Honesty as a marketing strategy + some thoughts about marketing
Well, I have to admit it first — I am bad in marketing, and I have no idea where to start. I can do backend, frontend, design, DevOps, and analytics, but marketing is something really weird and yet unexplored for me.
The first time I made an attempt to promote my indie product (https://telescope.ac) was about three months ago — I simply made a ProductHunt post (https://www.producthunt.com/posts/telescope-6) that helped me to get my first users and even some paying customers. However, the growth has slowed down immediately after that — mostly because I decided to focus on features and visual styles instead of immediately starting promoting the product elsewhere. Yes, I know that, ideally, you have to do both, but my resources were and are very limited.
The thing is I try to build my product around the idea of honesty. The platform itself is tracking-free, has no scripts or ads, and allows users to download their data in one click, and the way I want to do marketing should be aligned with the values of the platform.
The question is the following — what marketing strategies do you like, love, and find particularly useful? Which ones of them can you call 'ethical' or 'honest'?
Hi Alexander,
It seems that you have a good looking product, I am just not sure how it fits me - or anyone. It's not very clear from the landing page what it really is. Is it something like medium with no ads?
You're having a product-market/fit and positioning problem.
Here are some ideas for you:
Figure out what your product is for the customers that you already have. It might be a medium alternative for those that value privacy - this is an easier product to sell.
Focus the product 100% on the hole that it fits in your customers mind - not yours. This is one hard to swallow, but in order to grow is the only way. If people that are using your product tell you that they're using it because they like the design then it might be what you have to focus on, for example, "The blogging platform for those that want a simple but beautiful design".
Find a why - why do I want a "new beautiful way" to write, publish and distribute my writing, do I really need to? What pain point am I having as a customer that would make me use Telescope?
That’s actually a very good set of recommendations, thank you very much. I will certainly talk to those who use my product now, and will try to figure out what they value the most. Thanks!
Research VAT (Vulnerability, Authenticity, Transparency) methods as well as Seth Godin's permission marketing techniques.
Interesting question. A lot of people think that marketing and sales are a form of 'selling out' but you need to see what you've created as meaningful product for your potential customer. If you can frame it like that, interrupting their day with your message is less problematic.
A very common theme of content marketing is that you are creating value for the persona through education and being insightful, helping them achieve their own objectives. I have created a list of free ideas here for content marketing distribution https://www.linkedin.com/feed/update/urn:li:activity:6590613928185745409/
And I've also created 100 ideas for your first 100 customers as a Notion board https://www.notion.so/ollym/a81de48d5cd2414a8b307f7cbd461d42
In terms of changing your relationship with marketing and introducing it into your workflow, consider adopting a cycle of one marketing experiment a week, and measuring its performance vs time spent before going onto the next. This wouldn't be dissimilar to a design or development sprint and is a great way to build an understanding of what works in a way that is gratifying.
Nice ideas, thank you. Your Notion board is also amazing, will definitely check out the ideas there and try to adapt and use some of them.
Thank you! Glad you found it useful. If you have any questions just message me or LinkedIn, or book me through my open office hours so we can discuss on a call.
Building a project around honesty is a great idea, but you can take it a step up. Honesty is one of many values - transparency is another one, ethics too, etc - which I'm guessing are values that matter to you.
So one way to get around the 'how to live with marketing conundrum' is to go above individual values, and makes values in general your compass.
With that as a basis, you can start asking question about 'will do' and 'won't do', and let the answer guide your decisions and messaging. Won't lie or misrepresent, won't sell off user data - but will serve the user as per their needs, will create awesome UX, will treat people with respect etc etc.
That way, marketing gets a lot easier, because you're a) making it all about the user and b) you won't violate your own values (excellent for getting a good night's sleep ;).
And, because you lead with values in your decisions, product design and messaging, you filter for people who share the same values that are not-negotiable for you. Result: smaller pool of users, but much more aligned and engaged. That's especially useful in early stages, when ambassadors are important for adoption and growth.
As for 'marketing' as a concept: a guy I know says 'marketing is what you do when you can't go see someone in person'. I think that's a brilliant view, because: when you're chatting in a bar or a co-working space or on the subway, and someone asks what you're working on, your reply is also a form of marketing.
Seen that way, does marketing still seem as daunting or conflicting for you?
Talk to your users as people and ask them what problem they want to solve. Then only after they ask you how to solve it, do you share your product. Most conversations I never mention my company's or product's name. If it's relevant for them, it's the first thing they ask anyway.
Look at the other answers to this question, how many of them couldn't help but immediately share their product name or where to find it on product hunt, or some other marketing website.
We track everything and sell nothing. Why? Because as a user you want the best experience you can have, and if there is a problem during a session, a developer better be looking at it to make it better. If you aren't paying attention to the pains of your users, you missing a very important opportunity to help them. It is just irresponsible.
Of course, I use internal analytics and monitoring. By saying "tracking-free" I mean I don't use the external tools designed to solve this problem (like GA, for instance).
Then what you said sounds dishonest, just because you use something else besides GA does not mean you are tracking-free.
Additionally, scripts have nothing to do with honesty.
Marketing should not lie or harm others. That’s really the only limitation I have for it.
I don’t have an ethical problem with having tracking and analytics in our projects and websites. We use that to make things better. Likewise I don’t have a problem with ads, as long as they aren’t dishonest or scammy ads.