Are we stuck in a developer/entrepreneur bubble?
Are we stuck in a developer/entrepreneur bubble?
I'm listening to an episode of the Bootstrapped Web podcast, "More Questions Than Answers in 2019," and they're talking about how many of the go-to strategies from a few years ago don't work anymore. Specifically:
- PPC to get off the ground.
- Using content marketing exclusively to get started.
- Requiring a credit card number to get started with a free trial.
- etc
I got to thinking... most of the marketing and sales advice that I've read and listened to has been people creating products aimed at startup types. Maybe they're selling a book on marketing, or maybe they have a Saas app that they're targeting at tech-savvy businesses .
Let's say that I was an entrepreneur creating software for e.g. small accounting shops. I can't imagine that market moves as quickly as the one targeted at startups. Maybe those strategies from 2015 would still work? And that got me thinking - how much other marketing/sales advice that we hear is significantly less applicable in other markets?
Curious what you guys think.
Everyone avoids direct sales. direct sales works. following the trendy advice is cool if you're not dependent on revenue. If you need sales to live, pick up the phone, talk to people, qualify their problems and offer a solution. its timeless.
How can they? Customer aquistions costs rise no matter what the market. Only adwords cost are auction. The other channels rise based on market prices for digital marketing.
I am finding this out first hand as we are scaling our bootstrapped SaaS startup. For us, it's going to come down to direct sales and problem value articulation to launch into a market.
Each industry is at a different point in its digital transformation. Some are far ahead while others are "old" comparatively. With that said, similar to what @raleigh_user is mentioning, it is important to think about where your target buying audience will be and play to the marketing strategies that will work in that specific case.
Most of the online advice you see today is geared towards hyper tech savvy online only business'. The methods may work, but its just a means, not the right fit for most business models/types.
+1
I've just listened to the podcast and most of what they were saying is related to saas founders / freelancer niche.
There are still a lot of industries, verticals were people use ugly UX products, 10 years old desktop app, etc. You can still reach them with ads, cold emails, etc.
Ya, that makes a ton of sense. I'm sure there are industries out there where the best marketing strategy is paying for ads in physical newsletters.