From MVP to Beta with 150+ paid users. Now what?
Last year I started working on a product ( https://voice.vistaspeech.com ) to scratch my own itch of creating a tool that can do voice overs, create videos and have a choice of human like avatars to narrate the said videos.
I was making this tool to help me create product videos, marketing videos and anything else where I need a human. I was going to use it for my youtube channel and 2 newsletters I was about to start.
When the MVP was ready, I started testing the products creation among my friends and family to see if they liked it. I posted about it on facebook groups I frequent. The feedback was awesome and people wanted to try it by themselves. So I made the tool available to public on a trial basis. The feedback on the user interface was quite negative but I got plenty of pointers on how to improve it, which I did.
Some one suggested the idea of publishing it on AppSumo as a life time product and see if people are willing to pay for it and than take suggestions and feedback from paid users to further polish the product. I thought it was a good idea and listed it on AppSumo, they paid me $250 upfront (I think there was some kind of promotion going on at that time).
After that, I went back to working on the product and kept my trials users in loop. I shared the product updates through small videos and images.
I also did a giveaway of 10 premium accounts in a facebook group.
Meanwhile sales started rolling in from the AppSumo listing. In total I made about $7800+ in sales. I was very happy with the result.
But now I have decided to market the product as a monthly recurring service and took down my AppSumo listing. I am not sure how to market the product and where.
I am still going to use it for my own purpose of creating content for my newsletter + private community and youtube channel.
-> I would like to know what you think about my journey till date.
-> How can I market the product as a monthly recurring service and where to market it ?
PS: The main website and landing pages are quite old and will need a complete rework.
Cool story, you got so far already!
If I were to market your product, I would start by targeting one niche, like explainer videos for software products or helping HR train new employees. For the latter one, you could run ads on LinkedIn for example.
But before that, learn better who your paid customers are, talk to them and get them to recommend your product to their colleagues with an affiliate program, for example.
These are just some things that popped up in my mind right now. I'm more than happy to create a marketing plan with at least 3 paths forward you can execute yourself or at least get inspiration from for free.
My email is d.strijker@icloud.com