I got advice like this at the beginning when I started working on my app. After a few years in business and selling 10s of thousands of copies (it's a side project, currently at $4-5k / month and the sales are still going up), I am not sure that I completely agree with the gist of this article. My angle is that the core of marketing is the product itself - if you get it right and help with some real pain, it starts spreading itself.
My approach is to talk to customers and instead of investing my time and energy into marketing, to spend time on improving the product. I have noticed that after any meaningful update of the product, it starts spreading faster.
I follow the 80/20 ratio but inversely and also outsource some of the marketing, e.g. content creation, website redesign, etc.
On the other hand, I cannot tell for sure whether I couldn't have sold many more copies, had I done more marketing instead of the feature work :-)
1
By talking to your existing customers, you're already doing marketing ;-) After sales and/or technical support, is a part of marketing in the sense that how well you do it, or that you do it at all affects how your customers perceive you and will thus influence their decision to recommend your product or service to other people.
A recurring theme in most of Courtland's podcasts is how important it is to actually talk to a living, breathing customer - via video chat or phone call, as opposed to email or chatbot or those call centers. It's critical that we talk directly to customers more often as you'll get direct feedback about what your customers want and/or need.
I don't believe there's a "perfect" ratio or rule of thumb with regard to the amount of time spent between product development and marketing. You pretty much allocate your time based on what you learn from marketing and product development and prioritize the important tasks and allocate your time per day accordingly.
2
Interestingly, I have not spoken to any customer directly except for support emails. The only exception was an influential blogger - he asked me to add a feature and thanks to that then recommended my app.
To get honest feedback, just read the anonymous reviews in the AppStore and take them seriously - these are the pain points. As Bill Gates once said, “Your most unhappy customers are your greatest source of learning”.
2
Researching that pain and understanding + solving it is what amy hoy & alex hillman call "sales safari" - quite different from just talking to your customers which can lead you down the wrong path for the following reasons:
Almost all productive people are far too busy to remember everything they do each day because they’re Getting Shit Done. Almost all people are numb to their own pain. Their most dangerous problems aren’t the minor irritations that sting, but the dark shadows that lurk below the surface, unsaid, unnoticed, unmanaged. And while many people will say, “Sure, I’d pay for that” — few will do it. Even if you ask for money right then [a popular revision to the Customer Interview approach], they may cut you a small check out of awkwardness and — this is key — because you’re in the room with them, they actually believe in it.
But when you’re gone… the subtle web of social obligation and self-deception is gone, too.
So: People are locked into their existing reality, they can’t accurately identify their pains, or their cause — or when they do, they identify minor irritations and not bigger problems… AND you can’t trust what they say.
This, my friends, is why the smartest business minds have said:
“If I had asked people what they wanted, they would have said faster horses.” — Henry Ford
“It’s not the consumers’ job to figure out what they want.” — Steve Jobs
“A public-opinion poll is no substitute for thought.” — Warren Buffett
And it’s also why, when research psychologists design an experiment, they almost always hide the note-taker, the measuring equipment, and sometimes just leave a person in a room, alone:
If you want to know what a person really values, what they really suffer, what they really do, what they really pay for… don’t listen to their words, observe their actions.
By any chance can you give some more detail into the marketing jobs you outsourced?
3
Sure. As I didn’t know what to do at all (I'm a dev) and how to do or outsource marketing, I decided to pay for a marketing strategy first. I hired someone experienced on Upwork and paid 1k (you could probably get it much cheaper) for a ~ 30-page document analyzing my current situation, including competitors, user personas, possible channels, etc. The key is to pick a marketer who understands the domain/topic!
This gave me a list of tasks that I could outsource individually to less skilled marketers. As the app started making a bit of money, I picked some tasks - e.g. creating some content for my website and paid to get them done.
I have also contacted some high profile bloggers/influencers identified in the strategy and got some mentions on their blogs.
There are some more tasks that I’m going to pay for now, like spreading the word on Reddit, YT, Quora, …
I also did some initial ASO optimization myself using SensorTower (the free offering) - changed my app title to be more unique, updated the keywords, … This helped in the matter of a few months.
I have experimented with FB campaigns but it didn't pay, the app sells for under a fiver and I couldn't achieve a profitable conversion rate. I can imagine if you sell something over $10, it might make a difference as the audience targetting is great.
Recently, I have paid for a professional app preview video, which has increased the sales measurably.
I do it as I go and as the app makes some money. But seriously, the biggest increases in sales were after feature updates.
1
Lots of good info!
