How do you find someone to help with marketing?
I'm an engineer. I love making websites, but when it comes time to turn them loose on the world, I stall out because Im terrible at marketing and don't enjoy it. I just want to get onto the next project. So, I have a dozen websites with few customers :(
What I need is a marketing buddy or a small marketing company that can take over for me. How can I find this? I've done some searching, but it's hard to get past all the giant expensive marketing companies that I could never afford. How can I find someone just starting out who wants to learn with me?
You're not an engineer; you're an Indie Hacker. Suck it up and get better at marketing - my co-founder and I are doing the same thing. Sure we would be delighted to find someone to do everything we don't find as fun as coding but that's not a reasonable way to approach this.
A couple of counterpoints. "Getting better" at marketing might not be enough to compete with teams who are great at marketing and/or someone who can sustain the necessary time and effort, especially while wearing both hats. You have a co-founder, so you've already got what Jake is obviously looking for - someone to share the load. It's not really about doing things that aren't as fun as coding, marketing is a craft in itself and a time-consuming endeavour to do right. Obviously there's merit to upskilling in marketing as an engineer, but there's also limits.
And how are you going to find that marketing guy? By marketing to him of course. So you can either spend your time doing marketing to get a marketing guy or you can just market your product directly - your choice. Later on when you have customers it will be different and getting such a person will no longer require so much effort.
This argument doesn't apply if you want to get a technical person on board though because that person can see value in the code you are building at least.
Finding a co-founder and marketing your product to customers are vastly different exercises.
I wonder if Phlywheel by @missrogue would be up your street?
I don't they could take over the work for you with their offering, but it might help you off in the right direction. Many indie hackers struggle with this. And personally I love Tara's style.
Thanks @rosiesherry!
@offsky this is exactly why we built Phlywheel! If you don't mind doing the work, while getting the agency guidance and help, it's only $39.99/month (or if you want the Knowledge Center and 1-on-1 help, $149.99/month). There's a free trial, too. :)
@disrael is a bit harsh on the whole "you need to know it all," but Phlywheel is about teaching a man to fish as well...not just courses and such.
I'm only harsh on the chuck it over the wall to that missing co-founder approach. I've been to large meetings (before in person died) where more than half the people are stalled waiting for Godot.
Phlywheel might well be the answer.
@disrael we all need a swift kick in the butt from time-to-time. ;)
I love the marketing side!
Seeing an idea become a tangible product that people love is the best part for me.
What industries are your projects in?
I'd be happy to have a chat about partnering up. I'm mostly interested in gaming, sports, non-profits but would be open to a few different ideas.
The areas I tend to work in are puzzles (www.braingle.com), games (www.puzzletales.com), productivity (www.toodledo.com), and activities for kids (foldnfly.com), among other things. I posted some other links in a different comment here. I'll send you a message :) Thanks!
Sounds good, I'd be happy to have a chat!
Can you link some of the sites?
Here are a few of my more recent sites:
https://www.foldnfly.com/ (Paper airplane folding instructions)
https://www.puzzletales.com/ (Interactive puzzle stories)
https://www.movienight.tips/ (Finding kid-friendly movies from past decades)
https://www.t4sk.dev/ (Dashboard for your personal microtasks)
Thanks for the interest!
Totally get your problem! While leading a startup, I've found a marketing manager (actually, a great one) on Upwork. Try searching there, use filters and look for portfolios.
ps. Fiverr may also work
I've had great success with Fiverr for finding artists and designers. Never tried for marketing. I'll check it out, and upwork too. Thanks for the suggestion.
Do you mind if I ask what it cost roughly to hire them?
Lead marketer was 800 $/month and a part-time helper was 300 $/month
Hey Anastasia, could you please elaborate on what was most useful from the marketing manager you hired? I'm trying to hone in on my service offering
Simple. I don't. I use myself 😉
Hi Jake! I totally get your frustration. I am on the other side – I am a marketer. But I work closely with engineers to give support for their ideas and bring the product to life. It's two different areas of startup excellence – how and what to build. If you know the "how", I can help with storytelling and execution around "what". Here's a bit of my story and a website: https://remoteam.marketing
Looks very interesting! What are the costs, and is there any chance your service would work for a developer oriented product?
