Should I hire a marketer?

As a marketer myself, I'd say do-it-yourself until your business is big enough to pay for quality marketing. Here's why.

Consider how many marketing messages you see every day, and how many actually have any impact on you. I'm willing to bet it's less than 1%. But let's be generous and call it 10%.

That means 90% of marketing fails completely. And almost all of it is created by professional marketers.

So if you're going to pay for marketing, it really only makes sense to pay for the top 1%. You need someone who has a really solid plan on how they're going to break through the noise and generate sales.

Unfortunately, you're not likely to find that person on UpWork.

I'd go the DIY route, and start looking for someone who excels at direct response online marketing. A direct response marketer will be able to show dollar-for-dollar what the return on your investment is. They'll be able to show X dollars of sales were generated for Y dollars in advertising. They'll prove their ads (or emails or social media posts or whatever) are generating a positive ROI for you. What they won't do is say "I generated such and such amount of clicks, views, comments" or any other such useless metric. The only thing that matters is sales.

As a solo bootstrapper myself, I have realized that it is best to focus on marketing channels that give you immediate measurable results. Drip campaigns, blog posts, stickers, and tweets are cool but they don't have short-term ROIs nor is it easy to measure long-term ROI. Therefore, they are high risk. Only larger companies can afford to make those bets. As others have said, focus on direct response.

Hi Harry(?)

First up, congrats on getting close to your launch and announcing here on IH!

As you aren't planning to launch for another few months, I'm going to assume you don't have (m)any paying customers yet.

That's important, because even though you may be your own ideal user, you won't have had enough experience actually selling your product and talking to customers to be very good at marketing your product yet.

It therefore makes sense to do a lot of the initial marketing and sales yourself. There's no reason you can't learn the basics (ie to be 'good enough') pretty quickly.

That said, there are two areas where I recommend you get some support:

1. The hardest part of starting marketing is working out which select few channels/activities (out of many possibilities) should actually be implemented, and in what order. By yourself, you'll almost certainly get this wrong. If it were me, I'd reach out to the best marketer you can find (as a consultant or mentor) to help you work this out ASAP.

2. Some of the tasks you've mentioned above need your input/expertise to do successfully, but will be 10x better if you have the advice/guidance of a successful marketer. Drip campaigns are a good example of this. Great marketers are expensive though and don't hang out on Upwork.

As others have already said, you'll want to start growing your audience and reaching out to potential customers straight away.

Good luck!

Hi @harryblueberry!
I believe it's always best to do it first yourself. It's your business, your baby. No one knows better than you how to sell / market your solution.
Also I believe you shouldn't wait the launch to build your brand and engage your audience. You should start to experiment today so you'll be ready to boost your most successful acquisition channels once you'll be ready.
If you have precise question, I'd be very happy to help.

If you have funds to invest in finding someone who has experience in SaaS marketing - then definitely seek out that knowledge and experience. You want someone who has worked in a start-up environment and has hands on experience in creating all the assets you've just mentioned. I cannot express how valuable that knowledge can be. I've learnt so much from working with consultants and experts we've "headhunted". And I think that's the key. If you're going to pay for help, make sure you do the research and seek them out.

Start building a opt in email list early.

I would start building an audience now, months before your launch.

This way you can use this time to experiment and learn what works and what doesn't.

Beware of the snakeoil sales trap. If they want sell a package, seo, or content marketing, run away as fast as you can. Learn cold outreach.

General tip: avoid getting spread too thin.

Love how Michael E Gerber outlined the 3 roles:

• The Entrepreneur
• The Manager
• The Technician

No business runs without help. Typically, that's in the form of employees. These days, this is in the form of 3rd party work, automation, off-the-shelf tools, etc.

You need more bandwidth to get things up and running... and it costs to switch context.

For instance, if you're so focused on engineering or design, you'll want 3+ hours straight to work on a specific item... It costs so much to context switch into a salesperson/idea person/marketer.

@harryblueberry, If you are looking for help in building early traction, check out this option @ https://www.tractionmate.com/