Any sage advice or experience with outsourcing marketing and sales?
Marketing is hard. You identify the niche market, figure out where they hang out, what they like and dislike and what they had for breakfast and then... you marketing?
I am not a marketer but read up a lot on it and have a good grasp of different techniques used. Unfortunately, I can't really figure out what will work best for my product and it seems foolish to spread my already limited budget thin.
So I figured I'd hire someone to do that for me. What are your positive/negative experiences with this and do you have any tips on finding a good person when looking for this type of job?
I can recommend to search outsourcing developers and marketers in Ukrainian, Kyiv https://idapgroup.com/blog/kyiv-outsourcing-companies/ they have many great professionals which will help you in all your questions.
Are you talking to your potential customers already? More than just one or two that you knew anyway. Strangers who will buy after your friends. If not, start doing that now.
Marketing is finding out what your customers want and then making sure they find out about what you did for them. Spend money to scale with an agency or freelancer later, focus on talking to people yourself first and sell to them. When they pay, use that money and experience to pay someone else to keep it going for you. If you aren't talking to customers, how do you know you're giving them what they want?
Thanks for the response. I am clearly not talking enough to my customers, otherwise I would not be having this internal debate.
How do you start a conversation, and not feel like you're being overly salesy?
Don't try to sell. Just talk about their problems and pains. You'll get more out of it than if you try to hard close a sale early days. Their value is in their feedback more than their wallet. Close the sale later when you know them like your partner.