I've been hesitant to spend a ton on marketing after spending for a freelance developer. The main reason is that the app only sells for under $2 and I could very easily spend a ton of money that doesn't see a return. It's encouraging to hear a successful story from an app that sells for a low price. I'll have to look into hiring a marketing strategist.
Which tactic gave you the most bang for your buck?
Do you mind if I ask the name of your app?
2
Re the marketing strategy, I only paid for it once the app had made a few thousand bucks after the first 2-3 years; I don't invest money that the app hasn't made. Thinking of it, I cannot directly attribute any return to it yet so that's probably not a safe investment for start. I just wanted to approach it in a structured manner, not to randomly hire some facebook campaign managers and whatnot.
There is no single thing that has made a big difference, it's been always step by step, continuous effort. One thing that helped me at the beginning was when I contacted one influential blogger, he gave me some feedback and I implemented new features based on that. He then blogged about it and started spreading the word.
Sorry, I don't want to disclose the app yet. I have 2-3 competitors that (IMHO) make some mistakes in what they focus on and sell much less than me. I don't want to give them hints ;-) It's a tool/utility app with a high entry barrier; it is difficult to do, which means fewer competitors. It took me 1.5 years to launch the first version working 10-15 hours/week and it worked embarrassingly badly when I look back. Once I improved it, the sales started going up.
Not sure if I'm a good fit for this website; it's not exactly hacking what I do, more like a lot of work.
6
Great article - thanks for sharing. This part really resonated with me:
"Try to see marketing as a tool to help your (prospect) customers".
It's certainly been helpful to adopt this slight mindset shift for my project (www.tribefive.me for reference). By thinking about how I can add value for other people, it makes it easier to come up with blog articles to write, or think of better ways to engage with potential customers, etc.
One tip to add: if you are just getting started on marketing...start small at first, but be very consistent about doing it.
For instance, send out just ONE cold email per day. Setting the bar low will make it very easy for you to "win" each day. Doesn't matter if its 9am or at 11:50pm...you can always achieve your daily goal.
And then as you build up momentum...you can step it up to 5 or 10 or even more outreaches per day.
Cheers!
Jonathan
2
Great tip. Being consistent is so important. It gets really tiring in the early stages to continue doing any marketing if any number (traffic, users, etc) is super low.
2
Yeah, you are totally right. The problem with marketing is that you don't get feedback right away compared to when you are coding (ie. you'll see errors real time when you do something wrong).
That means...you could be doing a bunch of email outreaches and results won't trickle in until a day / week later.
To get over that obstacle, I keep this quote front and center: "Don't judge each day by the harvest you reap but by the seeds that you plant."
5
For anyone reading this article that feels marketing is not something they understand, I highly recommend that you follow HubSpot (http://blog.hubspot.com) to understand the value of 'inbound marketing'.
I also recommend that you get @mijustin 'Marketing for Developers' (https://devmarketing.xyz/). Don't just buy the book, get the online course and watch the videos. It's a great investment in how to take your product to market as a developer. Justin is also a fellow IH, so you give a bit of love back to the community... which is also good.
Oh yeah, I learned lots from Justin over the years. ✊
1
Hey you earned it bud.
Keep forging along. Can't wait to hear more about the transistor.fm journey.
3
80% marketing is bullshit, unless you are selling bullshit or unicorn farts. A real product should be, maybe, 70% product 30% marketing. (on time and budget)
3
For a majority it's true, but in my case.... I haven't done much marketing(like 2 hours/week?) and I reached a 5 figures MRR in less than a year. The marketing was done by:
my customers spreading the word about my product
"Powered by" style link on the widget.
responding to some questions on some forums
Probably it's just luck for me, but if you have a great product which serves a big need for a niche, the product pretty much sells itself.
1
I'd say 2 hours of focused marketing per week is a pretty significant amount of marketing for a solopreneur. ;)
1
What's your product? You should add it to your IH bio.
3
I had never heard of this 80/20 rule until I started frequenting IndieHackers. I always found myself trying to work on my project but always getting caught with marketing, demoing and selling to existing clients.
So, without knowing it, I ended up programming only on Fridays and sometimes Thursdays... so I validate the notion.
Great article and I can relate it very well. In fact, I saw most of the founders/makers of great products, actually spend the majority of their times on marketing.
1
Great article!
Always start with
was the empty space intentional ? :)
1
Is it still there? Thought I edited that (bad copy/paste from original blog) 🙀
1
fixed now :)
1
Resonates so much with me. As a developer the biggest mistake I have ever made is ignoring marketing altogether.
1
Great article, thank you for putting this together.