Hi @offsky, are you looking to sell any of them?
Perhaps we can discuss further over on email. I am the complete opposite of you. I hated designing homepages, layouts, and building websites (did a few nonetheless).
When I read this title I immeditaly thought of @mijustin Marketing for Developers. He gives a ton of advice that may help you do a few things to market yourself.
My advice as a developer is to build a product for an existing marketplace such as app store or extension store. I've been able to get 200k users for my Weather Extension and 150k for my Link Shortener Extension due to the reach the chrome/firefox/opera stores have. I also spend about 25% of my time focussed on marketing including blogging, sharing, and promoting my extensions.
If you are looking for a digital marketing solution, we made a mobile first AI marketing assistant that allows you to launch multi channel ads in less than five minutes. Check out Otis AI.
You should reinvest in your company by always setting aside at least 10% on marketing budget. And if you don’t know how to do it- hire someone or learn. There’s so many free resources out there. If you don’t market your business, you will scale very slowly or not at all. The key is consistency and keep at it even if your budget is $5 a day. Data driven marketing is the way to go now.
You're right. Hiring the good ones is super expensive. In the beginning it probably would make more sense to upskill yourself. Problem is that there's just SO much awesome content out there (look at this thread as an example) and it can get overwhelming. Having a mentor can help in so you stay focused on the action part while avoiding shitty noob mistakes. Check out www.growthmentor.com - built exactly for this purpose.
You're not alone Jake! Marketing is an art, science, with what feels like a bit of magic thrown in as well.
I've started an SEO company (platform + services) Centori after working for years at HubSpot and am happy to chat any time about marketing/SEO to point you in the right direction and see if a partnership would help you reach your goals.
When it comes to SEO I've worked with SaaS companies, e-commerce, and financial management so it's been a pretty good array of verticals. You can reach me at tscionti@centori.io. Good luck with the journey!
Try looking at marketing as an extension of what you do (developing) rather than as an aside from what you do. You might be surprised to find yourself enjoying it.
Im trying :) I continue to learn. I even made a website to make marking easier for myself, LOL. But, Id still rather be coding :) I'll keep working on developing my marketing skills.
Hi, I had the same issue. I'm also a development guy and I'm first starting with programming projects completely. I know its hard for techies to start first with market research (which is pretty easy and I can share some methods with you).
the issue with us that we jumping on our code editor and starting coding even in some cases products that do not have markets.
The right way is to start first with market research, and its pretty simple. The idea is first to search the problem on google, see what people looking for and if you have competitors - if you do have, its good just you want to make sure that there is a place for a new fish in the pool I mean by that, do not start to compete with big players, for example, write something like "Google drive" because its a red ocean.
you are looking mostly for moderate markets that you can give even a bit better product or a bit better price or even better pricing model.
I can recommend this book for reading which is a must, and might give you all fundamentals (and more) of marketing only - Traffic secrets by Russell Brunson (his own Clickfunnels and one of the greatest).
good luck and I'm really open to chatting this is a topic that I like to talk about and maybe we can cooperate in some way - you can p.m me your skype - or another chatting platform.
I think there a lot of us that feel the same :)
I have also seen the other side, non-tech marketer which have an idea they want built and looking for tech co-founder.
Have you tried https://cofounderslab.com/
One of the sites I am working on connects customers with bootstrapped offers. The goal is to drive customers to new sites with minimal marketing (still need landing page...)
https://poorsaps.com/
Your choice of startup name is kind of odd and has negative connotation:
poor sap - Urban Dictionarywww.urbandictionary.com › define › term=poor sap
A term used to describe a sissy do-gooder Often used to mock others for being weak.
@pystar
The slang has multiple meanings and in the context of this site sap = fool.
so, don't be a fool by missing out on great offers- the tag line 'turning saps into sages' fools into wise people.
Not meant to offend. Just a landing page and having a bit of fun.
This comment was deleted 6 years ago