Having trouble focusing on a marketing/sales approach - advise / help needed
Having trouble focusing on a marketing/sales approach - advise / help needed
Hi Indie Hackers!
This is my first post. Thank you for having this community. I wake up and go to sleep looking at posts on this site to keep me focused on my dreams. I am learning a lot through everyone's asks and answers.
doctrends.com is my site. I need advise and direction in marketing and sales as well as simplifying how I can explain what doctrends.com does and why it's worth it. Sorry for being verbose below but explaining in detail helps me explain.
I am a developer. I am happiest when learning, applying code and building product. I have been running an applicant tracking solution for 10 yrs at $10k/Mo and bootstrapped this business in 2009. I work full time for a company as a senior full stack developer / architect. 2 kids and married. Life is full. I still have an itch for something bigger/next tho.
I have an idea and (i feel is MVP) product I've been working on for a couple of years. The general idea is this: Add intelligence to a document you've upload. Aka: Control, Track, and add functionality to your content. I got the idea from visiting conferences and other places that print a document and then hand them out at. That print document offers little in terms of 1) intelligence back to the business that is promoting what ever the printed doc offers in the form of analytics, collection of contact info, allowing sharing from within the content. and 2) provides no functionality to person who receives the doc (likely throws it away) in the form of click to call, click to email, call to action.
I have sort of validated the idea in the following ways:
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Can a local restaurant use a content marketing magnet (content that attracts a person to read and use the content) such attracting a person to give their contact info traded for a coupon? I worked with a local restaurant and produced a coupon with them. Then when they went to a festival (lots of ppl) we printed a QR code and walked throughout the crowd, taped them on walls, table, etc. The results were that more than 330 ppl scanned the QR code and opened the document/coupon. 90+% gave their email and name and number to obtain access to the document. 55% opened the document later on (within a week) likely at home. When we sent a follow email a week later 85% opened the email and ~45% clicked the link to the document again. The real kicker is 90 ppl shared it with someone else by clicking the share button and sending the document (they effectively signed someone else up) to another person/email address. It's still being opened in spite that the coupon is expired and the event was in September. Validated that people will trade info for a document during in person interactions.
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Can a car dealer use an eBrochure to a car to attract people to read and supply their contact info on a website/forum? I'm into Corvettes so I took the current year Corvette eBrochure and uploaded it to doctrends.com, set a few control properties. I took the link that the system generates and put it on corvetteforum.com. I put in my post: "Take a look at the brochure for the 2019 Corvette => https://doc.doctrends.com/lmvd5ekw7" That was it. 25 contacts were created (the ZR1 ebrochure produced 45 contacts). I even reached out to the moderator and asked him to look at the post to make sure it meets the rules....it was ok. Here is the results live => https://www.doctrends.com/share/index/Sg7exm5z63mvd5ekw730n2y1dwv
As you can see from the shared stats page (obfuscated for security) that there are several return visits and you can glean from their use of the document what pages they took longer to read could mean interest in features that a document could convey. Validated that people would give info for a document during online interactions. -
Currently in progress: I donate time and effort to a Car club here in the Atlanta area named Corvette Cruisers of Atlanta - I run the site corvettecruisersofatlanta.com. We hold a car show to raise money for various local charities including first responders and bullet proof vests for K9s. Yearly I help design the car show flyer that is then printed and handed out at other car events and other car related social gatherings. Our online and social media presence is low. The question: Can distribution of flyer for a car show improve our social media presence and increase our car show registrations as well as spectators? The plan is to produce a printed version of the flyer with a QR code as well as a slightly modified version for online. Then use the online and in person methods to obtain info so we can re-target later. The flyer is a work in progress at this time but the benefit of doctrends.com is I can version the document and automatically update everyone's version. https://driventoshow.com/corvette2019 . Expect this to change over time.
If anyone would like a demo of the application itself let me know - this will help me demo better. If the community could give any advise on anything from the document viewer and what broken to how I can improve it and market/sell doctrends.com I would greatly appreciate it. Sales is a miss for me as well as how to eloquently explaining what doctrends.com does. (by the way....it does a ton more). I would even be open to hiring someone to help with this aspect. Reach out for this also. nick AT doctrends.com
Thank you very much.
Nick
Boring ideas make money. New cool stuff consumes start up capital fast.
Getting late here so I'll be brief...
I feel your pain. Marketing and sales are hard to be motivated about for purebred developers.
That said, the idea and execution seem solid.
I'd add some easily accessible samples to the front-page so that people can get a feel of your product.
Let people play with it and more importantly, make your value proposition very clear.
I don't think "Add Intelligence to your Documents" makes sense to most people. I had trouble "getting it" without reading the rest of your post.
I agree with Justin Vincent that niching out at this stage is a good idea. Perhaps try penetrating N niche markets (restaurants and w/e) until you find which ones stick.
Perhaps build a neat brochure outlining doctrends and how it can help business X and pass it around (maybe add a bit of personalization) instead of cold-calling.
Build some well-presented case-studies.
All in all, the product looks valuable but I think you need to work a bit on how you present it.
David, thank you for your reply. I really appreciate your feedback. I will add your advice to my plan and execute.
Awesome, awesome work!
I'm going to give some advice using bullet points because I'm in the Dr's office and don't have a huge amount of time and there's a lot to be say ;)
Other notes:
I love that you have a schedule a demo button. That's perfect at this phase because you want to learn as much as possible.
Most important: Uncover one specific market. One specific use case. Work with that market to build something that is amazing for them. (If you really want, after you build to $100k/month on that market/use case, you can move to a second, and so on)
Thank you for your reply. I’m greatful you took the time to actually read my post and provide such insightful feedback. From your message I will spend sometime to come up with a message less “boil the ocean” messaging for my front page and focus more on sales rather than marketing. I have obtained a list of approximately 6.5 million emails, names and numbers and plan to cold email (with integrity) soon. I’m thinking I should ask a question rather than make a statement. I haven’t figure that out yet. Is there a “this is a tried and true” how to cold email / call?
I don't have something that is exactly what you are looking for but this post we wrote should be of some use: https://blog.nugget.one/0-5-journey/case-study-how-i-got-25-customer-development-interviews-in-2-weeks/
...also. I hope whom ever is sick feels better soon. Taking the time while you or a loved one is sick is even more evident of your character being one more of us should strive for.