The part that really resonated with me was to treat marketing as another mountain you are trying to scale. Like coding and product development, marketing is a skill that can be learned with effort, persistence, and being genuine.
1
Helped me tremendously. I don't want (nor couldn't) be that person that says 'I am not made for that'. I've learned how to design 20 years ago, branding 10 years ago and web development 6 years ago. I started with marketing about 2 years ago.
1
100% agree. Thanks for sharing.
1
Love the information posted. I'm really stuck on marketing my product. Not really sure how to do it?
1
Happy to give some direction—just shoot an email! 🙂
1
This is very true. Even with an amazing product most of my time is spent on marketing, sales, demos, recruiting, etc.
I got advice like this at the beginning when I started working on my app. After a few years in business and selling 10s of thousands of copies (it's a side project, currently at $4-5k / month and the sales are still going up), I am not sure that I completely agree with the gist of this article. My angle is that the core of marketing is the product itself - if you get it right and help with some real pain, it starts spreading itself.
My approach is to talk to customers and instead of investing my time and energy into marketing, to spend time on improving the product. I have noticed that after any meaningful update of the product, it starts spreading faster.
I follow the 80/20 ratio but inversely and also outsource some of the marketing, e.g. content creation, website redesign, etc.
On the other hand, I cannot tell for sure whether I couldn't have sold many more copies, had I done more marketing instead of the feature work :-)
By talking to your existing customers, you're already doing marketing ;-) After sales and/or technical support, is a part of marketing in the sense that how well you do it, or that you do it at all affects how your customers perceive you and will thus influence their decision to recommend your product or service to other people.
A recurring theme in most of Courtland's podcasts is how important it is to actually talk to a living, breathing customer - via video chat or phone call, as opposed to email or chatbot or those call centers. It's critical that we talk directly to customers more often as you'll get direct feedback about what your customers want and/or need.
I don't believe there's a "perfect" ratio or rule of thumb with regard to the amount of time spent between product development and marketing. You pretty much allocate your time based on what you learn from marketing and product development and prioritize the important tasks and allocate your time per day accordingly.
Interestingly, I have not spoken to any customer directly except for support emails. The only exception was an influential blogger - he asked me to add a feature and thanks to that then recommended my app.
To get honest feedback, just read the anonymous reviews in the AppStore and take them seriously - these are the pain points. As Bill Gates once said, “Your most unhappy customers are your greatest source of learning”.
Researching that pain and understanding + solving it is what amy hoy & alex hillman call "sales safari" - quite different from just talking to your customers which can lead you down the wrong path for the following reasons:
https://stackingthebricks.com/bootstrapping-series-5-customer-interviews/
By any chance can you give some more detail into the marketing jobs you outsourced?
Sure. As I didn’t know what to do at all (I'm a dev) and how to do or outsource marketing, I decided to pay for a marketing strategy first. I hired someone experienced on Upwork and paid 1k (you could probably get it much cheaper) for a ~ 30-page document analyzing my current situation, including competitors, user personas, possible channels, etc. The key is to pick a marketer who understands the domain/topic!
This gave me a list of tasks that I could outsource individually to less skilled marketers. As the app started making a bit of money, I picked some tasks - e.g. creating some content for my website and paid to get them done.
I have also contacted some high profile bloggers/influencers identified in the strategy and got some mentions on their blogs.
There are some more tasks that I’m going to pay for now, like spreading the word on Reddit, YT, Quora, …
I also did some initial ASO optimization myself using SensorTower (the free offering) - changed my app title to be more unique, updated the keywords, … This helped in the matter of a few months.
I have experimented with FB campaigns but it didn't pay, the app sells for under a fiver and I couldn't achieve a profitable conversion rate. I can imagine if you sell something over $10, it might make a difference as the audience targetting is great.
Recently, I have paid for a professional app preview video, which has increased the sales measurably.
I do it as I go and as the app makes some money. But seriously, the biggest increases in sales were after feature updates.
Lots of good info!
I've been hesitant to spend a ton on marketing after spending for a freelance developer. The main reason is that the app only sells for under $2 and I could very easily spend a ton of money that doesn't see a return. It's encouraging to hear a successful story from an app that sells for a low price. I'll have to look into hiring a marketing strategist.
Which tactic gave you the most bang for your buck?
Do you mind if I ask the name of your app?
Re the marketing strategy, I only paid for it once the app had made a few thousand bucks after the first 2-3 years; I don't invest money that the app hasn't made. Thinking of it, I cannot directly attribute any return to it yet so that's probably not a safe investment for start. I just wanted to approach it in a structured manner, not to randomly hire some facebook campaign managers and whatnot.
