Ask: Stuck with marketing, any ideas what to do next?

In the end, I do have a product but have no good idea how to move forward with the marketing and promotion side.

You need an audience of people that know, like, and trust you.

There is just as much work needed on the marketing side as there is on the product side to have success--maybe more.

If this is totally new to you, I'd recommend you pick up "Dotcom Secrets" by Russell Brunson. He's a great digital marketer and creates a cohesive framework for marketing online. I have no personal or professional affiliation. Just a fan of his book.

P.S. If you're at all like me as an engineer diving into online marketing, the overly market-y sales-y aesthetic of the Dotcom Secrets landing page might turn you off. Resist the urge to dismiss and be turned off by it.

Here's an interesting quote from Ramit Sethi on the idea:

It reminds me of something I call going from D to C. And that means going from Disparagement to Curiosity, and when you see a comment that says who still uses email newsletters. That’s disparagement. You’re basically saying I’m smarter than this company. Who would ever use email newsletters, which is ironic, because this person happens to be exactly wrong.

And it, therefore, makes them look far more foolish because they’re disparaging something they simply do not understand. I would, instead, rather have people say, “Wow, these guys are using an email newsletter.” They seem to be doing pretty well. They get a lot of press. They seem to have a lot of customer testimonials. What do they know that I don’t?

From D to C. Stop the disparagement and start the curiosity. Like I said, when I started studying the dark arts of long copy, I first looked at these long copy pages, infomercials, and I said these things are scams. I started off with a disparagement model. But as I started getting deeper and deeper into it and learning what works, what doesn’t, what is ethical and what is not, I learned that there are very, very good reasons that direct response marketers have been using long copy for over 100 years.

What do they know that I don’t know? The answer is they know a lot. They know a lot more than I could ever hope to learn, and it’s all encompassed in this knowledge in direct marketing. So instead of disparaging things that we don’t understand, let’s actually try to say, hey, for 15 minutes, I’m going to try to understand that maybe these guys know something I don’t.

When you can do that, why…for example, of the reasons I moved to New York was all my Silicon Valley friends said it’s all about direct ROI. Those companies are so stupid that pay for ads in Times Square. I looked at them like that’s interesting, because those companies have been around for 50 years. Why does Louis Vuitton have billboards that they spend $200,000 a month on or 500,000?

What do they know that I don’t? As I moved here, the answer is they know a lot. They know a lot more, in terms of brand, and not everything is directly measurable. It’s important to be able to say, “Look, I may not know everything. Let me try to at least understand the basics of it.” When you do, you’ll see entire worlds open up. Like for me, I saw entire worlds of pricing, monetization, long copy, upsells, cross sells, AOV.

I saw all these things open up that I had never, never, never had an idea of. It was all because I first was disparaging them, and then I said all right. I better learn what these guys are doing. And that changed everything for me.

Originally from https://www.kalzumeus.com/2012/09/17/ramit-sethi-and-patrick-mckenzie-on-getting-your-first-consulting-client/

Hey Andrii - looks like you already know what to do next! You need a landing page. This will be your opportunity to describe the problem your potential customers have, and then tell us how Smarlyse solves it.

After you have a page that does this, start driving traffic to it. This is going to be a grind...not going to lie. People won't just find your site...you'll have to reach out 1:1 for their feedback along the way.

Once you do, you can start measuring your conversion and make tweaks to it as you go. The 1:1 feedback will likely bruise your ego...but that is part of the process and you can't hide from it!

What I've found with my project (www.tribefive.me for reference) is that:

1. I thought I was very clear about the problem and the solution
2. People were confused about what I was offering (aka I wasn't able to articulate my offering)
3. I had to go back multiple times and adjust my landing page copy and value proposition before it started to resonate

Here is a resource I've found that breaks down landing pages: www.useronboard.com. Hope it can help you!

Cheers,
Jonathan

I'm in the same position, I've been going through this list https://github.com/mrcrilly/PlacesToPostYourStartup

I've been featured on Launched.io starting today. But have yet to see any traffic for it, so I'll let you know if its worth it.

Hi Andril,

Once you have a landing page created, go to reddit and post on different sub-reddits like smallbusiness, entrepreneurs, startups and roastmystartup. You will get good feedback over there and also get visibility for your product.

Make sure to cover the following in a landing page

1. Have only one goal - if it is a free service say get started for free across the page, use call-to-actions 4-5 times max.

2. If you are intending on a free trial (if its a paid product), clearly mention how many days and have a uniform message across the landing page.

3. If possible, display actual screens of your product and mention top 3 benefits about what pain points you are solving.

4. If you have more features, i suggest dividing them into primary benefits and secondary benefits. Showcase the top 3 like i said in the previous point and others you can list as features.

5. Ask 2-3 people to use your service and take their testimonial. This will serve as your social proof.

6. If you can make an explainer video about using your service, all the better but keep it under 50 seconds.

7. Lastly, if you are not sure how many people might be interested in your product/service, you can create a short landing page telling them about beta access. This will help you collect emails and give you an idea how many people are interested in using the product. Buffer's founder (the social scheduling tool) also created a pricing page to gauge how many people visiting the landing page went to check pricing were interested in actually paying for the tool.

Hope this helps. Good luck :)

Hey Andrii. Can you tell me a bit about how you came up with this idea? Were you scratching an itch you've ran into before with 'junk' email addresses or is this just a technical solution?

Start with a good landing page, explaining the product and the problem it solves. Also make sure it renders properly: https://monosnap.com/direct/UOhx3LUpMXGr6apG2TTZyRoTuBqiCw

Ask more for feedback about the product itself.