Can sharing your origin story help build user trust and growth?
I feel that building user trust - through decent enough branding, alignment with influencers, testimonials, etc. - is a necessary ingredient for user adoption and for help telling the difference between lack of product market fit vs. sucking at marketing.
But, I've heard others say that the product will sell and market itself if it's really good enough and if the demand is strong enough.
My cold emailing hasn't been going so hot. Is there little demand/market for my service? Or do I just suck at marketing? Or is it because I haven't provided enough information to gain the trust of my users?
What do you all think?
People always ask "how did you come up with the idea?". So, to "feed two birds with one scone" (as my wife likes to say), I decided to publish my origin story as the first blog post on my site, which helps answer that question and which I hope will help build user trust: https://www.tipalink.com/blog/the-story-behind-tipalink.
[Tipalink ID UP-13337333-1]
I think, and am counting, on the fact that a solid origin story builds trust and alignment. Most marketing makes me think that I am listening to a cold, calculating corporate machine that is trying to get me to buy something while hiding their true motivations.
Knowing those motivations up front, and putting a human face on it (especially in the early bootstrap phase) could make a difference.
The flip side concern though is what happens when you are selling to enterprise or SMB/SME clients. I think this gets a bit more tricky as they want to invest in stable, strong, safe providers and know that there is a bigger machine going on behind the scenes (which we are all trying to fake with our little, small team, startup mentalities)
ha, good point regarding B2B. my startup is both B2C and B2B2C, so that's definitely something to keep in mind. cheers
Yes - we are people, and we are wired to respond to human narratives. I have one of the early emails from the Kickstarter crew when they were drumming up interest and projects for the idea - and it was grounded in the founder's role in the arts. So I would extend beyond the backstory to your early community - and focus in on those artists you are trying to help.
thanks, that's a good idea
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