There is no single thing that has made a big difference, it's been always step by step, continuous effort. One thing that helped me at the beginning was when I contacted one influential blogger, he gave me some feedback and I implemented new features based on that. He then blogged about it and started spreading the word.
Sorry, I don't want to disclose the app yet. I have 2-3 competitors that (IMHO) make some mistakes in what they focus on and sell much less than me. I don't want to give them hints ;-) It's a tool/utility app with a high entry barrier; it is difficult to do, which means fewer competitors. It took me 1.5 years to launch the first version working 10-15 hours/week and it worked embarrassingly badly when I look back. Once I improved it, the sales started going up.
Not sure if I'm a good fit for this website; it's not exactly hacking what I do, more like a lot of work.
Great article - thanks for sharing. This part really resonated with me:
It's certainly been helpful to adopt this slight mindset shift for my project (www.tribefive.me for reference). By thinking about how I can add value for other people, it makes it easier to come up with blog articles to write, or think of better ways to engage with potential customers, etc.
One tip to add: if you are just getting started on marketing...start small at first, but be very consistent about doing it.
For instance, send out just ONE cold email per day. Setting the bar low will make it very easy for you to "win" each day. Doesn't matter if its 9am or at 11:50pm...you can always achieve your daily goal.
And then as you build up momentum...you can step it up to 5 or 10 or even more outreaches per day.
Cheers!
Jonathan
Great tip. Being consistent is so important. It gets really tiring in the early stages to continue doing any marketing if any number (traffic, users, etc) is super low.
Yeah, you are totally right. The problem with marketing is that you don't get feedback right away compared to when you are coding (ie. you'll see errors real time when you do something wrong).
That means...you could be doing a bunch of email outreaches and results won't trickle in until a day / week later.
To get over that obstacle, I keep this quote front and center: "Don't judge each day by the harvest you reap but by the seeds that you plant."
For anyone reading this article that feels marketing is not something they understand, I highly recommend that you follow HubSpot (http://blog.hubspot.com) to understand the value of 'inbound marketing'.
I also recommend that you get @mijustin 'Marketing for Developers' (https://devmarketing.xyz/). Don't just buy the book, get the online course and watch the videos. It's a great investment in how to take your product to market as a developer. Justin is also a fellow IH, so you give a bit of love back to the community... which is also good.
Thanks for the kind words @SilverStr!
Oh yeah, I learned lots from Justin over the years. ✊
Hey you earned it bud.
Keep forging along. Can't wait to hear more about the transistor.fm journey.
80% marketing is bullshit, unless you are selling bullshit or unicorn farts. A real product should be, maybe, 70% product 30% marketing. (on time and budget)
For a majority it's true, but in my case.... I haven't done much marketing(like 2 hours/week?) and I reached a 5 figures MRR in less than a year. The marketing was done by:
my customers spreading the word about my product
"Powered by" style link on the widget.
responding to some questions on some forums
Probably it's just luck for me, but if you have a great product which serves a big need for a niche, the product pretty much sells itself.
I'd say 2 hours of focused marketing per week is a pretty significant amount of marketing for a solopreneur. ;)
What's your product? You should add it to your IH bio.
I had never heard of this 80/20 rule until I started frequenting IndieHackers. I always found myself trying to work on my project but always getting caught with marketing, demoing and selling to existing clients.
So, without knowing it, I ended up programming only on Fridays and sometimes Thursdays... so I validate the notion.
The "80-20" rule is a take on the Pareto principle (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pareto_principle)
Great article and I can relate it very well. In fact, I saw most of the founders/makers of great products, actually spend the majority of their times on marketing.
Great article!
was the empty space intentional ? :)
Is it still there? Thought I edited that (bad copy/paste from original blog) 🙀
fixed now :)
Resonates so much with me. As a developer the biggest mistake I have ever made is ignoring marketing altogether.
Great article, thank you for putting this together.
The part that really resonated with me was to treat marketing as another mountain you are trying to scale. Like coding and product development, marketing is a skill that can be learned with effort, persistence, and being genuine.
Helped me tremendously. I don't want (nor couldn't) be that person that says 'I am not made for that'. I've learned how to design 20 years ago, branding 10 years ago and web development 6 years ago. I started with marketing about 2 years ago.
100% agree. Thanks for sharing.
Love the information posted. I'm really stuck on marketing my product. Not really sure how to do it?
Happy to give some direction—just shoot an email! 🙂
This is very true. Even with an amazing product most of my time is spent on marketing, sales, demos, recruiting, etc.
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