: Uvodo’s customers share us online. And, this is only for the support and relationship that the team builds with them.
How do you decide which group of people to start?
Talking, talking, talking.
So, marketing is about to bring a change. How do you know which group to change?
What is your product’s current version and capabilities are and who are they for? You determine your product core values and the purpose of your product, you consider the unique aspects that set your product apart. But, aside from your product – what you offer, you need to understand not only demographics but psychodemographics of the group – whom do you serve like their lifestyle, values, beliefs, purchasing behaviors, etc.. And you understand this only by talking to them.
After having a rough picture of your customers and knowing what they want to achieve, you start customer development, finding a traction mentioned above.
You cannot sell water to people who wants a lemonade. Even if your water will become a lemonade some day. You need to sell your water to the people who just need water NOW.
If you vertically go down and find that tiny group who just need to use your product who is just happy with early version of your product, then you can broaden the group horizontally. Plus, as you improve your product, bring more features and functionalities to the table, you can vertically go up to a larger group of people who also need that additional feature you develop.
Also..
You should learn to say NO: say no to customers who don’t align with your tiny ‘focus’ group. They will, in any way, get no value from your product, thus churning. The best thing you can try when they want a feature your product currently lacks, and if the feature is in your roadmap, you can keep them on your radar, stay in touch with them, or even ask for pre-payment to speed up that requested feature and get their commitment. Don’t try selling your product at first but build a relationship and understand the problems and needs of that tiny group of people that your product can SERVE.
There are lot’s of spicy strategies to convert leads, make them commit, but you need to play smart here. Not every customer know what they want, not every customer is right, and not every customer request should be developed. If only that customer fits into your small group, then that’s another story.
Initial strategy should roughly look like this:
You get 1-10 customer, you make supporting those customers your favorite activity, you hear every word, concern, feedback they give; you learn them. You create high engagement with that target group. Your initial goal as you start building a product should not be different other than having 10 customer that love your product.
This process is usually done by the product founders.
No need to try to bring new customers in → focus on retention of your initial customers.
No paid advertising
Again, advertising is not marketing.
There’s no need to invest a penny on advertising. Paid marketing/advertising is shortcut to buying attention for your product from people who will churn or not become your customers at all [another topic for me to write about: ‘know your customer’].
Recently I met a guy at a coffeeshop. He was ad targeting specialist, he was amazed Uvodo’s admin panel, like how smooth to start selling something online. He was like “OMG, why you don’t you promote Uvodo.. You can bring X people by spending some $.. et cetera, et cetera.”
It’s a trap.
Could be done, yes; the scenario would look like this:
They will sign up, wander in your product, may subscribe to paid plan or may not; but they’ll churn. Reason: there’s no connection built, no trust, no human interaction.
At early stage, you need to find, bring, build connection, convert, and land customers yourself.
Advertising & SEO is great to bring traffic and maybe signups, but not for bringing in customers. Just don’t do it.
Learn writing
In short, if you want to work in marketing, you need to learn writing and work on your copywriting skills.
Why? Marketing revolves around effective communication (to make change, evoke certain emotions, play psychological tricks, etc.).
People have a short attention span and patience. The first time they come across your digital presence (say website, or a copy in somewhere) or the moment they start interacting with your product, you should communicate right way, effectively—from content design to the copy in the user flow.
Consider this like an elevator pitch. If you can’t explain your product in seconds (the moment they land in your site) or fail to help users navigate around your product (to reach the “AHA! moment” faster i.e., or start using a feature), you may lose your chance.
The way you communicate to target audience is content (text, visuals, audio, video, etc.).
Content marketing is communicating with your target audience, also understanding, educating, supporting and delivering value in each stage of their lifecycle (from awareness to conversion and retention). Plus, it extends each part of your product (i.e., in-app content, customer support resources, messages you write, copy in email marketing etc.).
You don’t need to start or invest in content marketing if you don’t know who you want to change. I’ve done it, failed.
Though content is not limited to text format, at the early stage of startup, you may only need to:
- position your product correctly in digital presence
- convey a clear message (i.e., product values)
- instruct users on how to use your product (help center resources)
- help users find their way in your product (UX writing, user flow, design)
- propose unique values in your marketing/launch campaigns
How your product is presented, the language used to describe it, and the overall content design choices contribute to the overall product experience.
Content is not king; only good content is king when it helps your target jump from stage to stage: ‘awareness’ → ‘engagement’ → ‘consideration’ → ‘acquisition’ → ‘conversion’..
I’ve asked several founders what’s your product. Either they couldn’t explain it, had difficulties doing so, or explained wrong (after I ask ‘so, your product does X?’ and received ‘no’). If you can’t explain yourself what you’re doing and what’s your product is about, then you cannot explain it to others. Try to explain your product to yourself, then expand and build first content around it. That’s it.
Long story short
- Talk to people, start marketing with customer development; focus on tiny group, support them, support your customers & deliver value before they are your customers, create high engagement, don’t rush in to bring new customers, give your full focus on retention
- No advertising, no heavy digital marketing practices
- Create nice landing page, establish supporting resources (i.e., knowledge base) have a nice product user flow, good UX writing, easy navigation. You’re good to go.